Christian & Nathalie Chaussard (Loire)

Christian Chaussard in his cask cellar Marçon, Coteaux du Loir (Loire)
The Coteaux du Loir region, which is France's northernmost Appellation area with neighboring Jasnières and Vendomois, is interesting for several reasons : First, it's largely under the radar of the international (and even national to some extent) markets, which makes them very affordable in spite of their quality. The other reason is that you find here two prized varieties, the Chenin Blanc and the Pineau d'Aunis, the latter having become quite rare as the Appellation system in the Loire at large favored what it deemed as more commercially-pertinent varieties. Before the Phyloxera, say, in the early 19th century, viticulture was very extended in the region, but as it happened elsewhere, the phyloxera and the railways turned this once-vibrant wine region into a sleepy one.
When Christian Chaussard settled here, he was looking for Chenin, but he learnt to love Pineau D'Aunis as well. Domaine Le Briseau, Christian & Nathalie Chaussard's estate, was founded less than 10 years ago, in 2002. With a previous experience in the Vouvray region, Christian Chaussard looked for available vineyards in different places and possibly with planted Chenin because he got addicted to working with this variety in the Vouvray area. He settled his choice on a few relatively old vineyards on this plateau near the Loir river. For beginners, the Loir river is a much smaller river than the mighty Loire, and it flows into the Sarthe river further, north of Angers.
[pic on right : the church at Marçon, with the monument to the sons of the village fallen during WWI]

