Devatting Cabernet Franc at Clos Roche Blanche

Didier & Catherine busy emptying a vat of Cabernet Franc Mareuil-sur-Cher, Touraine (Loire)
Each wine, as well as each winery is a different story, and what could look similar is actually very different, the setting, the air and the landscape change, and the winemakers have their own gesture and ways that add to the whole difference...
I hadn't in mind to specialize in devatting, but it seems that I'm on my way to the very third devatting of the season... This was not planned at all, I met Catherine of Clos Roche Blanche on the marketplace of Saint-Aignan-sur-Cher where I like to go on saturday mornings when I'm around on weekends. She told me that the harvest was finished and that apart from a devatting the next day, things were calming down. Devatting ? I begin to tilt now when I hear this word (décuvage in French) and you understand that I was tempted to go see that gorgeous grape move before the long winter in the cellars. I checked with Didier Barrouillet, the winemaker, he was OK for my visiting during this job and sunday morning (a wonderful, bright & sunny day of early october) I was there to witness another unloading of fermented grapes...

Pif resting near the press barn When I arrived at 9am, I first saw Catherine who was preparing to walk up to the tin barn on the edge of the plateau, where the press and a couple of fermentation vats are located. You reach it using a steep and short path through the woods behind the house/winery, and you find yourself at the level of the vineyards. On this picture above, Pif (CRB dog) is facing the vineyards (washed out here because of overexposition) and the tin barn is in my back. The day was obviously going to be another great late-season day like the ones we had enjoyed for at least the 2 previous weeks; as Didier hadn't arrived yet, Catherine did a few more preparations for the devatting, cleaning a couple of tools and other things. Pif just enjoyed lying in the shadow. It likes to stay with Catherine even more since his mother-dog died earlier this year or last year, I don't remember. There's now only one dog remaining at CRB, plus the cats who police the cellar galleries. Walking to the woods along the vineyard Waiting for Didier, I was chatting with Catherine about mushroom hunting, this season seemed to me not very prolific in terms of mushrooms, with underwoods still very dry. I found a few boletus, but mainly along side roads in the grassy ditches where there's more humidity. That's when she told me about the black trumpets (known in French as trompettes de la mort or death trumpets). The French name may hint at a poisonous mushroom but it's actually one of the sought-after gastronomy ones. I know many people pick black trumpets around here but I never learnt to recognize them, being happy with the huge number of boletus and hedgehogs that I usually find in the middle of the woods. That's when Catherine said, let's go, I'll show you.
On our way, I asked if the wild animals were still a problem as I spotted the electric fencing along the vineyard. She said they were considering removing the wires because it was a lot of work to maintain (you have to keep mowing the grass underneath all summer or the electricity will go down to the earth and not stay on the wires) and they're not sure there would be that many losses in letting the roe deers come and go. Cathering holding Black Trumpets That's how I ended up walking to the woods with Catherine... It was so close from the press barn that we didn't really risked missing Didier, and we even saw quite a number of boletus just outside the woods along the vineyard. As soon as we were in the shadow of the trees, Catherine stopped to pick a couple of black trumpets, there were actually plenty of them if you walked a bit in there, some were a bit dry, but still exploitable, she said. Anyway, what convinced me to try locate them from now on, was that the shape of these black trumpets is distinctly recognizable, there's a hole in the center (that's why this trumpet name) that no other mushroom in the region displays, and the color is generally black, turning grey when it dries. Now, I'll have 3 mushroom varieties on my hunting list, thank you Catherine... Didier preparing the press settings (the vat in the background) Were werer barely back from the woods when we heard the van approaching from the vineyard side, Didier was arriving at last. Didier and Catherine put the last touch to their preparations before the opening of the vat. The tin barn is open on all sides, it's still in the cover of the trees even if the vineyards are just a stone-throw away. It helps keep the place cool when the weather is hot, which may happen on certain years for harvest. There's also a protective sheet wrapping the vat to slow the change in the temperatures.
