Thierry Allemand (Cornas, Rhone)

Thierry Allemand on Le BoisCornas, northern Rhone
Thierry Allemand (whose last names means German in French) works on a vineyard surface of about 5 hectares in Cornas, northern Rhone. Cornas means "scorched earth" in the language of the Celts , which implies that the area has always been particulary hot, like Côte Rotie which means "roasted slope" in French. When you're down in Cornas looking up at the hills right behind the village (picture on left), it's obvious that you're very quickly on serious slopes, actually most of the surface of the Appellation is on slopes. Thierry Allemand lives with his family in the village of Cornas, in a charming old house wearing the patina of time. That's where he had his facility for years too, until he moved it to a larger building on the plateau above cornas.
Thierry Allemand's plots, which are part owned and part rented (fermage), are scattered in numerous small terraced surfaces, each with their specific terroir. The interresting thing to note is that when this vigneron selected and chose some of these (very) steep and terraced slopes more than 30 years ago to replant vines in the place of the trees and bushes which had since long taken over, he was alone with no competitor. Working in such conditions was considered too difficult or too costly because everything had to be done by foot & hand or with very small all-terrain caterpillars (which weren't easily available at that time anyway). Thierry Allemand did all this work mostly by himself, bringing back the age-old terraces to life one by one, and his choice proved to be a much better one (if painstaking) than choosing the easy option of making wine from a flat block down the slope. Cornas was then a neglected Appellation mostly under the radar even for knowledgeable wine amateurs and some vignerons preferred to bottle their Cornas under the generic Côte du Rhone label.

