Pierre Overnoy (Jura)

Real wine & real bread... Pupillin (Jura)
Making real wines opens perspectives on other real-food issues. Take bread, for example : like wine, bread was traditionally made with living organisms called leaven, but for commercial reasons, for predictability and efficiency, bakers now use yeasts to make our bread. Pierre Overnoy whom we visited shortly the other day is a passionate bread maker in addition to being the inspired and passionate winemaker that we know. I learnt from him that even bakeries pretending to sell natural leaven bread actually add lab yeasts to get their bread because as I understood there is a factor of unpredictability in these living organisms known under the name of leaven...

That sounds very similar to wineries which use lab yeasts because they want the wines to be ready rapidly, formatted products ready for the shelves.
Pierre keeps a pot of live culture of leaven in his home for his bread production, and he shows us here the bread and the creamy leaven, this is magical !

Pierre Overnoy gave us one of his breads, and as we told him that we were on our way to visit Jean-François Ganevat whom he knows well, he gave us another one for him, plus a third one for one of Ganevat's neighbor whom he knew was also fond of real bread...

This is life ! Look at this bloating substance, you watch Life in action, and once you've seen that shapeless but cute-at-the-same-time cream, you won't look at bread the same way.
Listening to Pierre Overnoy speaking on the subject was an awakening experience, there are many issues with real bread we feel easily connected to, and there are many relations to wine here, beginning with the fact that France, in spite of being considered the home of good bread and baguette, has fallen like all developped countries for easy-to-make industrial bread, including at our corner's gourmet bakery. Even if for economic reasons, most of us don't often buy artisan pain au levain bread (it's awfully expensive if you eat much bread every day), we long for a real bread that should be easily accessible and reasonably cheap.
As lovers of real wine, we also understand the question of leaven versus commercial yeasts, and still there are many other side issues that we don't necessarily grasp the importance of, like which variety of wheat to use, where to find it. Pierre, who seems to have understood all the facets of bread making, has singled our a producer for his weat. Also, there's the question about where to grind the grain, and from Pierre Overnoy's experience in bread making, this is a crucial question, if the wheat grain is unproperly grinded, you'll loose much of the benefits of your wheat. Pierre has his wheat prepared in a mill designed by two elderly brothers, the Astrié brothers, it's a large stone mill like in the old time, not metal, where the grain is grinded very slowly so as not to heat the wheat, which helps preserve what will make the future real bread so good and healthy. This type of mill is hard to find nowadays in France, but on specialized forums dealing with real bread, you can learn from where the existing ones are located. Their number is growing thanks to a movement pushing to rediscover the great breads of this country, and now [edit] there are a few workshops that build these mills on demand. You can also find on the market organic wheat milled with this type of Astrié mill. Pierre Overnoy & Emmanuel Houillon We were learning about these bread issues in Pierre Overnoy's kitchen when Emmanuel Houillon dropped briefly. He had a delivery of wines to do that day and Adeline would show us the wines.
The type of wheat is another issue that Pierre Overnoy seems to know well. You may be aware that in France and in the EU, only certain types of seeds are allowed on the market, and that buying or selling seeds of old varieties, be it of vegetable or grain, is forbidden. There is no freedom of commerce or bio-diversity like in the United States (where selling or purchasing seeds of ancient varieties is perfectly legal), and you may be prosecuted in France for selling seeds that are not listed in the State-sanctionned official catalog. Kokopelli, a non-profit organization promoting the distribution of these ancient French varieties was sued and heavily fined by the French State and the seeds industry for their very marginal sales of authentic indigenous seeds and promotion of diversity. So, people who want to make real bread from indigenous varieties of wheat and other grains rely on all sorts of improvised connections, buying seeds, wheat or grain from organic farmers who live sometimes far where you are. Pierre Overnoy gets from example his grain from the Ferme Ronot in Chazeuil near Dijon in Burgundy. There, Bernard Ronot , who was a conventional/productivist farmer in his former life, changed course and became one of the rare farmers in France using biodynamy for his crops. He founded the group Semence Paysanne, which promotes biodiversity and fights for the right to grow and exchange ancient indigenous crop varieties in France.
Another issue for real bread is the water : you just can't use tap water in most places because it's laced with chlorine and other residues, which harm the living organisms in the leaven, so you have to find pure spring water, which is of easier access in Pupillin. Pierre & Adeline Houillon Emmanuel Houillon is mostly the one in charge of the estate today. He joined Pierre Overnoy as an employee in 1989, 4 years already after Pierre began to make wines without any SO2. When we dropped there, it was in the middle of the crucial stage, with the post-fermentation tasks, and Emmanuel had also an unexpected delivery of wines to do, so Adeline Houillon, his sister, gently took care of us for a tasting of several wines. But you have to know that many of these cuvées are sold out, there will be more wine available next spring.
__ Pierre Overnoy Chardonnay 2008. Topped-up wine. Elegant wine with acidity. The estate has a total vineyard surface of 6 hectares, 2 hectares respectively of Poulsard, Savagnin and Chardonnay. The wine here is a blend of grapes from varied-age vines.
__ Pierre Overnoy Ploussard 2010. The name of the variety come from "plousse" or "pelosse", which means small plum or sloe. The volume of Ploussard is low this year. They blend the press juice with the vat juice. No note, sorry.
__ Pierre Overnoy Ploussard 2009. There had been hailstorms in july in 2009, which asked for a lot of work to take off the dry grapes from the clusters. Turbid wine with spicy aromas, nice substance with complexity.
__ Pierre Overnoy Savagnin 1999. Bottled 2 years ago but not yet on the market. The color is a dense gold with amber tones. Fresh wine, elegant. Very good length. Adeline says that Pierre Overnoy began to top up the Savagnin in 1985, and after a few years, they saw that this Savagnin wine still gets Vin Jaune traits with refineness.
__ Pierre Overnoy Vin Jaune. 8-10 years. The longest élevage made by Pierre was 14 years, but there is a peak in this type of wine that they try to take into account to choose the best release time.
__ Pierre Overnoy Vin de Liqueur. Made with non-fermented grape juice from 2007 blended with the marc 2006. Nice balance, sugar and bitterness, the whole with a very good acidity level.

