Bernache Season (Loire)

Bernache !Meusnes, Touraine (Loire)
Open season for Bernache, the sugary juice-turning-into-fermented-beverage. This was saturday late afternoon and as I was spending the weekend in the Loire, when a sudden thought popped up : this is Bernache time, how didn't I remember ? I often miss by inattention this narrow window of opportunity when shortly after the harvest you can go to a winery or a coop and purchase this deliciously fermenting juice called bernache in the Loire and vin nouveau elsewhere. Many wineries and coops sell bottled bernache. The bottles are usually closed with a light cap with a hole, because otherwise the fermenting juice could burst out of the bottle with the pressure, ruining everything in the way in the car or in the kitchen. The earliest type of bernache, when fermentation has just begun, is the best, don't miss this stage : the juice is utterly onctuous and sugary and still has this faculty to get you high with the developing alcohol. Later, it's also interesting somehow, but something has changed, the juice has lost its ingenuousness, it has already turned toward the more austere features of the future wine.
With these sweet recollections in mind, I grabbed an empty bottle of water and remembered that I also wanted to buy a case of Jacky Preys's Sauvignon Cuvée Silex, a particularly mineral Sauvignon. So I had an excuse to drop there and fill my bottle with bernache.
Now, what would I do without these wonderful plastic bottles ? Be it for raw milk or rosé in bulk, they've been on every story lately...
I took my motorcycle to go to Jacky Preys in Meusnes, the road is pleasant and it's not a big road, I remember that there was this light truck I had to follow and couldn't pass for some time, making me wondering if I wouldn't arrive too late at the winery and find the door closed. It was not too late, and Jacky Preys was still working in one of the vatrooms, but it happened that I had just missed Jim Budd (the author Jim's Loire) by only three minutes... He was on his way back from the Quincy region where he inquired about the 2009 vintage and had stopped at Jacky Preys, whom he wanted to visit for a long time. That's too bad we missed each other, that would have been interesting, Jim has been visiting many places in the Loire for this harvest. See his post about his stop here, there's a couple of pictures of Jacky Preys.

The happy mess of a winery at harvestHave you ever visited a winery at harvest time ? That's usually the time when the vignerons don't want outsiders see the mess in their winery, you have the pipes, the pumps, all the winery tools, it's a hot season there, you might slip on some splashed juice and break your neck. I knew Jacky Preys and I considered that he wouldn't hate me too much for dropping at this strategic time of the year on a saturday evening. I really just wanted to buy a case of Silex Sauvignon (which I did) and fill my bottle with bernache, but I couldn't resist his offer to taste several of these fermenting juices from different vats and containers.
Jacky Preys says that this vintage (2009) should be historic, it's just exceptional, in his own words, he has never seen that quality in the 45 harvests he has lived through. The health of the grapes, the quality of the juice, every thing is just perfect. It's rather high in alcohol, like 13°, and the only down side is that the volumes are smaller this year because of lack of rain, he says that it's early to give precise statistics (at this hour he still has 5-6 days of harvest) but it's something in the range of 20-25% below a normal year in terms of volume. The quality of this harvest makes him consider 2009 as possibly the harvest of the century. The late season is also perfect, sunny but not hot (21° to 24°C), cool nights with lows like 4° or 5° C, which prevents the bad rot.
Filling a glass from a vat outsideTasting bernaches and comparing these sweet juices in the early process of fermentation requires some expertise, only experienced vintners can have a foreview of what the future wine will taste like and know enough their grapes and their terroirs to project themselves in the months ahead. But this was still interesting for me to taste these Fié Gris and different Sauvignons including the one from Jacky Preys' Silex terroir, a vineyard block with a high density of flint stones. Many of these bernaches were already leaving the sweet-juice stage and were showing some elements of minerality and adulthood.
Jacky even had me taste a bernache of Pinot Noir, that was also something, with its redish and turbid juice. At the end of my visit, he gave me a couple of bottles from a cuvée of Touraine Pinot Noir 2007 (le Piloris) which he vinified without any added SO2. It's a limited edition, he said, a try on a small volume, but several restaurants in Paris liked it and ordered some. We'll open a bottle soon and see how it tastes.
tasting from a 2000-liter vatJacky Preys vinifies his different vineyards and terroirs in as many vats and containers, and he has a large choice of them in his facility. In some instances, he pumps some wines in vats sitting outside so that the fermenting wine can naturally cool down during the night. The one above contains for example 2000 liters of the precious Silex cuvée (or the Silex was in the vat on the previous picture, and it was Fié Gris here, I don't remember), and it comes from a few rows which were ripe and harvested before the rest. He harvests the different vineyards or blocks when they are respectively ripe and vinifies them in separate vats, it's toward the end of the vinification that he will blend some of these vats and reunite what needs to be reunited. With the sweet side having almost disappeared in the late-stage bernache of this Silex Sauvignon, it was showing already some striking minerality, at least something I would call elegant and austere at the same time.
Careful : I have to ride back safelyNow, the interesting thing with tasting these vins nouveaux at the winery is that with the stretched harvests, you have a taste of different stages with each vat, beginning with the utturly delicious and onctuous grape juice (the most recent juice) to the juice leaving its childhood and maturing rapidly toward adulthood (the juices with a few days of vatting). For me, this tasting was interesting in the sense that I could point to the exact stage that I like for the bernache, and the one most people like, I think, and that's when while being still very sugary and velvety, the juice has enough alcohol to gently intoxicate you. Many of the juices that I tasted that day were already beyond this pleasure line and had not yet reached the wine stage. We probably tasted about 10 juices that day, and it was wise to share the glass with the bucket, plus the content of this bucket (in which we didn't spit, don't worry) went back into one of the vats.
Bernache for dinner...Now, I swear I didn't arrange the elements on this scene to make a picture with an harmony of colors and tones : There were these first walnuts of the season picked under the tree, I had just cooked some zucchini with potatoes for a casual bachelor dinner when I realized how this all looked so nice, with these nuances of clay, yellow and beige tones. That's what I call a good match...

Comments

[Jim Budd]

Sorry to have missed you, Bertrand. We must arrange to meet up. Cordialement Jim

[Bertrand]

We'll arrange that, Jim...
Cheers,
Bert

[Allan Parker]

It's now 2012. My wife and I attempt to get to the Vendomois Co-op to get their Bernache each October. I's a pink colour and superbly refreshing.
AP