Leventre Dedieu (Champagne)

Régis Chawaf tying his Pinot Noir (Verzenay in the background) Verzenay, Montagne de Reims, Champagne
I made a brief visit to Régis Chawaf in Verzenay, Montagne de Reims in Champagne. Régis is a young Champagne producer whose Grand Cru I tasted recently with a group of friends wine amateurs in Vincennes. My friend Maryse Sargis had brought this bottle of Champagne Grand Cru Extra Brut and we had been impressed by the character of this Champagne as well as by its length. This was a high-end Champagne style of wine for only 32 € at the shop in Paris. Maryse, who runs a blog had written a post about Régis recently while he discussed his wines in Paris but I couldn't be there and it motivated me to go to Reims [pic on left] and visit the burgeoning winery.
Régis Chawaf wasn't initially in the winery trade and he worked in Paris, but his family owned some 3,57 hectares of mostly Champagne Grand Cru vineyards that were until now exploited by someone else on the fermage rent system. Married with a baby son (who was to be baptised the day following my visit), he decided that it was time to make the jump and do the winemaking and bottling himself. His father, a Syrian native and doctor who settled in Champagne and married his wife Bernadette Leventre, never tried to recover the vineyards. Using the winery facility of friends in Verzenay, he makes now three cuvées from a handful of plots (among the total of 40 plots in fermage), a Champagne rosé, a Brut and an Extra Brut, all in Grand Cru and made with Pinot Noir (and with some Chardonnay percentage for some of them). He named his nascent winery Leventre Dedieu, associating his grandfather's name to his grandmother's maiden name. If you know French, you have understood the incredible union of his grand parents names : Leventre Dedieu means (written this way : le ventre de Dieu) in English God's belly, which has a special resonance when applied to a delicacy like his Champagne.

