Jean Maupertuis, (Auvergne, Loire)

Jean Maupertuis in his vat room Saint Georges sur Allier, Auvergne (Loire - bottom-right, pink patch)
Jean Maupertuis along with several winemakers brought a new impulse in the Auvergne wines, which were until then mostly centered on the Coopérative de Saint Verny (which is co-owned by Limagrain, an agro-industrial giant of the seeds sector). The Coop will no doubt remain the heavyweight in Auvergne in terms of volumes but that's with people like Jean Maupertuis that the region's wines were noticed across France and abroad.
Jean Maupertuis was working in the computer sector in his previous life when he took a small vineyard with a friend in nearby Mirefleurs, this vineyard and winemaking thing pleased him, so he quit his IT job and went to Macon-Davayé in the Beaujolais for a degree in the wine school. While there, he met another student, Eric Macé who was already aware of the burgeoning culture of what we call the natural wines. Eric was already sommelier at the time (he opened since a string of wine shops/wine bars, la Cave du Sommelier in Brittany) but he had still decided to follow a training at Davaillé. This was in 1992, 1993, and Eric, who was already friend with several inspirators of this new wave including Marcel Lapierre and Pierre Overnoy, opened a window on new perspectives for Jean Maupertuis in tems of winemaking. They often visited some of these vignerons, especially Lapierre where they dropped all the time, sometimes with 4 or 5 people and this would be hours of good time tasting the wines in the cellar and discussing winemaking issues... When they visited Lapierre for the décuvage (when the grape are emptied manually from the carbonic-maceration vats and filled into the vertical press), that was also an experience, he remembers a 8-hour visit with the press being activated a bit tighter every 15 minutes, with good wine and some pâté de tête (pork head meat pie) at hand...