The vat cellar What is utmost interesting in the career of Christian Chaussard is that in another life, he teached enology and viticulture in the Lycée Viticole of Amboise along the Loire river. This was between 1987 and 1999, and he was also running his own winery in Vouvray in parallel, making wine as naturally as possible. At the wine school, he taught conventional viticulture and enology of course because that's the official program, but now and then he would tell to the students that there were ways to work differently, and he would explain marginally the alternative procedures. But one day the school director told him that he should stop doing that because he had phone calls from parents who complained that he praised organic methods to make wine in his classes [now think about that : the parents of these kids, who were probably conventional farmers and growers themselves, couldn't stand the idea that someone dared to spend a minimum time to teach their sons that there were non-chemical and non-additves ways to make wine. That speaks lengths on how entrenched is the chemical mindset in the farmland...]. The director himself understood his position and let him work his way but he just wanted to warn him about potential trouble on this issue. The door to the cask cellar at Les Nérons Christian Chaussard began very early to make sulfur-free wines, without having ever heard about Jules Chauvet. He made his first natural-sparkling wines, with no SO2 at all, in 1993, this was with Chenin when he was working in the Vouvray. It's actually only when he met Nathalie 10 years ago that he first heard about Jules Chauvet, the initiator of the vinification without additives and without SO2 and mentor of Marcel Lapierre. Nathalie is a trained comedian and she is also a diplomed sommelière and enologist. Having been obliged to stop his Vouvray venture for economical reasons, Christian also quit his teaching job and travelled around, as far as Oregon, meeting Nathalie in the way. They toured many French regions together, looking for vineyards to purchase or rent, and they ended up settling in this Coteaux du Loir area, a moderaletly hilly region north of the Loire valley with remnants of what was in the past a very active wine region. If you read this page in French from another organic estate of the region, you'll see that there are only 200 hectares of planted vineyards in the Coteaux du Loir, with a potential of would-be-allowed plantation of 1900 hectares. Time to reinvest in what was a very active wine region...
The triggering factor in their choice was the Chenin vineyards that they found here. During his years in the Vouvray region, he had learnt to love this variety and here was this opportunity near Marçon, they decided that this was it. They settled first in Les Nérons (picture on left), a lieu dit a couple of kilometers uphill from the village, with a two-centuries old deep tuff cellar (part of these cellars date from the 18th century, says Christian) . The Vaslin press At the beginning of this estate in 2002, they worked on 4 hectares of vineyards, then 5.The estate now totals 10 hectares, half in red and half in Chenin, most of the surface being owned. The red part is made up in majority of Pineau d'Aunis, with some Gamay and some Côt. Most of the Pineau d'Aunis vines are about 40 years old, and they replanted some additional surface of it. The Chenin is maybe 30 or 35 years on average. For the facility, they found this foothill structure at les Nérons, with several long deep tunnel-like cellars that they use for the vinification. However rudimentary it may look today, this place was not really ready to be used as a facility when they took it over. Christian says that he had to move tons of earth, build the side building and pour a concrete slab, among other things. These places literally breathe History when you look at the walls and vaulted ceilings but it's often badly maintained and lacking necessary modern fittings, whith the good side that they're very affordable. The new facility Later, they added a new facility on the top of the plateau with fields around : a warehouse-looking building that they built a hundred meters from their own home, which is also new and has a nice modern architecture with wide windows. This Second facility, which is used in parallel to the hill cellars of les Nérons, is used mostly for storage and logistics, the vinification taking place in the tunnel galleries down the hill.
A few years back, Christian Chaussard and Nathalie Gaubicher created a négoce activity, Nanas, Vins & Compagnie, vinifying purchased grapes of selected plots from vignerons of the region. In some cases, they buy grapes from faraway growers in the south of France, have the raw material shipped here refrigerated and vinify it under the négoce label. While they take care to buy from growers who follow as much as possible reasonable farming practices, the négoce wines aren not certified. By comparison, the whole estate of Le Briseau is certified organic (Qualité France). Nanas, Vins & Cie remains a very small négoce in terms of volume, Christian says, and wether they vinify here or at the contracted-vigneron's facility, they respect the same additives-free and real-wine philosophy. Originally, they created this business a few years ago when climate accidents dwarfed their grape volume on consecutive years. To stay afloat, they needed to still make wine with purchased grapes, so they set up this négoce venture. Standing near Pineau d'Aunis vines Being particularly biased toward Pineau d'Aunis, that's the vinayard I wanted to see and fortunately, most of his plots of this variety stand a few hundred meters from his home and new warehouse (you can guess both in the far, one on the left, the other on the center-right). Christian says that when he took over these vineyards (there are also some rows of Gamay and of Côt), they were in bad shape, the previous (conventional) owner having really taken little care of the vines and of the ground/soil. The whole thing had to be revitalized through natural ways and this really took years. The vineyard which was before just a disregarded agricultural tool recovered slowly from unsuitable farming practices. Pineau d'Aunis The plateau here is quite windy, year around, and this helps for the health of the vines and grapes. Christian says that he even thinks he cout set up a windmill unit here to make electricity for his home and the warehouse.
Like you may see on this picture, these old goblet-trained vines had been grown further up vertically so that to allow machine harvesting, and Christian had to let the vine-shoots go further up from the thick wood to get the right foliage surface and a balanced maturity. There's no combine used there now of course, everything is hand picked.
The earth/soil is visibly alive again, although I didn't see how it looked with the former grower (but I imagine easily the hard, arid and moss-covered surface that you see so commonly in the chemicals-saturated vineyards. Vinification in old casks for reds and Chenin Back to the deep tunnel cellar where all the casks are lined on both sides : that's where all the wines, reds and white (Chenin) are vinified. The casks are relatively old, routinely from 5 to 8 years old, sometimes more. The wines ferment there on the wild yeasts coming with the skins or the atmosphere and without SO2 added, staying in there several months depending of the wine.
Prior to that, for the red grapes (including the Pineau d'Aunis) there has been a maceration stage in the white plastic vats in the next cellar tunnel (see one of the pictures above) : The whole clusters are poured from boxes into these moderately-sized vats, and all along this filling of the vats, two people will stand atop of the grapes in the vat, stomping them with the bare feet to have a sizeable liquid volume for this maceration stage. He doesn't make a carbonic maceration even though he may try one this year. And when the filling is completed, some CO2 is poured at the surface until fermentation begins by itself, and after then regular punching of the cap is done all along the maceration stage. Depending of what they want to obtain, depending of the red variety or the vineyard plot, this maceration may last 4 weeks. It's always whole-clustered grapes, except once in 2008 because the stems were'nt ripe and he didn't want to take the risk to keep them. Jules Chauvet's bottle filler... Then the grapes are pressed in the two simple horizontal presses outside (not pneumatic). Christian Chaussard doen't separate the free-run juice from the press juice, they're blended immediately, but the vineyard plots are vinified separately. There's a short settling of the lees in a vat for 24 hours and the juice goes into the casks in the cellar next door. The pressing takes about two hours for a batch of red, when for the white (Chenin) it takes between 5:30 and 6 hours to press (he presses the Chenin in the new facility now), because Chenin has thicker skins and because there hasn't been a maceration stage beforehand.

