Georges Descombes (Beaujolais)

Georges Descombes near his vertical press Villié Morgon (Beaujolais)
This was a crucial time of the year, Georges Descombes was overlooking the press of a vat load of Gamay after it had been through its carbonic maceration. This took place earlier in october on a misty autumn day. It was an afternoon, and the press made its job almost silently, you could only hear the continuous flow of juice resulting from the gentle but steady pressure.
Having met Georges Descombes on various tasting events or in wine bars where he delivered his wines, I was happy to at last see where he vinified his beautiful wines, especially at a time when the chai was charged with all these positive vibrations and wild yeasts...
Georges Descombes place, with the house sitting next to the winery, is discreet and unsophisticated, you'd have a hard time to guess that the wines coming out from there have the power to make salivate so many demanding wine amateurs : from the outside, a winery like many others, with vats not very modern but not very old at the same time, but definitely the secret of these wines doesn't come with the tools.
The picture on the right shows the hamlet of Morgon, from which the Morgon Appellation took its name : it's not even a village but rather a hamlet located between Villié-Morgon and Fleurie...

In the Morgon old vines It wasn't a very beautiful day, I think it was even raining a bit if I remember, but we headed to the vineyards right near the winery, because they play the first chapter (an important one) of Georges Descombes wine. There's an old-vines plot there, with a nice view in the far, villages of which I forgot the names, all I know is that they bear names of terroirs, like Morgon, Fleurie, Brouilly. There were a few clusters of Gamay here and there, they hadn't been left aside by hurried pickers but they just weren't ripe at the time of the harvest, resulting from unscheduled blossoming.
We walked to the old vines of Morgon which go to the Vieilles Vignes cuvée. Like his other vineyards, it is plowed and farmed organicly. The first plowing takes place right after the pruning, it's a décavaillonage, that is, a slice of earth is cut with a blade and put upside down in the middle of the row. It stays like that about a month, then it's flatened back so that later in the season, they can use a blade plow superficially under the vines.
This particular vineyard has many missing vineyards, and he'll have to uproot it someday, he says. Asked about the replanting density, he says that he replant at about 8000 or 10 000 vines/hectare. Here, there's a distance of 1 meter between the rows as it was thought for draft horses, and he'll replant with an intrer-row width of 1,1 to 1,2 meter so that the tractor can pass without risking to harm the vines..
Georges Descombes' vineyards make a total surface of 15 or 16 hectares, stretched as such : 3,5 hectares of Brouilly, 7,5 hectares of Morgon, 2 hectares of Regnié, 0,5 hectare of Chiroubles, 2 hectares of Beaujolais Villages and 1,5 hectare of generic Beaujolais. The man in his vineyard Otherwise, his vineyards are farmed organic, they use only sulphur and copper, plus they add at the same time oligo-elements and algae-based powders which help the vines to resist diseases (they blend it with the other sprayings). Recently, they had to face challenging situations, like 2008 where lots of grapes were lost. Now, 2010 was also a difficult year to handle, but with the experience and the lessons learned in 2008, they checked the vines more closely, sprayed successively when needed and went out relatively safe, only for a few spots touched by mildew. They were very present in the vineyard when the disease pressure was worst, and they answered quickly to the danger. This bad weather risking to endanger the vines was during the blossoming time and shortly before the blossoming, somewhere near the end of june and beginning of july. Because of the bad weather, the flowers stayed longer, obliging them to be constantly on their guard.
2009 was not a big harvest in terms of volume, but they did had bigger volumes than in 2010. In 2010, they had hailstorm-related losses too, on quite a few hectares, this was in july. In 2009, there was no particular problems, just that the heat and draught slowed the yields, but that was still a good vintage in terms of quality. He's quite happy with the quality of the grapes in 2010 too, but the volumes aren't there. He adds that anyway, he doesn't usually make big yields, so he's used to handle this situation. For example, when they get 40 or 42 hectoliters/hectare on a given vintage, they're in a good-volume year, but that's not happening every year. In 2010 for example (it's hard to say precisely, it's a bit early), he thinkls they'll reach 30, 32 or 33 ho/ha. In 2010, they got hailstorm damage on Morgon, on Regnié and on the Beaujolais Villages (the latter having suffered on a large surface, which is unusual). Checking the super-slow pressing of the Gamay Look at this big press sitting in the middle of Georges Descombes' chai : it's the marriage of an utterly-simple tradition with modern sophistication. We climbed on it carefully to have a look at the inside, there's a complex electricity-powered motor that wraps the screw and weighs on the mass of clusters. Georges Descombes uses a single press for all his grapes, and it's impressing to see it work : the pressing being set on a very slow mode, it's almost silent, you just hear the small stream of juice flowing gently into the big wooden bucket, and sometimes, there's a subtle cracking noise coming from inside of the press, which hints at the compacted mass of grapes being squeezed a notch tighter. The principle of this old press stays the same, except that a precise mechanism modulates the pressing at will, allowing a very smooth and long pressing to proceed. He had the electric system and motor changed a few years ago for a more recent one, but it remains essentially an electricity-powered manual press. The paradis What you see flowing from the press is called le Paradis, this is the first juice flowing from the press, the best, and that's a juice that the winemaker loves to drink and taste. These clustered grapes have been fermenting for weeks and now they release a beautiful juice