In the vineyard When he came back in Auvergne, he did not know yet if he would work in a winery or set up something by himself. There happened to be a vigneron in Saint-Georges-sur-Allier who was in the process of retiring, so he rented his vineyards which made a surface of 3,5 hectares, and he bought back his tools and vats. It's very diificult to have a vigneron sell you his vineyards right away in Auvergne, because with the proximity of Clermont Ferrand (a big town nearby where Michelin has its headquarters) the real estate prices are very high and the land owners wait for the time their agricultural land will qualify for construction land. Since he opened up his winery in 1995/1996, he kept roughly the same surface with a few changes in the variety repartition, like he has some white (Chardonnay) now.
For the history, Jean also took part later to the adventures of the Domaine de Peyra, which was the result of the collaboration of several winemakes including himself. There was Eric Garnier who was beginning to farm a vineyard in the vicinity at the same time and whom he saw often, plus Stéphane Majeune who came regularly to help in the vineyard. Jean tipped them about a long barn near his facility which was available and where they could do something in common. There was also Jacques Néauport (dubbed bidasse in the milieu) who came here several times then, he had worked with Jules Chauvet and had given some advices to Marcel Lapierre. Once, they were having dinner, the four of them around the table, and they sort of decided to start something. Stéphane went to Davaillé (the wine school) in the Beaujolais to complete his training and they opened the Domaine Peyra in 1999. This was a separate estate from Jean's own winery, and it worked from purchased grapes coming from the partners. Peyra which closed down some time ago (2006) has produced beautiful wines and still shines with an aura among the wine lovers. The Guillaume vineyard His Gamay vines are all relatively old, with the youngest having been planted in the early 1970s'. Most have been planted between the 1940s' and the 1960s', and there's a plot with a few vines dating from the early 20th century. It's mostly Gamay d'Auvergne, which is slightly different from the Gamay Beaujolais. He just has a small plot planted with Beaujolais Gamay, and he makes rosé or sparkling with it as it is younger and more productive. His vines are massal selections, not clones. He has by the way a few Gamay Teinturier vines (a dark-colored Gamay) lost in the middle of his Gamay d'Auvergne, as well as some Mirefleurien, a very local variety named from the nearby village of Mirefleur. It's a red variety, very different from any Gamay and very dark in color. The Guillaume vineyard makes about 1,5 hectare and gathers 6 different parcelles (plots). The Pierres Noires vineyard Most of his vineyard is split between these two terroirs, Guillaume and Pierres Noires. Pierres Noires, like the Guillaume, makes 1,5 hectare but with 4 different plots. Guimmaume & Pierres Noires make 3 hectares together, and on top of that, he has a small surface of Chardonnay (about 33 ares) between Cournon and Clermont-Ferrand.
On Guillame, the soil is quite poor with limestone and marls. On Pierres Noires, the slope sits on clays with volcanic stones and basaltic debris resulting from the inversion of the geologic layers in a distant past. Press and fiber vats His winemaking is simple, he says : hand picking of the grapes in 20kg boxes which are emptied manually into cement vats (the blue ones on the top picture) and covered with CO2 while waiting for the start of the fermentation (on wild yeasts only, Jean doesn't use additives in the chai or cellar, except this CO2 gaz). He says that this maceration is technically a semi-carbonique one (half-carbonic) as he leaves the juice that flows naturally in the bottom of the vat, a 100¨% carbonic maceration being with clustered grapes only, no juice at the bottom. Then he doesn't touch anything (no pumping over) and the grapes stay as such for usually 3 weeks. He doesn't cool the grapes prior to this, he picks in october which is not very warm in Auvergne, and the grapes are usually brought in at relatively-low temperatures (plus, they harvest only in the mornings) and arrive at 10°C here in the vat.
The press on the picture above is an old Vaslin press which was in there when he took over this winery. It does a good job, he says, if you don't rack too much the must and the grape clusters during the pressing. Also, he avoids pushing up the pressure on this press because it would yield too much extraction. Jean Maupertuis in the chai After about 3 weeks of carbonic maceration, he lets the juice flow out, presses the grapes and blends immediately the two juices in the cement vat. When the fermentation is over, he racks it into fiber vats (he doesn't let it on its lees very long), and the malolactic fermentation takes place either immediately in the following or it waits for the spring because the cellar becomes too cold with the approaching winter (but it's exceptional, usually the malo gets along right after the racking). He doesn't use much wood, this year (2010) he didn't put any wine in casks. Sometimes he puts the press juice which is a bit more rich and charnu into a barrel but this year he didn't do it. Once in the vats with the cap on the wine, he doesn't touch the wine for the whole winter, he says with a laugh that he closes the cellar, then. In spring, he will rack the wine again to prepare the bottling, this will take off the lees (which are much thinner than in the first racking) and the remaining CO2. Usually, his bottlings take place end of march and early april. He doesn't touch the wine when it's cold because the wine is very fragile then, it can get oxydized very easily then.
That's for the reds, but this year he put the Chardonnay in casks. Checking the fermenting juice Jean Mauperthuis's facility is located in an ordinary village house in Saint Georges sur Allier, and if you don't know his address, you might pass the house without realizing that there's a winery in there. He uses all the different rooms on the street level as well as the cellars and with his small surface and output it's OK. He made about 100 hectoliters of wine in 2010, including sparkling wine which needs more room with the riddling tables (he made 2400 bottles of natural sparkling). It's the 4th year that he makes sparkling wine, the first one in Auvergne to make natural sparkling was Patrick Bouju of la Bohème. The biggest difficulty that both of them have to face is related to the fact that they don't filter the wine : in order not to have too thick deposits when they disgorge the wine, they decant the juice by the cold temperature to get the thickest lees out of the natural sparkling before the bottling. This year for example he also tried something else, he made a first rosé (with the first harvest) to the end, so as to have a clear wine, then he added some fermenting juice, plus also some press juice which had a good sugar level. He adapts to the vintage, like here with the early harvest of one plot which gave him a rosé at the right time to try this sparkling blend. After the disgorgment in march/april, he completes with the same wine and seals the bottle again with a crown cap. This is all manual, and he says that he doesn't disgorge more than 300 bottles at a time. No doubt, there's a winery behind this door... His wines are unfiltered, which he says is not a problem for reds. He hasn't any filtering system in his facility anyway. One thing he noticed along the years is that his cuvée Guillaume has always a lighter turbidity thanthe other terroir, Pierres Noires. The latter is really more cloudy, at every vintage, and this, with the same vinification and élevage. When turbidity has deep terroir roots...
The white is easier to get clear of its turbidity in the casks, but you'll also see some turbidity in the bottles, albeit a lighter one.
About the sulfites, Jean Maupertuis says that he never used any SO2 during the vinification. At the beginning when he started this winery, he added some sulfur either at racking or at bottling. Then in 1997 he began to make some sulfur-free cuvées and he later generalized this SO2-free winemaking as there hadn't been any backlash from this. When they had the Peyra winery running, they also had totally sulfur-free cuvées and others with a bit of SO2. From 2000 he says, either at Peyra or in his own production, there hasn't been any SO2 added in the red wines. For the rosé, the gris, he may use some, not sure yet. Last year, he also didn't add any in the rosé. It depends if the malo gets completed or not. If the wine for some reason doesn't make its malolactic fermentation, he would add some SO2 so that this malo doesn't try to start untimely. Until 1999 they had also some filtration at Peyra and here, a service company cale with a filtration system with clay, but this was long time ago. Opening a bottle Since 3 or 4 years, Jean Maupertuis stopped presenting his wines to the agreement commissions for the Appellation labels. This had become complicated because sometimes he had to bring back the wines a second time because of turbidity or any other reason. What happens is that in the region most vignerons have their wines ready in december or january, so at this time of the year, the commission d'agrément opens its office once a month, but Jean Maupertuis' wines are ready only in march or april (his wines weren't "hurried" with lab yeasts and other additives). By that time all the conventional vignerons have already presented their wines, so the commission scales down its office frequency to one day every other month, which is a very long time to wait and adds some more delay for the label printing, as Jean Maupertuis doesn't know what to print on the label, if he will have the Appellation or not...So for him the best option was to stay out of the Appellation, it made one hurdle less in the long list of administrative paper work.
We tasted a few wines of course during this visit:
__ Jean Maupertuis Gamay 2010, strait from the maceration vat (picture below). From the Guillaume vineyard. The nose has acidulous aromas. Mouth very candy like, fruit with sugar. Remains 20 grams of sugar he says. The harvest began october 8th and lasted until oct 18th. Jean says that he'll press these whole-culstered grapes next monday when the juice will be at 1000, now it's 1005, it'll have made 17 days of maceration.
__ Jean Maupertuis Pierres Noires, from a cement vat too. Took one week to begin to ferment. He'll de-vat these grapes after all saints' day (this visit took place late october) after 23 days of maceration. He weighs the wine in front of us (see a previous picture), it makes 1047. From the maceration vat __ Jean Maupertuis Chardonnay 2009 (cask). A try of oxydative wine. He will bottle it soon, like that, without SO2 (only one cask of this). Puy Long (the plot I guess). Nice balance, richness feel, not really oxydative feel. One third of hectare of Chardonnay, 25 year-old vines. Yields of 18 ho/ha, low yields because of a poor soil.
__ Jean Maupertuis Gamay 2008, from a cask. It's rare, he says, that he keeps the wine two years in a cask. He had 3 or 4 casks of this Gamay and he decided to keep one of them longer. In there, there are a few Pinot Noir grapes and a few Mirefleurien grapes, a darker type of local variety. The mouth is tannic with acidity. He plans to bottle that soon.
__ Jean Maupertuis Pierres Noires. Gamay 2008, from a bottle. Labelled as Vin de France (table wine). 5/6000 bottles a year of this. Jammy nose (strawberries), the mouth is still tannic with a peppery side. Jean says that it's the typical result of Gamay growing on volcanic soil. This was bottled end of march 2010. It fermented in cement vat, then élevage in fiber vat.
__ Jean Maupertuis Guillaume 2005, Gamay. 3/4000 bottles a year. Quite good. Gentle nose and nice peppery feel, I swallow. Turbid with color on the salmon side. Never saw any SO2, like the other reds.
__ Jean Maupertuis Pink Bulles Vin de France 2009. Natural sparkling. Gamay rosé. Surary but nice drink, remains 10 grams maybe. He'll try to make 2500/3000 bottles of this this year.

