Jean Foillard (Beaujolais)

A memorable tasting (and drinking) at Jean Foillard Villié Morgon (Beaujolais)
This is the sort of tasting experience that you hardly forget. We were scheduled to visit Jean and Agnès the following day and we had reserved for the previous night in the Bed & Breakfast that they run in an aisle of the winery. When we checked in, Jean Foillard was tasting wines with a few people in the tasting room on the first floor, we didn't dare to join but he saw us and told us to please, come in and join the party. First, let me explain about what I call the tasting room : it's more like a community room where Jean, Agnès and the workers eat, there's a kitchen attached and a nice brick oven when they can cook things. Around the long wooden table, this evening, were Philippe Valette of Domaine Valette (center, at the end of the table), Jean-Claude Chanudet of Domaine Chamonard (hidden, on the right), a young trainee of Chanudet who worked previously in a wine bar in Nice (also hidden by the glass-holding arm), and two workers working with Jean Foillard (not on the frame). Now, listening to vignerons commenting their wines and exchanging tips about what they do in such or such situations is passionating and I regret not having taken notes of these relaxed conversations even though I think just enjoying the whole thing was enough. It seems to me that these passionate artisan winemakers making natural wines often visit each other, taste their mutual wines and exchange honestly about their experience on winemaking issues or vintage particularities. There's a real fraternal attitude here, no competition or secrecy between them, but emulation and support.