with lots of sugar. This is the most concentrated and natural type of grape juice you can dream of, velvety and full of life...
The juice filling the bucket beneath the press is pumped from time to time back into a cement vat where it will ferment with the free-run juice. Watch the short video on the right, beyond the portable radio of the worker, you can hear the flowing juice and the occasional cracking noise of the press which is similar to the one of this inside of a 18th century ship...
Otherwise, apart from a few differences, all his grapes follow the same vinification :
First, the grapes are hand-picked. Then, all the old-vines grapes, the long-keep wines go into a cold-temperature room the size of a freight container for a night before going in the cubic cement vats for the carbonic maceration which sits in a corner of the vatroom. The young vines and the primeurs (the Beaujolais nouveau and the cuvées to be drunk young) are just harvested in the morning and pass through the cooling room only if the weather is very hot. Having the grapes cooled down before beginning the fermentation is very important, almost as important as having grapes that are not damaged maybe. The fact that Georges Descombes vinifies without using SO2 asks for a lot more care compared with conventional winemaking.
All it takes is good organization and methodolgy, the harvest boxes (11 kg each) are piled in the fridge container and the following morning, they dispose of the grapes and fill the vat, leaving the container ready for another load. The vinification vatsAfter a night in the cooling room, early the following morning, they unload the boxes of grapes into these cement vats for the carbonic maceration stage. These cement vats are very common in the French wineries and their main advantage is the temperature inertia. Here most had a volume of 60 hectoliters. After filling the vats, they cover the load of grapes into CO2 and let the grapes begin to ferment by themselves with their wild yeasts. It usually starts pretty fast, this year, after only two days, they could hear the music of fermentation as the grapes were producing their own CO2. Last year the fermentations started swiftly too, the only thing is that in 2009, as they had high natural sugar levels, the yeasts were weakened by the alcohol level. When you reach some natural levels of 14 °, the yeasts are less efficient and they slow at the end, but anyway that's what he looks for, long fermentations are the ones which gives the best results in the wine, not the short, hurried ones. Georges Descombes with his stepson Damien Coquelet Of course, they use whole clusters for the carbonic maceration. There's a bit of juice which mounts up in the bottom of the vat, resulting from a few damaged grapes during the transfer or from the weight of the mass, and this juice will begin to ferment. When the grapes reach the vat, they're at about 7° C and the temperature of the load, sealed from the outside air by the CO2 blanket, will reach 24°C or 25°C. Again, it's very important that they begin at a low temperature because the wild yeast are fragile and have to get used to the milieu and grow quietly. If you attack them with SO2 or with high temperatures, he says, you endanger them at a crucial time of their life.
On the picture above, you can see the horizontal (non pneumatic) press used by Georges' stepson Damien Coquelet, who uses a line of cement vats (of the same type than the ones in the facility) outside of the building (Damien makes wine from a total surface of 10 hectares). Georges Descombes doesn't use this horizontal press very often, so that's the one with which Damien presses his grapes for now. In the newer cask room After the fermentation has gone up again when the press juice and the other juice were blended in a celment vat, the wine ferments for, say, two weeks there and it is entonné, meaning it goes into casks to keep fermenting there and continue its life. This élevage stage will last a few months, till july or august for the terroirs wines and the ones made from old vines. About the cellar part, there's little to say, except that he doesn't use any additives or any correction trick, the wine is made when it reaches the casks. The wine is bottled unsulfured and unfined.