Jean Maupertuis takes part to a couple wine fairs, Vin Nature en Nord in Lille every march, les Dix Vins Cochons in Chateldon (very soon, dec 2nd) and Vini Circus near Rennes.
Otherwise, he sells to a good number of cavistes and wine bars in Paris : le Baratin, Caves Augé, le Verre Volé, Autour d'Un Verre, Bistrot Paul Bert, au Tonneau des Halles, le Chateaubriand, les Fines Gueules, le Bistral, le Café de la Nouvelle Mairie, le Vin en Tête, L'Amuse Vin, Cave Au Bon Plaisir, Crus et Découvertes, Que du Bon, La Robe et le Palais and a few others...
Jean Maupertuis exports his wines to Canada (Quebec - Plan Vin, British Columbia - Racine Wine Imports), the United States (Dressner Selections), the United Kingdom (Caves de Pyrène), Belgium (Troca Vins Naturels), Holland (Wijnvriend and Vleck), Japan (eno-connexion), Spain (Bodega Cigalena - Santander). His wine is also served at the Bistrot de la Poste in Brussels. The guy there was the chief sommelier of the French presidential palace (l'Elisée) under Jacques Chirac and he introduced many natural wines in the wine list of the Palais de l'Elysée....
Picture on the left : the church (made partly with volcanic stones) at Saint Georges sur Allier.
Here is a page with satellite view of the village. You can click and enlarge, Jean's facility is in the middle of the village (hard to guess when you're not aware), just north of a sandy square where a red car and a white car are parked (with the shadow of the church tower on the lower right of the parking lot)...

Jean Maupertuis63670 Saint Georges sur Allierphone + 33 6 13 03 79 67 (cell)phone : + 33 4 73 77 31 84 (fixed)maupertuis [at] aol (dot] com

Comments

[Amaronese]

Nice as ever Bert! Jean's wines are indeed imported by Troca-Vins in Belgium. This is the site link: http://www.troca-vins-naturels.be/

[michael pharey]

where to buy in London ??

la Plage Maupertuis x11.............terrrifffic