Brightening sky over CornasThierry Allemand started working at Robert Michel (a family winery in Cornas) at the age of 18, and at 19 he had already vinified his first cuvée there. He learned a lot with Robert Michel who is a man of tradition in the area, doing the vineyard tasks and learning the vinification. He kept working at his day job in the winery all the while beginning to tend a small surface of his own beginning in 1982, half an hectare at first, then 1,5 hectare. This turned out to be like running two full-time jobs at the same time : the regular day job with the usual working hours, and his own vineyard work (and replanting) in the wee hours of the day and in the evening. He began to sell the wine to the négoce in 1987, until 1991 when the négociants refused to pay him the 32 Francs/liter (about 5 €) rate he asked for his Chaillots and Reynards wines. From then on, he did the bottling and commercialized his wine himself. And this double life (day job & his own) lasted some 15 years during which he could patiently work his own way through the rebirth of these terraced plots and his vinifications without the pressure of the mortgage and the banks. this fierce independant mind allowed him to work on his own rules, not on the ones of optimized returns, and stay free. He is one of the vignerons (maybe THE one) who helped prove that Cornas wines desserved a front seat among the northern Rhone wines, and this, without using lab additives other than a light SO2 addition (some of his cuvées don't get any SO2 at all).
When you put things in context, Cornas is a small Appellation in terms of size : located in a single village (Cornas), it has roughly 112 planted hectares today, down from an estimated surface of 500 hectares in the 19th century. Everything was sold in bulk to the négoce until well into the 50s', the first estate bottlings started in the mid 1950s' thanks to inspired vignerons like Clape, Juge, Voge and Michel. Cornas in the eye of the storm (view from the upper slope)Soon after arriving at the Allemands' house in Cornas, Thierry drives us to the vineyard-covered slopes above the village. B. and I take a seat in his old Toyota all-terrain, a Land-Rover-like vehicule with 280 000 km at the meter. One of these violent summer storms started right when we left the village and began to climb the steep gravel roads in the battered 4X4. I must recognize that with the slippery mud and stones on some of these very-very steep trails, I didn't feel very secure at all (we drove on some abruptly-steep trails with lots of mud and gravel). Of course I knew that Thierry Allemand drives there all the time by all conditions and seasons but I really had the feel that the Toyota could loose its grip on the uneven and slippery slope at any moment, and I envisionned the multiple turnover catastrophe that would follow (B. told me later that she felt safe all along, shame on me)... We make a stop near a small building up the slope with a few trees around it, with the view on the steep vineyards, the village of Cornas and the Rhone river in the far (picture above) as the full-blown storm pours its rain. Great changing lights with shades of grey on the whole scene. The vineyard just beneath this cabin belongs to Robert Michel and Thierry works them on fermage, it's the Téziers vineyard if I'm right. Geynales (center, beyond foreground), a Cornas terroirThierry Allemand's vineyards are located very close from Cornas and while they're all on slopes and man-made terraces, they have distintive terroir characteristics : Some are granitic, others are decomposed granit (named gore) or granit with clay, then others are just clay, with still a dominant granitic in general. Reynards for example has a soil with big granitic stones.
During all these years when he was working with Robert Michel, he learnt all the differences and properties of these terroirs, and he could also in consequence foresee the potential value of the terraces that he would later clear from their maze of trees and bushes. The terroirs bear names like Chaillot, Saveaux, Geynale, Teziers, Reynards, the view from all of these plots being astounding under almost any weather, I understand why Thierry Allemand loves this life in spite of its challenging hardship. From up there you dominate the Rhone valley, small side valleys and the village of cornas, and working on terraces with sometimes just a single row of vines must yield ascetic and hermitic pleasures. His smallest vineyard blocks makes 800 sq meters or 0,08 hectare. We have a look at his 0,8-hectare Pigeonnier vineyard. Elsewhere (here we move again on the treacherous and scaringly-steep trails through the vineyards) we see the vallée de Chaillot, a plot with a north-east exposition and clayish soils. These grapes go into his SO2-free cuvée.
He and one of his sons work all these vineyards with tools, either manually tilling between the rows or using a small, special walking plow coupled with a motor-powered winch to pull the plow up the slopes. When the slopes are too arduous for this job, for example when the slope is not straight and veers one one side or the other, they just let the grass grow and cut it with a wire mower. These vineyards where grass is just cut from time to time and where there's no plowing done appear oddly to have a lighter green color from afar. That's because of the competition with the grass, as I understood, the foliage doesn't get dark green like in his other (plowed) plots.