Now the bottle filler above has its own incredible story : As were were leaving the main room of the modern facility on the plateau, I spotted this strange machine behind a plastic vat and, recognizing a bottle filler (if with a strange shape), I asked if that's the way they filled their bottles. He answer no, they use a service company for the fillings, but he recounted to me the incredible history of this nice red tool :
One day Christian was chatting with Agnès Foillard somewhere in France, saying that he was looking for a simple bottle filler for their small bottlings, and she told him that she was pretty sure they had one such filler in their attic, that they didn't use anymore. Weeks later, he met Jean Foillard who handed him this bright-red filler which still worked perfectly in spite of its age (I would say it probably dates from the late 1940s'), and the best of this story is that this very bottle filler was owned previously by Jules Chauvet, a man who was the initiator of the sulfur-free wines in the Beaujolais and started unknowingly the natural-wine movement... Hadn't I asked about it and moved the (extremely heavy) metal filler for a picture, I would have just passed that gem of a filler.... Drinking Pineau d'Aunis Let's taste now.
__ Le Briseau 2009 (white). Chenin. Bottled very recently (with just 0,5 gram SO2 one day before bottling) after a light clay filtration. Powerful wine, with a neat mouth. Very nice.
In 2010, they had a tough season with the Chenin, there has been lots of rotten grapes and they had to knife-open each cluste to select the healthy grapes, the final yield being only about 5 hectoliter/hectare. They will make a single cuvée with what they picked in 2010.
__ Mortier 2009. 100 % Pineau d'Aunis. I'm surprised by the dark color, I'm accustomed to see light-colored, translucid Pineau d'Aunis. Aromas of cherry kernel, also ink I would say. Bottled a week ago. No SO2 at any stage. On the nose, some peppery notes. Good tannicity in the mouth, with also this ink feel. Very nice minerality here. Christian says that he filters his wines, albeit very moderately, with light clay. What he wants is avoid returns from the shops or restaurants because of excessive deposits in the bottle. Christian told me earlier as we were driving to the vineyards that this variety was looked upon as a minor variety and vinified like a rosé wine, but with this maceration that they do at Le Briseau, they make very different wines, more concentrated and with a structure. Not really made for immediate consumption but with lots of pleasure after they reach their time. Eric Nicolas was the pioneer in the region who began working this way with Pineau d'Aunis.
__ Mortier 2008. Very nice indeed, the tannins are toned down here and there's a real harmnony in the mouth, with substance and length. But Christian says that he thinks that the 2009 is much over this one, it's just a bit early to taste it. I think he's right, he knows how his wine evolve and mature, and the 2009 will certainly be a great drink in one or two years from now. Christian & Nathalie Chaussard (right) outside Caves Augé in 2010 60 % of the wines are exported, mainly to Japan (VinsCoeur), to Belgium (Vin Nature), the United States (Louis Dressner Selections), the United Kingdom (Les Caves de Pyrène), Switzerland...
Here is an interesting page (in English) with extensive information on the Loir region (Coteaux du Vendomois, Coteaux du Loir, Jasnières)

Domaine le BriseauNana, Vins & CieNathalie Gaubicher & Christian ChaussardLes Nérons, Marçon 7230phone + 33 2 43 46 02 64fax + 33 2 43 44 58 53email : nathalie [dot] gaubicher [at] wanadoo [dot] fr

A bridge on the Loir I shot this video maybe one kilometer from Marçon, with the hamlet on the other side of the Loir river named Port Gauthier, which consists of a few houses (follow this link to the google-map satellite image of this place and zoom-in - Marçon can be found following the road to the right). You can see that contrary to the Loire river, which is a mighty, wide and sometimes unpredictable river, the Loir is a very gentle and subdued water way...
The single-lane bridge, which may date from the early 20th century or late 19th, is also a cute piece of architecture, ideal to drop a fishing line and forget everything else.
If you follow the winding river to the upper right, you'll arrive soon after in the small town of La Chartre sur Loir, the major community in the Coteaux du Loir. Music with bottles

Comments

[Peter Minde]

Great story. I'm reading your site from the U.S.A. In the wine distribution business for 25 years, and I appreciate reading your stories. Keep it up!

[Gracie Shantri]

I find myself wanting to travel to France for my next holiday. The photography in your post is incredible. I love the "Music with Bottles" wind chime. How creative. Thank you for sharing this.

[monika]

I'm just to participate at a wine tasting with Mr Chaussard's wines tomorrow evening in Brussels - the article is an excellent preparation for it, thanks a lot!

[Ian Hancox]

Bonjour!

Every bottle tells a story ... and your bottles tell more interesting stories than most!

I live near london and became interested in Jasniéres through a young lady who worked in my local Nicolas branch. Her name was Margaux Aubert. I also met her father, Jean-Michel, from whom I learned a great deal. I guess these names might mean something to you!

Good luck with all your efforts and endeavours ... they are greatly appreciated!

[Oliv]

J'apprends à l'instant par un ami vigneron le décès de Christian Chaussard des suites d'une longue maladie.

[Bert]

Merci, Oliv,

Triste nouvelle. Je savais qu'il était malade mais je l'avais trouvé en pleine forme il y a quelques mois.
On pense à ses proches.

Bertrand

[jf]

Bonjour
Il est décédé suite à un accident de tracteur

[Marc G]

Still have marvelous vouvray from 95 & 96. Enjoy drinking them with the memories we have of him.