Maison OvernoyRue du Ploussard39600 Pupillin

Comments

[Iris]

Thanks for this article about Pierre Overnoy. I remember a visit in his place, about 10 years ago, when we sat at the long table behind the kitchen and talked about natural wines, we tasted his wines and were overwhelmed by his hospitality and openness. We didn't talk about bread, but reading your article, we could have - at the time, I still made my bread myself, from a leaven, which I kept alive for nearly 20 years - and of course, we knew the frères Astrier and their stone mills...and had a organical wheat grower not to far from here, who payed back in flour the money, we and other friends had put together, to enable him to buy such a stone-mill...bread and wine ... and (goat's;-) cheese...what else do we need to be happy and well nourished:-)!

[Brian Anderson]

I have been starting to make bread recently and wonder what exactly is in the pot. Looks like it must be a sourdough culture. I have never made beer, but they say it is essentially liquid bread. Must make interesting bread to take the lees to form the dough...

[Jerry McWine]

I've only recently started to read your site, but it's a devoted start. I appreciate your viewpoints on the wine but especially the focus on the person as much as the bruvage. Thank you. Let me know if you are ever interested in the sklepy and bodi of the Czech Republic.

[Cory Cartwright]

Bert,

Recently I have become obsessed with making my own pain au levain. I got the idea from an article by James MacGuire in The Art of Eating, which is perhaps America's finest food magazine. It includes both a history of levain, as well as a recipe for making the starter and bread, a time consuming experience for a novice such as myself (Brian is right that that is the bread starter). MacGuire makes a passionate case for bringing back authentic Levain and gives a number of places in France to find the real deal, including an out of the way spot in Muscadet (la pain Virgule). I highly recommend reading this, and thank you for the article.

Unfortunately when I was visiting Manu Pierre was out of town and I missed out of his bread (but not Anne's cooking)

Cory Cartwright

ps. My bread experiment is here:

http://saignee.wordpress.com/2010/05/25/zen-or-the-skill-to-catch-a-candida-milleri/

[Bertrand]

Thanks for this contribution, Cory, makes me want to make the leap myself. What is funny is that I've been making bread for years but with a machine, and as I'm lazy, I bought ready-made flour with everything inside including bad industrially-produced wheat (I guess) and yeasts. In a first move, I think that I'll try to find authentic flour, some levain, work on it manually and cook it at the end in the machine.
I heard about this Art of Eating magazine which has no sponsors and advertising, seems to have very good in-depth reports on many things, including wineries.

[JT]

Do they have email?

[Bertrand]

Yes, here it is : emmanuel [dot] houillon [at] wanadoo [dot] fr