His Geynales vineyards, which are probably with the Reynards the best terroirs of Cornas, were purchased by Swiss investors who wanted him to make wine from them. They let him work his own way and as I understand appreciate the type of wines he makes. Les ReynardsWe reach a narrow valley encroached on the slope : les Reynards is the name of a narrow side-valley perpendicular from the Rhone valley. It climbs toward the plateau and it is still very wooded in some parts, this is one of these vineyards that he conquered back from the woods and bushes which had take over and almost erased (at least visually) the ancient terraces' walls. That's typically the sort of land nobody was interested in : very narrow, impracticable terraces whith sometimes room for a single row. Farmers in the past centuries, in times of autarcy, would grow vegetables and vines there to take advantage of the sun and of the expostion. The climate was milder than today and the slopes would guarantee ripeness.
It took Thierry Allemand lots of effort and energy to clear these terraces and replant them. At some point he had to become a builder in addition to a grower and a vigneron : to secure the narrow terraces which had suffered from years of neglect and from the comeback of the guarrigue, he had to rebuild some of the walls that keep the earth from tumbling down the slope. He had tons of stones hauled there as close as possible and he put the walls back in place, sometimes bettering the initial wall to optimize the use of the motor-powered winch and plow. Showing the different climatsWe stop at a vineyard named le Bois which is planted with old vines. This block is plowed with a winch and a walk plow. This 0,2-hectare vineyard was planted in 1934. It's striking how Syrah vines don't look big even when they're very old, the vines remain slim even if with some features and angles showing their age. The goblets are very high above the ground, and unlike many growers around who cut the plant at the post height, Thierry Allemand lets the plant raise further up. That's one of the ways to distinguish his vineyards from his neighboors. He considers that cutting too short makes reaching the right maturity problematic. Some of the posts are made with pvc instead of wood because the high Ph of the soil shortens the lifespan of ordinary wooden posts.
For some of the vineyard management, he relies on a service company named "A la Tâche". To tie the shoots, he never use a company, that's a job he makes with his sons. The spraying is an even more strategic thing and he does that alone. He makes also some special preparations for the sprayings but he isn't strictly in what could be considered a biodynamic management. working with a cable-powered walk plow needs also a few people : two to operate the plow (one at the plow, the other on the engine side), plus 7 or 8 to till the ground. Then, there's the ébourgeonnage (debudding) and the épillonnage (a more specific debudding) which are also time-consuming tasks : 500 hours per hectare in average.
Driving further, we reach the plateau which is beginning to be planted with vineyards even though it's less qualitative in terms of soil (too rich). Still, 3/4 of the vineyards in Cornas are on slopes, the rest being either on this plateau or on the flatland down the slope near the village.
At one point, we saw how a radically-different vineyard management translates in the appearance of the vines, as you can see on the picture on right : These are originally same-age vines part of an originally-whole plot. The half on the foreground id Thierry Allemand's while the part in the back is worked by another vigneron who somehow plowed heavily between the rows, which resulted in severed roots and hampered the vines development. Allemand preferred to work softly on the ground, and the vines show a happier foliage as a result. Thierry Allemand pouringHe learned much indeed from Robert Michel, who is a tradition vigneron par excellence : for example he learned how to replant several vines from a single vine next to deceased vines : a vine shoot from a healthy vine is guided into the earth where a new vine is needed, but from there it takes off again and will be put to root a couple of times to replace other missing vines. That's an even cheaper way to do marcotage, the traditional way to replant vines. He noted by the way that if he cut the vital link between the newly-born vines, they often got sick with Phyloxera, as if the link protected the new vines from the disease with some sort of memory.
