Devatting at Noëlla Morantin (Loire)

Noella Morantin passing a bucket of grapes to Lalita La Tesnière, Pouillé-sur-Cher, Loire valley
Devatting in the chai, plus great news from Noëlla Morantin...

I dropped unannounced at Domaine Noella Morantin recently, wondering if they were still harvesting something, as Noella had told me the previous week that they should be still picking the Côt. They actually had finished the Côt the previous day as there was so little to pick, and they were busy devatting a maceration tank of Gamay that will be part of the cuvée La Boudinerie. I had the surprise to see Noella working almost knee-deep in the bottom of a vat and filling buckets of gamay grapes with a pitchfork. Not the easiest job to do and I'm sure that many winemakers have it done by someone else, but Noella says that she's been doing the devatting work from the very first years when she began to make wine, like for example when she worked at the nearby estate Les Bois Lucas.
This Gamay has been through a couple of weeks of maceration, this is a complement from the bigger, wooden tronconic vats where most of the maceration is taking place. When the carbonic-maceration time is considered over, the juice is racked and the pomace is taken out for pressing, here, through a conveyor belt.
As you know, spring was very beautiful and hot, here like in the rest of France, which yielded a very nice and early blossoming season. Then august was quite rainy which turned into some rot here and there and bigger grapes with the rain water. The juice is thus more diluted with an alcohol level at about 12 °. They began harvesting 19 days earlier than last year.