Jean Foillard in Corcelettes (not sure) For Jean Foillard, the first rule before the harvest, is to have healthy grapes, which means that they must have worked correctly in the vineyard, not have had too much grass between the rows, plowed at the right time and the right way, pruned so that the vines give the best-balanced load of grapes, made in time when necessary the sprayings against the diseases like mildew or oïdium for example. This is a lot of work year round. Jean Foillard drove us to the Côte de Py nearby, one of the iconic terroirs that he vinifies the grapes from. There's only one variety here : Gamay. Be it Corcelette, Côte de Py, Fleurie, Morgon, they vinify all these Gamays the same way (including the "lower" cuvées), which means that whatever differences you'll find (especially when comparing similarly-old vines), it will come from the terroir particularities. And inside each terroir, you may find very different types of soil, like the Côte de Py which is at places clayish, at others sandy, or stony, or schistic debris, Jean Foillards adds with a laugh that explaining in detail this particular terroir and the soil changes with their geologic history could fill a book the size of a phone book [he means Paris' phone book]. He chooses for this reason to blend them all, otherwise it would be arduous to manage so many cuvées. He just separates the cuvée 3.14 for the very old vines there when he considers that it will make something interesting on its own. Jean & Agnès Foillard's winery, Bed & Breakfast, and home Another sensitive issue is to choose the right time for the harvest, depending of the terroir and the weather, you need some courage to wait for the right maturity. Many vignerons tend to panick at this stage and will harvest too early by fear of some bad-weather forecast, but waiting for ripeness is essential.
Then at harvest time, the sorting is very important, the grapes must be very healthy, which means that the picker must let down the unripe grapes and the rotten grapes, cutting some grapes off their cluster if necessary so that only the good grapes arrive in the chai. This strict discipline is an absolute necessity when you vinify without SO2.
Another thing that he considers as important is to bring in the chai grape clusters as whole as possible, the grapes must not be damaged or crushed in the handling and transport between the vine and the vats. That's why they pick in small containers with a capacity of 40 kilograms. Cement and wooden vats, press The first stop for the grapes is a refrigerated room where its temperature will go down so as to begin the carbonic maceration in the best conditions. The reasons for this cooling stage are complex to explain, Jean Foillard says, but what can be said is that the bacteria are hampered by the cold temperature while the yeasts get along more easily, so they get an advantage in the early hours of the fermentation. Also, the cold temperature makes the carbonic macerations longer, but that's a way to avoid the downside macerations under high temperatures, like rough extraction with vegetal harshness. Under cold temperature, the extraction will be refined and elegant.
So, after several hours of cooling, the boxes of grapes are lifted with a fenwick, and Jean unloads them carefully into either a wooden open vat or one of these cement open vats. He has 11 of these cement vats, each with a 50-hectoliter capacity. Once in the vat, the load is soaked with CO2 and after 2 or 3 days there begins to be some fermentation, which creates CO2, so they stop adding any. Then, they wait, they check the density, and also the mortification of the grapes : As Jean Foillard explains, the Gamay grape is white inside and the color is in the skins, and with the carbonic maceration (after 25 to 30 days), the color of the skin migrates from the skin to the inside, and the pulp becomes red instead of white (translucid). That's what is called the mortification, and from then on, they know that it's time to press the grapes. In parallel to the slow evolution during this carbonic maceration, some grapes burst even though they don't touch the vat, and more juice is massing up in the bottom of the vat, reaching as much as 3/4 of the load height at the end of the process.. Jean Foillard loading the press with Côte du Py grapes The carbonic maceration can take more or less time, it depends of the temperature that the load of grapes will reach, and also of the strength of the fermentation push, it can go from 20 or 22 days to 35 days, and this, for cuvées with the same vinification scheme. Let's remind that only indigenous (wild) yeats are used here, and there are vintages with more active and energetic yeasts, this is a factor that has an impact on the maceration length. Asked about any vinification difference between generic cuvées (lower-status Appellations) and specific terroirs, Jean Foillard says that for some time, he has decided to vinify everything the same way, in clear, there's no shortcut for the cheaper wines, the generic cuvées just come from the younger vines and less-interesting terroirs.
As you can see, Jean Foillard's press is a pneumatic one. He had a vertical press for many years, and he used to press each grape load for 24 hours. When the estate grew, he bought this pneumatic press, it's a Schneider, it's dubbed the Rolls Royce of presses [not a good time to say that, with the succession of failing RR aircraft engines...]. It's the 5th year he works with this press, it works very slowly, like 3 or 4 hours for a load, and he considers that it makes a very good job compared with a traditional, vertical one. Tasting wines at Pascal Brunet, a neighbor vigneron About the onloading of the clustered grapes from the vat to the press, Jean says that the aspect of these grapes is very different from what they would look like if they were pumped with a machine from the vat to the press, like it is the case in many conventional wineries. Here, they can literally grasp with the fork grape clusters which are still whole even if crushed by the weight of other grapes. This careful transfer between the vat and the press also counts. If he'd use what is called a "harvest pump" to siphoon the grapes from the vat to the press (like many vignerons do to spare time and manual work), he'd have jam at the other end, everything would be almost grinded including the stems and you just don't make the same wine this way.
After the press, he blends the two juices into the same vat, he cools the juice a bit to slow the fermentation and make wines that are more refined, because he saw that letting the temperature go too high translates into something gross, wines too tannic. Working at lower temperature, the wine gains in subtility. To be precise, the juice flows by gravity into an underground vat (a conquet) where it is cooled before being pumped back the following day into its initial vat (where it can be cooled also if necessary). There, the alcoholic fermentation will follow its course. There's no rule, some yeasts work faster at 11°C than others ar 13°C on certain years, it's very changing with all the known and unknown parameters. They make lots of analysis here and there. With a fellow vigneron, he set up a lab managed by a woman enologist of their friends who can make tests when needed, they have another friend who is micro-biologist and who makes countings of bacteria and yeasts, and otherwise, there's a classical enology laboratory in the next village where they can ask for analysis of their juices and wines. A pumping-over alternative On this picture, the workers are doing some sort of softer alternative to a pumping over. A pumping over is when you pump the juice from the bottom of the vat to the top of the vat through the cap, a solid, somehow compacted mass of clustered grapes. Here, to avoid the violent action of the pump on the juice, a mobile tank is filled by gravity, then lifted above the vat and the juice will flow again by gravity over the cap. Jean Foillard says that they made quite a few checks on the subject before using this technique. Using microscopes and other counting methods, they discovered that the pumping destroyed a sizeable proportion of the yeast population. This two-steps method