When he had to replant whole vineyards, like 0,4 hectare at once, he purchased massal selections of course, but planting the grafted vines right away in these scorched-earth plots often led to many losses. He says that typically the nursery dlivers the plants with a relatively short root which wasn't deep enough to feed the plant into survival. He is now resorting to doing what he has learnt at Robert Michel : plant the root first (which has usually a much longer root than the grafted one in the nurseries), and graft it with the desired selection a year later when it is firmly rooted and secure. There's no loss this way and the vines make it in spite of the hard conditions of the slopes. Robert Michel (who is now 62 and retired) is an experienced grafter and he has the official permission (agrément) to do this job. Checking a Henriod walk-plow with Philippe jambonThat's only when we drove back to his home that we could see his walk-plow workshop. Working with a walk plow is an art and a science, like I had the chance to discover with Francis Dopff in Alsace, a man who specialized on vineyard plowing with draft horses. You're quickly induced to design plows and blades when you do this kind of extreme plowing. You need tools which fit perfectly with the kind of slopes and terrain, and Thierry Allemand worked with a Swiss company, Plumet, to better an initial model from this make. His workshop is full of walk-plows, each with qualities and benefits, even if there he relies mostly on maybe a couple of them, a Plumet and an Henriod (the blue one). Philippe Jambon (a vigneron from the Beaujolais) and his wife had dropped at Thierry's place when we came back from the slopes, and he was very interested with the technical details of the walk plows. There are models like the V6, the G6 for buttage and another one I don't remember the acronym for the débuttagefor example. The motor-powered cable puller is a small (but heavy) machine on wheels, with a folding seat, one worker sitting there firmly while the other walks behind the plow at the other side of the winch/cable down the slope. To resist the pulling of the plow, the motor side digs into the ground with steel picks and spades fixed under the seat. Thierry has two such machines in his workshop, each weighing some 110 Kg complete with the steel cable. The walk-plow cable machinesThat's a sporty side of the vineyard management, and many artisan vignerons are familiar with these tools designed for extreme conditions, because they keep working on micro terraces or on extremely steep slopes, something that the business-minded vignerons rarely do. The latter prefer the flat or relatively flat surfaces for an optimized investment return. We're not dealing with the same wines at the end of course. Speaking of conventional growers, Thierry Allemand jokes that once he saw such a vigneron (whom we'll not name) who virtually never sets a foot in his own vineyards, the guy was posing in the vineyard for photographers and guess where ? in Thierry Allemand's vineyards ! It's probably that the vines were better looking or that the slope was so steep that it made a good photo-op, or both....
Philippe Jambon also uses this type of powered-cable with plow to work between his steep and narrow rows. He shows one of the winch/cable machines, remembering that he sold one of these to Fred Cossard (in Burgundy). Thierry says that a company restarted the production of these winch machines, at a price tag of 10 000 €.
Thierry Allemand has also a 60-centimeter-wide caterpillar for special jobs, but he says that he doesn't use it much.
Thierry Allemand on plows with Philippe JambonPlumet, the Swiss company which made the walk plows closed down some time ago and its activity was restarted in Burgundy by a company named Equivinum, the name of the company referring to the draft-horse tools. More and more growers choose to work with draft horses, and I don't think that it has to do with marketing or hype (there must be some here and there of course), and the rebirth of specialized tools catering to this new generation of growers was a natural outcome.
Finding the right blades for the plows is also a challenge, the shape and angle of the blade making a big difference. These tools and parts are not manufactured by mainstream agriculture-machines company because the market is still marginal, so the growers who need them because of the difficult terrain have to do some research, sometimes learning the metal-working and welding techniques. Thierry Allemand found by chance a blacksmith in Spain who realized the exact design that he wanted. The Spanish blacksmith is actually a sculptor, a skillful artist whom he came to know through his cork producer in Spain. He was chatting with him about his need of special blades, and the Spaniard called a friend of his who in fact couldn't make these blades, but the guy had an uncle/artist who ended up to be the right person. Opening a bottle in the cellarThe wines : Thierry took these bottles from his cellar and he made thus a beautiful gift to all of us. His wife took part to this tasting in the courtyard in front of the house, as well as the Jambons and their friends Floriane & Sébastien Grospellier who run the excellent restaurant La Table de Chaintré (in the Beaujolais - note that this is a must-visit table with great wines and affordable rates, but better call ahead, especially for dinner).