Lalita They were 6 people around in the chai that day (last friday) : Noella, Laurent, and 4 young pickers who have been working here for the second straight harvest and are staying a few more days to help in the pivotal early vinification process. Not just a job I guess, but a very cool experience. I noticed that all of them including Noella and Laurent had this inspiring Hindu-style red dot on their forehead, I had undoubtly missed an important initiation to the natural-winemaking world. The sight of the lees with their tender purple color made them do it, they say. Now I understand how they get this special vibration in the wines, I was suspecting for long that some esoteric ritual was behind the magic of these wines, now I have the proof... Here is another thing which isn't taught in the viticulture schools for sure...
Having myself witnessed firsthand with Jean Foillard the pure color of fresh lees in the very seconds they're exposed to the air, I understand the magic of the lees. Wind to minute 3:25 on this video of mine. In the depth of the vat The word devatting (décuvage in French) applies for all sort of vats, it may be for a tronconic wooden vat (I didn't choose the right day for that here), a cement vat (like on this pic shot at the Saladin sisters), a stainless or whatever other container. Some modern vats are designed for easy self emptying, but generations have done it manually by pitchforking the grapes out of the vat. This is something Noella is at ease with, she has just to be careful with the CO2 which roams around after a carbonic maceration. Prior to getting down in the vat, she opened the lid for a long time and she makes sure that there's always somebody in the vicinity just in case. CO2 is odorless and doesn't warn you before striking. Accidents often happen with unexperienced chai workers who don't follow a careful procedure. Noëlla holding macerated Gamay The Gamay in there is whole clustered and it has mostly macerated with intact grapes. Carbonic maceration has been rediscovered thanks to the work of Jules Chauvet and Beaujolais winemakers like Marcel Lapierre who died a year ago. It's not a miracle recipe and talented winemaking involves other expertise, but these wines are more fruity and deliciously easy to drink. When you have tried one of these wines, there is a good chance you'll be hooked to additives-free natural wine with no return.
You can see on the picture how intact indeed these grapes are, although I took the picture as Noëlla had almost reached the bottom of the vat and these grapes had to stand the weight of a big volume of grapes. Women at work This Gamay (cuvée La Boudinerie), in addition to the maceration, has been foot-stomped, even if some clustered grapes remained whole at the bottom as you could see on the previous picture. It is important to note that Noëlla's other cuvée of Gamay, the one named Mon Cher, doesn't get any foot-stomping or crushing at all.
As soon as Lalita gets a bucket of Gamay grapes from Noëlla, she empties it on the conveyor belt which lifts them in continuum over the press, where the remaining juice will be extracted. Laurent, pitchforking the grapes Laurent climbs along the pneumatic press from time to time, to check that the grapes are evenly spread in the rapidly filling cylinder. Noëlla purchased this press second hand a few months ago. Last year and the year before, she had to use Didier & Catherine's press at nearby Clos Roche Blanche but it was not very convenient because of the issues of the transportation the juice and of the availability of the shared press. Soon spotless The vat is now empty, and Noëlla hoses it clean so that the next batch of maceration can begin. This vat is easy to clean, compared to the wooden open vats, for which I'm not sure they use water for rinsing by the way. This maceration load of Gamay was part of the future cuvée La Boudinerie, which is made with a total of 3 vats : this 22-hectoliter vat plus a 50-hectoliter tronconic vat and an other such wooden vat with a capacity of 20 hectoliters. Manual destemming There's no loss of time here, and that's why the young folks that they hired a few more days for the chai are helpful : as soon as a maceration vat has been emptied and cleaned with water, the next batch comes in, which is the Côt coming from both her vineyard and the one of Jean-Luc Tessier, an organic grower from the area from whom she purchased additional grapes. Laurent has put a destemming rack at the lower end of the conveyor belt and Noella and her aides brush the grape clusters to separate the fruits from the stem. It takes a few seconds to brush the grapes off the stem and put the wood on the side, after which Samuel brings another box of grapes. Whole clusters of Côt filling the vat Actually, it's a partial destemming here, with layers of destemmed grapes alternating with whole-clustered grapes. Now for instance, they have taken off the destemmer rack in order to put a layer of whole-clustered Côt, after which they will put another layer of destemmed grapes and so on.
Noëlla's vineyard of Côt is a very old one, like 70 years old and many vines are missing as it has never been complanted to replace the voids, so she would make only 600 bottles if she didn't purchase additional grapes for her cuvée. Destemming the grapes by hand On this video, Noella and 2 assistants destem the grapes by hand. She explains that when you've cut your fingers it hurts with the grape juice. She also tells me that they alternate layers of whole-clustered grapes and destemmed grapes in the vat (like a "millefeuille", ads Laurent). Listening to the cask noise I walked through the door on the left beyond the press, that's where the whites are fermenting, at a warmer temperature than the cellar beneath. Laurent shows me the foam going out of certain casks : the fermentation of the Chardonnay is on its happy course and you can literally listen to it. Laurent puts his ear above the opening, at a distance so as not to get foam all over his head. A cask is a microcosm and most of the other casks are more quiet, they don't seem to overflow at least. All the wines in here ferment on wild yeasts, bu they do it sometimes at different paces. Overflowing fermentation foam We looked for another cask where the fermentation was not overpouring and listened : it was singing as well, only that everything was taking place inside the barrel. I took out a small recorder and took a sample of this Chardonnay song : Worker's portrait I had been watching and enjoying this chai buzzing with activity for quite a moment when Noëlla, pausing for a welcome respite, told me that she had great news for me : she has signed with Junko Arai for the purchase of 3,8 hectare of her vineyards. If you remember, Noëlla worked a few years for Les Bois Lucas, a Japanese-owned winery very close from here. Junko Arai at Les Bois Lucas, who is also farming organic and vinifying without additives, is downsizing her surface and this was a golden opportunity for Noëlla to augment her surface with an outstanding terroir. It is a single block vineyard with 3 hectares of Sauvignon planted respectedly in 1944-45, 1967-68 and 1968-69 (in winter I guess), plus 80 ares of Gamay. She knows these particular vineyards very well and remembers (and I remember too) that the wines made of them were great : for several years, she was the one in charge of both the vineyard management and the winemaking at Bois Lucas. Noëlla rents right now 8,2 hectares of vineyards in production from Clos Roche Blanche, and this purchase will complement beautifully her working surface. The 3 hectares of Sauvignon will add up to the 3,68 hectares of Sauvignon she is already working with. No need to say that she is very excited of this deal. Laurent Saillard who until now worked part time for both CRB and Noëlla, will recenter on the newly-augmented estate. Battlefield briefing Stepping out Winery assistants enjoying a break in the late-afternoon sun Lalita preparing a pie I was within seconds of leaving the wine farm on my motorbike (they all still had lots of work to do in the chai) when I shot my last pictures outside in the courtyard. Not really winery related, but this scene with Lalita peeling fruits for I guess was to become a pie they'd eat in the coming dinner made me wonder what we're still doing in Paris...

Watch Aurelia in Canada as she tastes Noëlla Morantin's Gamay La Boudinerie 2009.

Comments

[Tom Casagrande]

Great post. As are all your posts. I love the "barrique chante," especially, in this one. Nice touch to think of recording that and posting it.

[Chris Kissack]

Great report Bertrand, thanks.