The family cellar in Verzenay Verzenay, where Régis was born, is one of the maybe three villages being part of the Côte des Grands Noirs (by opposition to the Chardonnay-planted Côte des Blancs) where the best terroirs of Pinot Noir are located. Verzenay is also incidently the place where Mrs Pommery, a lover of Scottish architecture, built her first Scottish-castle mansion, the one in Reims and the others being built later. And lastly, Verzenay is home of both a wind mill (now owned by Mumm) and a lighthouse built as advertising emblem by a négoce house (Boulet Turpin)
Once in Verzenay, Régis showed me the family house in the center of the village. There, I met briefly with his mother Bernadette and his wife Marianne (respectively on the right and on the left) who was fedding her baby boy. Marianne works in Paris for the famous jeweller Boucheron and Régis owns himself a jewelry workshop. They both keep their jobs during this gradual restarting of the winery, and Régis commutes from time to time to his vineyards or to the winery facility of his friends. Many young vignerons setting shop keep at least one salary to help making ends meet.
While recent renovations since the 1980s' didn't let the ancientness of the house show at first glance, the deep cellar and the side building were still firmly rooted in the 17th and 18th century, with the purity and architectural elegance of these man-dug caves. We reached the cellar through a steep staircase. Once at the bottom, there were a couple of tunnel rooms with a few remains of Régis' maternal grandfather works, that is dusty or even mould-covered bottled, riddling tables with still a few bottles on them. A full magnum from his grandfather's time Régis has been working on restarting the winemaking and élevage very recently, and he didn't really invest himself into making something out of this rock cellar. He by the way followed a fast track course on winemaking and viticulture for adults last year, this was compulsory if he wanted to set up his Champagne winery, and he got his diplom which he shows me proudly in the family living room. Régis told me during our converstation when speaking of the big Maisons de Champagne (the major well-known brands) that he will never say bad things about these wineries, even if they make millions of bottles and if his Champagne styme is very different. The reason is that he considers that he owes them a lot, because they have done all the upstream job of making Champagne what it is today, that is a world-class drink without rival. Bottle rack covered with mold Until Régis regains control over the 3,57 hectares of his family, the remaining production is sold to the local Cooperative Vinicole de Verzenay which in turn sells this Grand Cru juice to Champagne makers like Bollinger, Venôge and Jacquard. There are many coops in Champagne, Régis says (here are a few of them just for the Marne département) and he adds that the Champagne coops have been way ahead compared to the ones of other regions for the setting up of Appellation rules and the improvement of practices in order to make better wines. Régis' grandfather still managed to make and sell 15 000 bottles under his name of Georges Leventre. He himself plans to vinify some 40 000 to 50 000 bottles when he'll have recovered the whole surface of 3,57 hectares from the farming growers, depending of the quotas he'll be allowed to sell in bottle by the CIVC, the governing body that overlooks everything in Champagne.
Back to the cellar (I loved this place) : There were a couple of places in the cellar where bottles were literally drowned into white or black mold, this was like in the movies except that it was was for real, a vivid and delicate life that was feeding off the subtle vapors emanating from the wine inside. These molds are for me like a physical etheral body materializing a very important life activity like the one of the mysterious natural yeasts, which live somewhere between the walls of the chais and the grapes skins... Coteaux Champenois 1976 In a 3rd cellar room, we stumble on about 50 dusty bottles, the wine is obviously red inside (and what a color !) : it is some Coteaux Champenois that Régis' grandfather made in 1976. If you remember, 1976 was a very dry and hot year, an ideal wine to make more still wine with the Pinot Noir instead of blanc-de-noir Champagne. Georges Leventre made a majority of Coteaux Champenois that year because he understood that the vintage asked for it. This wine must be in still in good condition, even if the corks are not in perfect shape. No wine is missing in the bottles, and they may taste one soon, maybe tomorrow after the baptism of his baby son. Small-capacity vats The facility where Régis makes his wine belongs to friends of his in the village. They share costs and work like a miniature coop, which means that they put in common their grapes (which they grow on a similar farming style), making sure of course that Grand Cru grapes are vinified with Grand Cru grapes and no lesser terroirs. Régis makes only 100 % Grand Cru, so his blanc-de-noir Champagne wines are vinied with only the one hectare of Grand Cru Pinot Noir that his friends own. Régis Chawaf reminds me (I may have heard that but forgot) that the Grand Cru Appellation in Champagne can be made with only two varieties, Pinot Noir and Chardonnay. The Pinot Meunier that you find in many Champagne wines can't qualify for a Grand Cru. While Chardonnay brings acidity and subtleness, he likes what the Pinot Noir brings : the structure and the length in the mouth. Winemakers in Champagne are expert in pressing softly and rapidly the Pinot Noir, he says, Pinot Noir making a majority of the planted surface in Champagne. Pinot Noir must be pressed quick enough so that the juice doesn't get the color of the skin, yielding a white wine with still some inherent characteristics of the red wine, among them the structure. He says that the Pinot Meunier gives the fruity side, but it's also a simpler wine which doesn't age well. This isn't an issue for Champagnes deemed to be consumed rapidly, but he is vying for other types of wines, and Pinot Meunier doesn't have its place there. The underground élevage warehouse The grapes are pressed in Verzy, in another facility, then the wine is stocked in vats over there where it goes through its alcoholic fermentation (lasts 8 days on average, a week after the harvest) and then the malolactic fermentation later in january. The latter is not compulsory in Champagne, but when you do it, it brings the acidity level 30 % down. In this shared facility, Régis Chawaf makes a Champagnisation à façon with his friend, who has the same age as himself. The place is stocked with thousands of bottles, most belonging to his friends as Régis only recovered a small surface of his family vineyards.
in the future, Régis plans to build a separate facility so that his friend and himself don't need to rent the Verzy press and vatroom. It'll have to be large enough to accommodate 300 hectoliters of wine (when the whole of his vineyards will be recovered) for his own output, plus 2000 hectoliters for his friend. Right now he uses a pneumatic press in Verzy, but he doesn't like that and he wants one day to invest in a "tilted-tray press" (pressoir à plateau incliné) similar to this one by Coquard. On this type of press, the pressure/surface ratio is close to the traditional Champagne press (here is a visual demo of its modus operandi. He would put it in the first room of this facility, near the street.
The picture above and the ones below were shot in a separate élevage cellar that you reach from the first warehouse (with the three small vats) through a long tunnel (pic on left) large enough for pallets, that has been dug under a couple of village gardens, reaching another larger, cement-walled and 12-meter-deep cellar where several vintages of Champagne wait in lined blocks of bottles. 21586 bottles of rosé Champagne in this "wall" There are walls of bottles, white and rosé Champagne. This one above, made of rosé Champagne, makes exactly 21586 bottles, and they put the bottles by hand one by one from collar pallets. Making Champagne requires lots of patience and long élevage time when quality is the objective, and as Régis wants 5 or 6 years of élevage for his Champagne on its fine lees before disgorgment and corking, much of the work will be for the bottles to just lay for years in this cool and dark cellar.
Régis says that he feels very confident on the work style of his friend here, for example regarding SO2, they use it very conservatively, just when needed. He says that SO2 is added at pressing as well as after the alcoholic fermentation so that it contains the strict minimum of 10 mg per hectoliter. This needs lots of hygiene in the fermentation tanks and in the vatroom (in Verzy). He and his friend want also to make a few cuvées without malolactioc fermentation, and it means that they will need to keep the wine for a longer élevage, because as they will have to put more SO2 to block the MF, they will have on the other hand to lay down the wines longer so that the SO2 get away along the years. The good side for this type of Champagne without malolactic fermentation is that you get older Champagne wines with a very nice acidity, which is a plus. Riddling table and rosé-Champagne wall The élevage cellar holds wome 300 000 bottles, Régis Chawaf says, most of them belonging to his friend and co-manager of the facility. Rosé Champagne, white Brut Champagne, blancs de blancs, BSA (Brut sans année or non-vintage Brut) are lined all around us. Most Champagne houses sell their bottles after 15 months of élevage sur lattes (18 months altogether if you count the 3 months of laying after disgorging). Here, they sell their Champagne no younger than 6 years old. This is an investment but the result in the mouth is worth it. The long contact of the wine with its fine lees helps build a Champagne wine of deeper nature, and when Pinot Noir is involved, it's yet another dimension.
As said above, right now 90 % of the wine having its élevage in this cellar had its malolactic fermentation done, but it may change in the following years as they may block the MF for a proportion of their wines. Tying the vines on the wire We then drive to the vineyard plot where Régis was busy tying the vine wood back to the wire. For that task, he uses a strange tool that looks a bit like the grape shears, it's a vine binder. This slope is very windy, says Régis, and while it has positive aspects, it makes tying and binding the wood very important. I will try my luck with this tool and that didn't seem to hard, although doing that all day must not be easy. On the way to the slope, Régis says that he has recovered 5 vineyard plots among the total of 40 plots that are rented to other growers. Now that he got his Champagne-winemaking diploma, it will be easier for him to terminate the rent agreement (fermage) and exploit the vineyards himself. This should take about 5 years. Speaking again about the Syrian roots of his father, who was from Hama and had 200 years of family history in Syria, Régis adds that before settling in Hama, his ancestors had roots in Basra in Today's Irak, a place where winemaking was already practiced 5000 or 6000 years B.C. The conversation then drifts to the fact that the Romans soon added sulphur to keep wines, Régis considering that the organic stance against SO2 is not pertinent. He points to the fact that organic farming still allows excessive use of copper in the vineyard, and that by the way the soils in Champagne are loaded with high levels of this metal. He says that non-organic chemicals at low and carefully sprayed doses are better than spraying all this copper and Bordeaux mixture (he doesn't use the latter). Vine binding in Champagne With Verzenay in the background and at a stone throw of the old wind mill now owned by the maison de Champagne Mumm, Régis Chawaf binds the vines back to the wire, putting delicately but firmly the wood close to the metal wire and then using his vine binder and some paper/metal string to attach it. He has some five rows here on the steep slope, plus two or three along the five which are much shorter. He says that the vicinity of the woods behind Verzenay is enough to prevent the spring frost, that's why there is no counter-measure systems like heaters installed in the area. With only a very short experience behind him, his reconversion to grower/winemaker being very recent, Régis Chawaf seems confident and efficient, and he shows me this landscape with the village behind and says that working here makes him feel very happy. The vines don't look that big (except maybe the lower part), but these (Grand Cru) Pinot Noir vines were planted in 1986.
Leventre Dedieu Champagne-wines public rates are very affordable at the winery, like in the low twenties for the base cuvées, a very good deal for grower stuff. Champagne Leventre Dedieu 1 rue Collet 51360 Verzenay phone + 33 6 11 62 06 58 champagneleventrededieu [at] gmail [dot] com leventrededieu.wordpress.com Leventre Dedieu in Paris (address of the street shop : 36 rue Sainte Marthe)