__ Thierry Allemand Cornas Chaillots 2007. All these wines are reds, Syrah of course. Beautiful nose with jellied fruits notes. Blackberries, raspberries. I feel wet stones, there's a mineral thing here. B. feels jellied black cherries with complexity and floral notes too, a charming and tannic mouth. Nice legs in the glass. Freshness feel, good acidity. Thierry Allemand ays that the fermentation lasted 20-25 days.
__ Thierry Allemand old vines, same vinification and élevage (2 years) as the former. 1,5 gr of SO2 added at the blend (of the casks), that's all. He vinifies whole clusters, uses always indigenous (wild) yeasts and doesn't "adjust" the wines with enological products. No filtration, no fining. The casks are several-years old, and he uses a foudre too.
Darker color than the former glass. On this wine, the nose seems to me more ample (and structured, says B.), but also more discreet, oddly to me. Solar mouth, beautiful. Perfect balance, a wine with lots of complexity B. finds the wine very mineral with a bit of jellied blackcurrant, and she appreciates the length, the juicy feel with the tight and elegant tannins.
__ Thierry Allemand Cornas 2003. Spices, eucalyptus and the likes, menthol notes. The fermentation in stainles-steel vats lasted 18 months, he says. The wine retained some gaz and it went out in the bottles. Its 15,5° in alcohol passes very well. Jellied fruits aromas. That's a beautiful wine for sure. He says though that this wine will show its best in 10 or 15 years from now, adding that the wine that tastes very well today is the 1989. 8000 bottles made from 4,3 hectare that year. Depending of the conditions of the vintage, Thierry Allemand makes fewer cuvées at times or sells the grapes he isn't satisfied with to the distillery.
__ Thierry Allemand Cornas 1998. Dusty bottle, from Thierry's cellar again. Animal notes on the nose, B. feels meat and pepper. Harsher tannins, the maturity was less advanced than it would be in the following years. He says that this tannic feel is closer from what used to be a northern-Rhone syrah. 1998 was the turning point, he feels, the last year with an uneven maturity, before the warmer vintages that followed. 1999 was like jelly, 2000 was very round and relaxed, easy drinking, 2001 was ripe. 2002 yielded a fruity wine but not ripe because of lack of sun. Now, to try to adapt to these changing weather conditions and avoid high alcohol, they're experimenting on certain vineyards a different pruning, leaving three écots instead of two, leaving thus 6 shoots which will yield more clusters to avoid the overmaturity. The yields will go up lightly, maybe to 35 ho/ha, but he will thus avoir being overripe. Otherwise today his yields are between 25 and 30 hectoliter/hectare, which was fine under cooler vintages. For information, the maximum yield allowed in Cornas is 40 ho/ha. Nature Morte (still life)__ Thierry Allemand Cornas 1989, Cuvée Jeunes Vignes (young vines, some are two years old)). Soft spices notes. Withered-rose notes, as well as meat juice, says B. No astringency here, and the color is relatively light. This wine dates from the time he sold most of his production to the négoce, for example he made maybe 10 hectoliters of it, sold most of the wine in bulk (typically in march) and kept one cask for himself that he bottled later. This bottle is one of these rare early bottles. Quite outstanding wine for very young vines, and a 20-year-old bottle...Regarding the SO2, he was using more of it at the time, like he says, 2 gr at harvest and about 2 gr at bottling.
__ Thierry Allemand Cornas 2002. In fact, a bottle without any label or chalk indication. Guess the vintage, he says. B. says it should be Reynards because it's mineral. Very nice nose, very refined, adds B. Could be Chaillot. That's the one she prefers, she says. It's 2002, he ends up saying. Small vintage he says, lots of rain. He made a single cuvée that year, with a majority of Reynards grapes. While the vignerons around chaptilized heavily that year, this wine didn't get any sugar and neither any SO2 (this particular bottle comes from a Reynards cask that they bottled for themselves). Philippe Jambon notes that the nose looks very ripe but the mouth shows no alcohol, the exact level being 12,5°here. Thierry Allemand jokes that he often says 2002 was his wife emannuelle's vintage, because she was the one who did the pigeage with her feet in the fermentation vat. On a vintage lacking ripeness he says, it's undesirable to get extraction and the pigeage must be very soft, thus the reason he preferred to have women do the job. This wine has tannins, but they're not tight. There's not much length in this wine but it's still a very nice wine. Thierry, Emmanuelle & son LeopoldThierry Allemand and his wife Emmanuelle have 4 children.
Thierry Allemand wines are exported to different countries, the United Kingdom (Richards Walford) the United States (Kermit Lynch), Japan (Mrs Goda - Racines), Australia (Andrew Guard), Korea among others.
Nice article on Cornas (in French) with pictures, one of them with the different terroirs locations.
Informative article on Thierry Allemand and Cornas (in French). Thierry Allemand 22 impasse des Granges 07130 Cornas phone + 33 4 75 81 06 50 (recorder)email : allemand [dot] th [at] orange [dot] fr

Comments

[luc ertoran]

Thank you again Bert.
Luc

[Lawtonmk]

Most excellent report, thank you very much.

[jamie goode]

brilliant stuff - thank you

[le tchétchène excentrique]

bravo bertrand,
ton article m'a donné de faire un nouveau séjour la région de mes ancêtres. cela m'a réconcilié avec bacchus, et m'a donné envie de goûter à ce breuvage des dieux, accompagné d'une viande.

[Ryan Mostert]

Beautiful article, thanks for writing it. Guys like Thierry Allemand are very inspiring.