Les Cailloux du Paradis (Loire)

Etienne Courtois in one of the cask cellars Soings-en-Sologne, Loire valley
If you haven't had a try of Les Cailloux du Paradis' wines, I would describe them as strikingly alive and mineral. These non-appellation wines are gems that make you happy and feed you at the same time. This small estate of the Loire, which is now well known by amateurs of artisan- and additive-free wines, is now increasibly being run by Claude Courtois' youngest son Etienne, who at 23 has already mastered the challenging vineyard management and the careful uninterventionist vinification needed to craft these outstanding wines. Julien Courtois, Claude's elder son, is already running his 5-hectare estate a few hundreds meters from the family farm, and Etienne took 5 hectares on his shoulders while Claude Courtois keeps 2 hectares for himself, including the legendary cuvées Racines and Nacarat. Claude Courtois, who is busy right now building a separate chai at the end of the facility for his small surface (as required by law, separate wineries must have separate facilities), says with a grin that he wants to have more time to enjoy, and with two hectares he will still have enough to do anyway. As an introduction, Claude offers me and the two workers a couple of pours from a Cote de Beaune, Les Pierres Blanches 2007 by Emmanuel Giboulot, a pure delicacy with the cheeses on a plate. Claude Courtois says that he knows Giboulot since he was a child, he knew his father very well too.
The farm (la ferme) like Claude and Etienne say routinely when they speak about the winery, is located in a woody corner of the Sologne, in a peaceful area with the first vineyards plots a stone throw from there, separated from each other by blocks of thick woods (pictures right and left).
In 2007 at the age of 17, Etienne Courtois had already a 30-are parcel to exercize in the Art of winemaker; he would work there after school and on weekends and holidays. Shortly after he was on the farm full time to take things in charge. Of course since his youngest age he has been immersed in the wine farm tasks, be it in the vineyards that literally surround the farm or in the chai.