Asked how he began to make wines this way, and what sort of exchange there was between himself and Marcel Lapierre who initiated, sort of, this type of winemaking, he says that at the time Marcel Lapierre (who lived also in this village of Villié Morgon) started to make natural wines, he (Georges) was helping his father and he was also employed in a service company which was doing the bottlings in different estates, including at Lapierre's. That's how he discovered these very early cuvées of Marcel Lapierre, in 1982 and 1983. Through his job, he was used to taste wines from different people, some better than others because of the terroir or also because of a different work of the vigneron, and when he tasted Marcel Lapierre's additives-free, unsulfured cuvées, he immediately knew that these were the wines that he wanted to make. There wasn't any natural wine movement, or hype, or even self-aknowledgement at the time, but the wine was so different and beautiful that it spoke for itself. Georges' father, while not working like he does today, still vinified rather correctly then, for example he never added lab yeasts to ferment his wines. He did add some SO2 during the vinification, but in very reasonnable doses compared with the practices elsewhere. So, when he vinified his first harvest in 1988, he changed what needed to be changed in order to also vinify without additives. Georges, Damien, and the shy dog The pic above was shot in the other cask cellar, the older one. Georges Descombes' dog seemed shy that day or it was frightened by my camera maybe, so Damien had it come closer to me with holding a potato (potatoes stocked in the cask cellar, I love that !), and the trick worked....
Back when he began to make his wines in the late 1980s' : Like the ones of Marcel Lapierre, they were brought to the knowledge of the wine lovers through the very first natural-wine bars which were opening in Paris (in the 1980s') : Bernard Pontonnier's les Courtilles and François Morel's les Envierges. François Morel now heads Le Rouge & le Blanc, a fiercly-independant wine magazine (no sponsors, no advertizing). Again, there was still no name to categorize these types of wines but the people who tasted them in these bars couldn't but notice the striking difference and lively taste that they offered compared with conventional wines.
Let's taste :
__ Georges Descombes Brouilly 2007. Bottle, opened yesterday. Very beautiful. Cask élevage, unfiltered & unfined of course. Juniper aromas, eucalyptus too. The 2008 costs about 12,5 € at the estate (public price).
__ Georges Descombes Morgon 2008 Old Vines. From their own vineyards like the rest. Very nice mouth with fruit, and length. Same price.
__ Georges Descombes Regnié 2007. Very nice substance, still a very young wine that has lots to offer in a couple of years. Same price. Waxing bottles of MorgonThe picture above shows how the bottles get their top waxed. Damien Coquelet is doing his own Morgon, a bit differently than the Descombes' as you can see, there's only a crown of wax when Descombes bottles have a longer wax coating. This is a skillful work, you need to do the same swift movement to get the same result with no flowing drops, the trick is to have the wax at the right temperature, not too hot not too cold, and hold the bottle a few seconds on the side after immerging it so that the wax is almost solidified when you put it back on the table.
__ Georges Descombes Regnié 2009. Tastes well now, says Georges. Powerful like the 2009.
__ Georges Descombes Morgon 2008 (generic). Very nice wine, a bit of animal notes at the beginning, but not a problem. Georges says that some people think it's Brett, but it's not. This wine costs _sit down, folks_ 7 € a bottle at the winery. You've got to drive to the winery though to get your hand on a few bottles, I don't think there's much left.... My bottles of Morgon.... That's something you don't get every day : Georges Descombes preparing your own bottles of Morgon himself....
25 % of Georges Descombes' wines are exported, to the United States (Dressner Selections), to Japan (oeno-connexion), Canada (Quebec - Rezin - British Columbia Racine Wine Imports), the UK (recently : Les Caves de Pyrène), and a few other countries. Georges Descombes otherwise sells to many restaurants and cavistes, and he also delivers himself his wines. I remember spotting him once walking incognito into les Pipos, a natural-wine bar in Paris, a few days before the Beaujolais nouveau (read this story)....

Georges Descombes 69910 Villié Morgon phone + 33 4 74 69 16 67descombesgeorges [at] orange [dot] fr

The winery/house courtyard in the evening

Comments

[Yutaka Saito]

Hellow!

I love your site, It is a pleasure to visit.

I have added your site to my site.

Please link my site to your site.

Thank you!

http://internationalwinechallenge.blogspot.com/

[Kate Rodde]

Hi Bertrand

What a great post - I have really learned a lot about Georges Descombes so I will enjoy even more the next bottle of his Morgon that I taste...and will keep an eye out for him the next visit to Les Pipos too!!

cheers
Kate

[Neville Yates]

I was trying to find Damien when in Beaujolais recently. Do you have an email address for him or Georges please?

[Neville Yates]

Doh, I just saw it!