seemed then a good and smooth alternative to the pump. This is a detail that he thinks can make a difference. I have the impression from my many visits of artisan winemakers that beautiful wines are the result of lots of care in the details, the health of the grape, the hygiene in the chai, the attention to the life of the indigenous living organisms in the juice, and the accumulation of these details is what makes these wines strikingly alive and beautiful... Waxing the top of the bottle As soon as the alcoholic fermentation is over (when it remains less than 2 grams), he racks the wine into casks or into a foudre, the first lees, the gross lees have already settled, they'll stay in the vat, and he prefers to have the élevage done on thinner lees. We didn't see the cask room this time (I forgot right away to ask, too much good-wine drinking, I guess...), but there's a couple of pics from on my story few years ago. The wine will stay in casks or foudres until the moon of early june or the one of early july, then he blends the wines for two consecutive moons, and after then, he bottles it. For the couple of months before the bottling, he ended choosing the cement vats again. He tried for some time to blend the wine in stainless-steel vats, but maybe because of metal-induced reasons, it doesn't make any good on the wine, so he came back to the good old cement vat. It's not a matter of temperature inertia then because the room is temp-regulated at this stage, so it must have to do with the steel that this wine which has been all the time in contact with more natural elements, resent. The casks will stay empty roughly from june to october, he uses a sulphur wick in between, and before filling the casks again, plus hot water at high pressure before filling them again to get rid of sulphur remains.
About the SO2, Jean Foillard wines don't see any SO2 until the racking, when the casks are blended to prepare for bottling. That's the only time he puts some SO2. The milky color of lees If you never saw lees, here are some : this picture was shot at Pascal Brunet, a vigneron/neighbor (in a village nearby) of Jean Foillard as we were stopping for a few minutes. Pascal Brunet was racking a vat and at the end, he opened the small door. The lees look so thin and milky, it's like plaster dust mixed with wine, very nice color.
At some point, I asked Jean Foillard how exactly he began making wine : he says he began in 1980, worked very conventionally until 1985, when he veered progressively to end up making the work and the wines we can enjoy today. Marcel Lapierre had a triggering influence on him, and they kept working together and exchanging along the years. Speaking of these exchanges, I tell him that I'm always impressed how artisan vignerons doing their best to make real wines gather very often to taste different wines, exchange their experiences, give tips and so on.
My impression is that it's not so widespread among industry-minded vignerons. Probably, as they're working according to well-tested recipes where additives "secure" everything, they don't need this permanent brain storming (tasting & drinking fellow-vignerons' good wines may be the real reason for all these exchanges and meetings...). The best place at Foillard Let's taste (and drink without restraint when you know you'll go to sleep on the other side of the courtyard at Foillard's B & B...) :
__ __ Jean Foillard Morgon Côte du Py 2008. Beautiful wine, the first that we taste as we join Jean Foillard, Philippe Valette, Jean-Claude Chanudet and others at the long wooden table that evening. Jean says that he puts the wine in the casks at the end of the alcoholic fermentation to avoid having CO2 gas build up.
__ Jean Foillard Fleurie 2008. So good too... More elegant maybe, lighter color. That's indeed a beautiful wine....
__ Jean Foillard Morgon Côte du Py 2009. A bit cold but after warming the glass in my hands, it's damned so good... Lots of savoury substance, spices notes.
__ Jean Foillard Morgon Corcelette 2009. No notes, but I don't remember a single wine I was lukewarm about.
__ Jean Foillard Fleurie 2009. Fleurie 2009 is more concentrated in the mouth compared with other vintages. Foillard says about the Nouveau and its fixed date in late november : you don't fight against a vat, you fight against time for the primeurs, they'd need one month and a half more to really be ready [when you vinify like the vignerons in the room with indigenous yeasts]. Then, the 3 vignerons speak about the malolactic fermentation, what can be done so that it takes place in time. Jean Foillard says with a laugh that the total production of Morgon is equivalent in volume to ione glass per French citizen. Then, someone asks how much Morgon it would make for every Chinese...
__ Jean Foillard Fleurie 2007. Very happy drink, very beautiful, a treat. This wine is hearty, light, fruity, elegant...
__ Jean Foillard Morgon Côte du Py 2007. Nose meat sauce or juice. Sold out. Vignerons chat at Foillard __ Jean Foillard Morgon Côte du Py, "Cuvée 3.14" 2007. From an old-vines plot. Very beautiful, elegant, and with what I'd call a striking minerality. Double star rating for me. That's indeed a very nice wine. Jean Foillard says that there's still some wine left of this cuvée. After a few minutes [we talking or listening a lot around this table], the nose of this wine is fantastic. The mouth is so intense, fruity and full of life... Length too. We've been drinking quite a bit and I ask for the toilets, it's on the other side of the courtyard and what I like there, it's that in addition to the "normal" toilets, there's a mural urinal, so much more convenient...
__ Domaine Valette Macon Villages 2003. Philippe has brought his bottles of course as usual when they're visiting each other. On the lychees side with some light sweetness but still fresh. There's a picture to prove it, Jean Foillard drives himself from the Beaujolais region to Paris to deliver his wines to the restaurants and cavistes. Otherwise, the export share is 40 %, maybe 10 % to individual buyers, and the rest is restaurants, cavistes and wine bars. For this self-delivery, he says that he does it very often because he likes to meet the people who drink and like his wines. On some occasions, it's the occassion to meet also lots of consumers and have fun, like next Beaujolais-Nouveau day, when he'll drive to Caves Augé in Paris with a cask and bottle the Nouveau on the sidewalk along with a public tasting... It's during such a "Nouveau bottling" tasting event at Augé several years ago that I shot these few pictures of Marcel Lapierre bottling his wines.
Outside of France, Jean Foillard wines are exported to the United States (Kermit Lynch), Canada (Quebec - Rezin - British Columbia - Racine Wine Imports), Japan (Vinscoeur & Co), Holland (Winjvriend ), Belgium (Basin & Marot), Norway, Denmark (Mia Rudolf), United Kingdom (les Caves de Pyrène), Australia Foillard visiting Pascal Brunet As Jean Foillard drove us to a few of his vineyards, we stopped at a friend of his, Pascal Brunet, in a village nearby. We had a few glasses of wine and witnessed the end of a racking : the wine had been transferred in another vat and Pascal Brunet opens the small door, revealing what we all like to speak about but rarely see : the priceless lees which have so much importance for the wines that we love. The color of the lees is a very delicate pink. Pascal says as he removes the lees that they're still active and fermenting...
This visit took place on the 3rd week of october.

Domaine Jean FoillardLe Clachet 69910 Villié-MorgonAgnès & Jean Foillard's Bed & Breakfast

Comments

[Thomas Glasgow]

Bert thanks your website is a great resource.

[BARBOULUD]

Utterly brilliant. Thanks so much for these postings.

[Mark Thomasseau]

It is wonderful to walk in on lively and interesting discussions, especially when it is wine makers discussing Beaujolais! Great posts! Thanks for sharing your passion.

[Yann Mazabraud]

Excellent, as usual.
Thank you very much for all those real life moments that you are sharing with us.

[Melissa_ful]

Foillard is a genius. Inspired by your post, and having never tasted, I shared a bottle of the 2008 Cuvee Corcelette with a wine friend. Thank you.