Claude Courtois pouring. This Nacarat makes you happy... To rewind a few years back, Claude Courtois was a vigneron in Provence before settling in this area of the Loire. He was making wine in the backcountry of Provence, in Le Val, a village near Correns and also near Chateau Miraval, the estate purchased by Brad Pit and his wife. Their estate was named Domaine Saint Cyriaque and Claude was already following a non-chemical vineyard management and a natural winemaking philosophy. Things weren't easy, the growers of the area having a hard time to understand how he could leave grass grow between the rows, for example. Apart from the grapes, he grew also wheat, oats, hay and everything there, this was a real farm. After several years he had a production of about 100 000 bottles, these were Provence wines which were not heavy, he says, and the customers liked that. Claude and his wife Claudine lost their vineyards in one of those big forest fires of Provence, it was in 1991, and they moved away from the Var département to settle elsewhere. They found this estate in the Loire, with vineyards that had been abandonned during 7 years and had been farmed chemically during 20 years before that. The area was beautifully wild and the property included large blocks of woods and fallow fields, so they chose to come here. He still had to revitalize the subsoil to get the vineyards back on tracks. He had to uproot some of the vineyards and replant new ones, most of the existing ones being Sauvignon and Gamay and Claude Courtois wanted more diversity in the varieties. There are still some old plots here, like the 45-year-old Menu Pineau with which he makes his Racines. When they arrived here in Soings, there were 24 déclarations de vendange (harvest declarations) in the village [an administrative formality which helps count the producing vignerons], but most weren't 100 % vignerons, they were farmers doing a bit of grapes and wine on the side. Today, apart from the Courtois family, there are only 4 growers/vignerons left in this village. Claude Courtois says that to be a vigneron, you have to love this job, it is like a baker, you can't make a good bread on a soul-less way. Looking at the Gascon Among the varieties that Claude planted soon after arriving here was Gascon. Gascon is an old variety which was not authorized by the viticulture administration for the area, and he had it over-grafted on existing Syrah vines. The job was done by experimented Mexicans who do that around the world [Wordwide Vineyards if I'm right] Things went sour, with summons to uproot the whole thing, and after court appeals he got through the hurddles. This overgrafting of Gascon took place in the early 2000s' and you can see how these vines looked when B. and I visited the estate in 2005 (2nd picture from top on this story). This Gascon thing embodies Claude Courtois' character : passionated by the making of natural wines from healthy vineyards and living soils, he was ready to go against the [appellation] stream and the conventions if he considered diversity could help him make better wines. The varieties are in the back seat in his wines, they're often blends of with countless grape types. Unknown variety top-grafted with Côt The exact number of varieties here is an arduous question. While we could say roughly that there is officially mainly two varieties, Sauvignon and Gamay, the unofficial reality is that there are close to 40 varieties, most of them though as experiments with no more than a few vines. But even so, they add their weight to the complexity and build the larger picture of unimitable wines like Racines for example. We pass for example a few rows of an unknown variety, the result of a few abandonned vines of an unknown red variety that they reproduced patiently. They gave this variety a name of their invention, Planté (meaning planted). A few rows further, Etienne shows me rows of Côt that were over-grafted on these Planté vines. For these graftings, they use stems offered bu fellow growers. There is also some Gewürztraminer, Roussette, César...
We've been walking along the vineyard parcels with the two dogs, the one which was already here in 2005 plus another one (pic above) that Etienne says came from nowhere one day, liked the place and stayed...
We pass rows of Chardonnay which are the result of a massal selection made from 90-year-old Chardonnay initially found in the Orléans region further east along the Loire. This Chardonnay comes from the vineyards of a vigneron named Reynald Héaulé, a man who has been working for 5 or 6 years, a couple of days per week, at les Cailloux du Paradis. He owns 2,5 hectares of his own, split in the Orléanais (the region of Orléans, which is also known for its wine) and he shares his time between hiw own vines and the ones of the Courtois. This Chardonnay is vinified in a cuvée named L'Arnoison, which is an ancient, disused name for Chardonnay. The soil under here is like in the rest of the vineyards, a thin layer of silica which is mostly flintstone (silex) dust, under which you deep clay flint stones, the roots going deep into it and feeding of a rain water which behaves like a silica extract. Other parts of the vineyards are very rich in quartz, which is basically melted silica. Further, we walk along some Pinot Noir, the dog following us between two rows. A Romorantin vineyard They have several parcels of Romorantin, including a few rows which were planted in 1998. A few meters further, we walk along rows with vines of different age and sizes, they are non-grafted vines, means they don't have the protection of the american rootstock, but the nature of the soil makes the occurence of Phyloxerra very unlikely, because the sandy/silica soil is not good for the agents of this disease. All these vines from many different varieties are trials, and the grapes even if making a small proportion in the wine, bring a touch of complexity which adds to the rest.
The earth between every two rows is plowed on the surface, the grass being left to grow on the alternating row and cut with a portable grass trimmer. A young plot of Pineau d'Aunis This parcel of Pineau d'Aunis was planted only 2 months ago and this baby vine already grows a grape [And I don't think they boost the plants with fertilizers over here...]. The plot was prepared during two years before the planting. Etienne will tell me later that what they like with this property is that they have a large choice of unplanted plots, prairies or fallow fields that they can let to rest for long years in a very healthy way, and later decide to plant if they need to. For the Pineau d'Aunis, they got the vines from Jean-Marie Depont, a nurseryman with whom they have been working for a long time.