A cheaper way of transportation to Reims or elsewhereI was encouraging people to vote with their feet and make their own bread in a previous post, but they could do the same in regard to the rising gas costs and the prohibitive train fares in France, that’s what I’ve been doing several times recently. I didn’t want to ride or drive myself this time, and the train is quite expensive, even for this type of short distance (50 € one way !) . Since the high-speed TGV line opened eastward of Paris to Strasbourg, the SNCF raised considerably its fares like in the rest of France, making rail travel out of reach for much of the working-class people. The rates, the repeated strikes and recurrent technical breakdowns (just a few days ago, 5000 people stranded in 15 TGV trains) have made of this company one of the most detested in France. In spite of the size of the subsidy flow going from the State to the French rail monopoly, the SNCF is always close to bankruptcy although it managed to hide its debt by splitting into the SNCF and RFF (the latter, the railroad-tracks part of the company, having taken with itself most of the debt). With the dire state of its finances, the French rail monopoly pushed its prices up to stay afloat, targeting the corporate travelers and the wealthy retirees. Another thing which is central to the problem is that to keep its fares outrageously high, the SNCF prevents bus lines from operating inter-city connections, leaving the people with modest revenues with no other option than drive or stop travelling. There is a market and a pool of potential customers (beginning with me), but the SNCF makes sure that no private bus takes the road so that it can continue to abuse its captive customers.