Even though varieties are growing together, either complanted or single rows near each other, the harvest time isn't homogenized [in the Jura or Alsace, complantation leads to simultaneous harvest times]. They make many different pickings, sometimes 3 for a single row because maturity happens at different times, like you do for a tomato plant when you pick the red ones and come back later for the green. That's why they use many different vertical presses, some handling very small volumes. At Les Cailloux du Paradis, Claude and Etienne use only this type of vertical press. There are 8 of them in functioning state in the facility, plus a few others outside that are either disused or needing extensive wood replacement. They got them all from aging farmers in the region who stopped making wine or had acquired more modern tools. Some of them are close to a hundred years old but when the wood staves are replaced they work just fine (they're doing the repairs themselves). These things often stand useless in barns and sidebuildings of farms, and this is a second life for them. They're all manual, ratchet presses, no electric motor there and you need to activate them physically, including in the middle of the night if necessary. And one of the rooms that Claude Courtois is building along with the small chai for his 2-hectare surface will be the room where he'll look over his press during this pivotal time. There's also a price factor as a pneumatic press costs so much compared with these simple tools. Indestructible tractor I was surprised by the number of tractors sitting in the open barn, many of them small narrow tractors fit to pass between rows. Again, it's a pleasure to see how well these machines from the 1960s' keep running. Etienne says that there is usually 1,6o meter between the rows and the tractors are narrower than that. Claude and himself use the tractors, plus they have two part-time employees who work two days a week. The vineyard work is central for this estate where no petro-chemicals are sprayed and no weedkillers as well. Not that I'm being bad-mouthed here but when you walk along the vineyards of the big-and-famous winery nearby, Henry Marionnet to name it, you can't but feel appalled by the appearance of the soils : they have the usual green mosses and stone-hard surface typical of dead soils overflowing with weedkillers. It would be nice if every serious wine buyer of a given wine could see the vineyards by himself and know what such or such appearance really means (many people still think that a square-looking vineyard means a well-tended vineyard). This would maybe result in second thoughts regarding what they think of the wine. For all the efforts Claude or Etienne would make in the cellar, there's no way they could make any of their outstanding wines from such chemical-stressed vineyards and soils [my opinion here]. Etienne Courtois pouring some Plume d'Ange We subsequently walked into the facility to taste a few wines in the many cask cellars, some being surface rooms and others being underground. The wines here aren't submitted to a rigid temperature control and there are fluctuations along the seasons, which doesn't seem to harm the wines, it could even make them more apt to stand their SO2-free life without accident.
__ Les Cailloux du Paradis Romorantin 2010, from a cask. They make an élevage of 30 months for this wine, with an exception for the 2009 which went through 18 months only because the 2008 waited too much to make its malo (and they needed available Romorantin). I love having Romorantin, this rare white variety from the region and I should purchase more of it, plus it is said to age very well and even show its best afte. a few years.The nose is beautifully flowery with notes of mediterranean dry leaves, laurel leaves, incense or the likes. Lovely wine. The average age for the casks is 20 years, even if the particular cask here dates from 2006.
__ Les Cailloux du Paradis, Plume d'Ange 2010. Sauvignon. Will be bottled around Easter 2012. Very atypical Sauvignon. Etienne says that they make 3 different cuvées of Sauvignon, and they're each very atypical : Quartz, Plume d'Ange and Or' Norm. The Plume d'Ange is more on the roundness side, the vines are 20 years old here. The wine is very mineral indeed in the mouth, but the Quartz is even more, he says. Delicious wine, no way, we're far from the usual Sauvignon feel but this is so good. The wines have their fermentation in the casks, they do some rackings, especially for the reds, usually one in spring and another one before bottling. For the whites, they don't stir the wines, they let them make their life quietly. For the SO2, if they add some, it's only before bottling. And for example if you take Racines, this cuvée gets 3 or 5 successive bottlings following the demand and the customers, and depending where the wine goes, it can get 1,5 grams or 2 grams if it's exported in Japan or elsewhere, other bottlings get nothing in terms of SO2 if they travel closer, or get just a light filtration. In the reds cellar We walk into a higher-ceiling cask cellar with nice beams, it's a surface cellar with casks of red wines plus some white ones.
__ Les Cailloux du Paradis Cuvée des Etourneaux 2009. 100 % Gamay. What I tasted at Louis Vins was from an earlier bottling of the same vintage, but there are 4 more casks of this wine. They will be bottled at the earliest next december, or more likely early 2012. Nice pepper notes, beautiful stony minerality. Makes an easy drinkability with an alcohol level which may be 13,5° (they still have to check the alcohol).
__ Les Cailloux du Paradis Gascon 2010, will be part of the cuvée L'Icaunais (means inhabitant of the Yonne). From a cask. There were 9000 hectares of this Gascon vazriety in the Yonne département (Northern Burgundy) before the phyloxera. According to the official records of the varieties surfaces as of 1988, there were only 3 hectares of Gascon left in the whole world. That's what we can call a survivor. A bit close at this stage. Perly. Its total élevage time will be 24 months. Samely, the 2008 didn't complete its malolactic fermentation, so they've been selling the 2009. They racked the 2008 in resin vats to let it continue its life.. Another cask cellar Another cask :
__ Les Cailloux du Paradis, Cuvée des Etourneaux 2010 (in the other cellar we had the 2009). 100 % Gamay again. Dark Gamay in the glass. The vines are 40 years old. Here the minerality is properly striking, especially on the tongue. I wondered a second if it was perly or what, to give this particular feel, but no, this wine is just stone juice, on suce du caillou (we're sucking rock) like we say in French. Outstanding mouthfeel. This is fresh and balanced, with an unknown alcohol level which may be high (no analysis so far).
We taste a white now :
__ Les Cailloux du Paradis, Menu Pineau 2007. From a cask again. Incredible nose, voluptious, with many things, among which pear. this variety is originally a Traminer, Etienne says, coming from the Austrian region North of Venezia. It's also a distant cousin of Savagnin. It was harvested around november 15 and has been in cask for nearly 4 years... They top up, but not always regularly, the wines are grownups and they handle it. They have 4 caks here for 2007, they made yields of 10 ho/ha (in 2008 is was even less : 3 casks and 7ho/ha yields). They never knew the exact age of these Menu Pineau vines but they estimate them to be more than 45 years old. The wine is again exceptional, very classy and mineral. These wines also can surely stand a long time after having been opened. This type of wine stands well a light oxydative note, and by the way Etienne says that its other name is Orboué, like from Arbois. They vinified it a couple of times as a veil wine, Jura style in 1999 (Petit Coin de Paradis) and 2001 (cuvée Fleur de Damoiselle). They also made it in liquoreux with a potential of 18 °, it was bottled without any SO2 and didn't ferment again in spite of the high residual sugar. Usually this cuvée of Menu Pineau is named Evidence, except when they make another version like a liquoreux or a veil wine.

This is a small review of the many wines of Les Cailloux du Paradis, as Etienne and his father Claude made 18 cuvées altogether last year for example, from the 8 hectares of their combined surface. All these wines are made outside of the Appellation system, but who care really when you swallow this... Claude Courtois in an 11-year Menu Pineau vineyard Claude Courtois and his son Etienne don't market their wines as organic although their vineyard management goes further than some certifications. They just subscribed to Nature et Progrès, the rules of which are particularly stringent some of them even more than Demeter. Samely, they use decoctions sprayings to revitalize the vines but don't want to be labelle as biodynamic. It's a question of trust, says Claude, more than certification : he likes the beautiful products and he want healthy products for himself and his family. Etienne and Claude say that by principle the weight of the proof should be on the conventional wines, not on the artisan vintners who add nothing unhealthy into their wines.
After this visit I was invited by Claude to have lunch outside in the shadow along the farm. This was another treat with great wines, a hearty terrine and some aïoli on a long table with all the family around it including Julien's daughter, Claude's wife Claudine and the two workers who help build the new chai. The bottles are in a bucket with ice and the kitty and the dog come there to drink. Here is is a real winery where the vignerons live in the house next to the chais, do themselves the vineyard jobs and eat under the trees right there in summer... Asked if they made this terrine themselves, Claude says no, but from 1979 to until 3 years ago they had all sorts of farm animals, cows, sheep, donkeys, goats, including pigs (they got up to 7 of them), but they had to let them down when they used their roof to make a 2nd chai. If I didn't know that Claude doesn't like the biodynamic hype which he considers as being often marketing driven, I would have told him that these farm animals around the winery were very Steinerian indeed [Steiner always insisted of the important of the farm as a whole, crops, animals et al]...
Claude first brought a bottle of Racines 2009, a white which is I guess is made like the red Racines with a large range of varieties growing on the property. Delicious, the complexity here is played on a mineral mode. The second treat was a Plume d'Ange 2009, a turbid white, and even Claude is surprised at the vividness of the liquorice on the nose. Another crazy wine. We drink this one with the Aïoli.
If you ask Claude Courtois what he keeps in the 2 hectares that he'll work by himself, don't ask for the varieties (like I mistakenly did) : he is not selling varieties, he sells cuvées, and in short he keeps Racines in white, Racines in red, and Nacarat, and if you keep thinking secretly about varieties, just know that there are many, many varieties behind these cuvées, they're part of the alchemy of the wines, with the striking minerality of the soil. He says with a grin that as his yields are low and he's a good drinker of his own wines, there's not be much wine left for the customers.. Resting in the shadow We were resting in the shadow with the house/winery in our back and the vineyards in the light beyond the trees, with good food and these vivid wines to quench our thirst : what more would you ask ?
I think that Claude Courtois read in my mind because he finished this flight with a bottle of Nacarat, this magic wine with a flashy red color (you can see claude pouring a glass to his wife Claudine on the second picture from top). This wine is indeed mysterious, because I asked him how he vinified it and he said it was sort of secret. He just added that it was something that hadn't been tried with this type of grape. The first time he tried this technique and made a cuvée Nacarat was in 1996. He says that if you're formated by the enology schools, there's no way that you could have had the idea that led to the vinification technique behind Nacarat. Samely, he says, Plume d'Ange and Or'Norm are the result of a particular, non-conventional way to work and vinify.

The wines of Les Cailloux du Paradis are mostly sold within France, with exports in different countries like Japan (Racines - Mrs Goda), the United States (Jenny & François), Brazil, Canada (Quebec - la QV), and Australia.
In Paris, La Cave des Papilles, Racines, Vivant among others. Online : Vins Etonnants.
Watch Aurélia tasting Racines 2007 in Quebec for her video blog Busurleweb. If you understand French (with her lovely Quebec accent), you'll feel compelled to try this wine...

Les Cailloux du Paradis Route de la Sauvée 41230 Soings en Sologne Satellite view of the farm & vineyards phone +33 2 54 98 71 97 fax +33 2 54 98 77 38

Comments

[Fabio (Vinos Ambiz)]

Hi, we just tasted a bottle of Les Cailloux du Paradis by Claude Courtois this weekend. It was a 2008 vintage, but will have to check my photos, as I can't remeber what it was excactly, right now. Excellent! I'll be posting a post soon on my own blog; and by coincidence, there were some other wine-bloggers present too, so there may well be a burst of publicity soon!!! Great post above.

[Ross Hallett]

I remember the meandering journey--stop as post office, ask directions, meet the Courtois accountant--she was heading there, and guided my now wife and I--vintage, 2008.