Yes, believe it or not, companies wanting to open bus lines between French cities must have the prior authorization of the SNCF, which it of course never gives so as to be sure to keep extorting outrageous prices on its captive customers, and that’s why there’s not a single long-distance bus line in France. This is an issue which is almost never addressed by the mainstream media in France, and even though the EC explicitly condemned this blockade, nothing has changed. The following document of the International Transport Forum sums up the situation, read this extract :

"There are essentially no long-distance express coach services in France. The regulation of public transport is allocated to the State for interregional passenger transport services, and these are the monopoly of the national railway company SNCF. Regional and local transport services are organised by the Départements (to be compared with counties) and by (co-operation of) municipalities. Most of these services are submitted to competitive tendering. Express services exist at the level of the Départements, when ordered by the respective transport authority, but no services are operated on a national scale on real long distances.As a result of this, and although some competition exists between SNCF‟s train services – in particular its TGV high-speed train services – and the airline business, there is no such competition between rail and road. Market entry by market initiative by individual transport operators is, for the time being and since the enactment of the current transport legislation in 1982, not foreseen and prevents explicitly direct competition to SNCF services. As a result, such entry is de facto impossible. Gaining the agreement of SNCF seems illusory, as the company has always been opposed to the idea."
This whole issue summarizes the alas frequent French scenario of the class-privilege trend that is the rule here, with public sector groups taking the rest of the country in hostage in order to perpetuate their overpriced service and their jobs for life. This thing is to my opinion at the root of the obvious French economic decline compared with its European neighbors.

So, [end of the rant] I resorted to this very encouraging alternative which is getting momentum these days in France and in Europe : car sharing. I’ve been trying this transportation mode several times recently and I was surprised at the number of proposed rides, their affordability and the enjoyment of the whole experience. Covoiturage.fr is a such a free-registration website where travelers and drivers are put into contact for the best benefit of each side. Just type a departure city on the left, an arrival city on the center, and a date on the calendar on the right, and you get many opportunities with the phone number (once registered and logged in) of the driver, the fee, departure time and everything. This is a great way to make friends (you don’t need to be perfectly fluent in French but a few words will help), and it’s also very likely that the driver may drop you at the door of your destination , which the SNCF would have trouble to do.
The meeting in Paris was near Porte de Vincennes (there was another person, a young woman waiting there too) and with three passengers, the cars were full on both ways. We took the toll freeway each time. I came back the evening of the same day, meeting the driver at Reims' train station. ;-) It cost me 10 € to go to Reims and 13 € for the return trip, that made a 23 € round-trip instead of 100 € for the SNCF…. And you can do car-sharing all over Europe…

Comments

[Neeli]

This is an excellent post. I just recently visited the Champagne area and would highly recommend visiting from Paris (although Sundays in the middle of winter make it difficult to visit many of them). The smaller houses are very charming and produce excellent champagnes, and the drive is really stunning.

[Sargis]

Bravo Bertrand pour ce reportage complet sur l'auteur du champagne Leventre-Dedieu, bien heureuse de ton inspiration. Autour d'un verre à Paris bientôt... Marise

[guitard]

salut Bertrand, un travail toujours exemplaire...de nobles flacons aux couleurs étranges, un champagne au nom attractif pour les croyants universels et un franco-Syrien "d'origine contrôlé"... notre ami Régis, passionné et heureux d'avoir repris ce petit bijou de Verzenay!
longue est la route de la Champagne renaissante
il faut soutenir tous ceux qui ont le courage de faire résonner comme on l'encensait il y a encore quelques siècles, le crissement éclatant du Champagne dans sa plus noble vérité!
après lecture de ce pamphlet sur Mr Chawaf, je vais aller me servir une petite coupe...

[Rousset]

I am drinking this Champagne. This is a very good one...with an amazing name :)
Bruno

[vanraes]

Bonjour

Où puis-je acheter ce champagne en Belgique
ou le commander?
Merci