First, Didier settled the press on the right setting, because at first there would be just the juice flowing in and out, and continuing by gravity to a vat in the deep tuffeau cellar beneath. A hose connected to the pool under the press goes all the way through the hill, across a narrow vertical tunnel, and lands over the vats and tronconic fermenters area of rthe cellar. There's no pump used here. Releasing the juice Chronologically, this is the very first step of this devatting, Didier unlocks lightly the lower opening of the vat so that the juice/wine can go out into the toboggan. When the flow seems to ease, he unscrews the door some more, all this in several steps. He has to be careful because there's still a lot of juice in there, and it could easily overwhelm the toboggan capacity and get lost. Here, the juice comes from the opening, Didier has already released the juice/wine from the tap, the hose of which you can guess on the right side of the metal gutter (maybe the cage is blocked by skins and grapes at this stage). All this juice flows through the press and from the pool beneath, to the vat a dozen meters under the cliff. The first pitchforks of Cab Franc The Cabernet Franc inside (with also a bit of Cabernet Sauvignon) this vat has been fermenting for 9 days, and Didier wrote the evolving data of the juice on the outside, the last noted density being 1000 (this was the previous day's check). Didier opened the other opening at the top of the vat to ease the emptying and also help disperse the CO2. The vat, which has a total capacity of 78 hectoliters, was holding roughly one gondola and a half of grapes, or 30 hectoliters (grapes take more room than liquids). This year, says Didier, the juice yields are low with the Cabernet Franc in 2011, compared with the Côt and the Gamay. The acidity was checked at 4,5. The Cabernet here is 100% destemmed. Loading the press While Didier pulls the grapes out of the vat with his pitchfork, Catherine pushes them galong the metal gutter into the waiting press. You can see in the background the edge of the plateau, the house standing a few meters below, and the deep chalk/limestone cellar being about a dozen meters under our feet. If there were no trees to block the view, you would see the Cher valley in the far. Reaching out for the grapes On this picture, just above the pitchfork handle and still covered with grapes, you can guess the cage which is designed to prevent the skins, seeds and solid parts to go out or block the tap when the juice is let flow. It's called a crépine in the area, this one is made out of plastic. You can see it on the left when it has been detached from the bottom of the vat and cleaned.
Didier does his maximum to unload the vat from the outside, it helps also clear away the CO2, but at sopme point, he'll have to step into the vat from its ceiling opening and continue from inside.
Catherine tells me an interesting thing about these filters : in the past, they were hand-made by the vignerons and they used rye bundles, you would bind them together so that no skin or seed could pass. But then came a time when you didn't find rye anymore, especially that you needed to do these bundles with hand-cut straw, all being cut at the same length. The straw cut by the machines is usually ruined and chopped, and you couldn't do anything with it. Plus, even if they found some, they'd need to check that it's organicly farmed before daring to make filters out of them.
Then they used vine shoots, these were thin and rigid enough to make the job. Now, you get these manufactured filters which are easy to clean (in the past, you'd make your filters/crépines for every vintage.
There's also one such filter at the exit of the pool beneath the press (picture on right), to make sure that no solid part flows down to the vat in the cellar. Checking the receiving side At some point, Didier walked down to the facility/cellar beneath the press, in the heart of the hill, to check if everything was running smoothly. This cellar is also a vatroom and basically, the facility itself, spread in a maze of tunnel/galleries like you can see on this story. Didier wanted to have a look in there, you never know, he says, the hose hanging over the vat might have slipped out of its position, or something. But everything was fine, and the vat was beginning to fill with the juice. If I'm right, this vat was originally a milk vat, it's temperature-controlled and ideal to settle the juices before the fermentation. Didier working inside the vat Then Didier climbed on the vat and slipped into the ceiling hole to finish the devatting from inside. The CO2 had had time to leave, with the upper and the lower openings leaving the air come and go. Catherine says that with this type of vat, you don't risk much, compared with the vats with no lower opening. They used to work a few years ago with a cement vat whose uppe opening was not centered, which left some CO2 blocked in parts of the vat, and they were always a bit anxious about going inside at the end of the fermentation.
Didier says that this metal vat here was custom made on their requirements, as he found that the usual design was too high and too narrow for this grape fermentation. So he asked to the vat maker 3C a wide-bodied, moderately-high vat where he could work at ease and where the exchange surface between the grapes and the air was large enough for the types of maceration/fermentation he looks for. Preparing to unload another vat But this vat of Cabernet Franc was only one part of the cuvée, the other part being in a vat in the courtyard of La Tesnière, a large farm belonging to Catherine and which is partly rented to Noella Morantin. It's barely a few hundred meters from Clos Roche Blanche and we drove there to do the same thing, empty the vat into a gondola and have it pulled behind a tractor to the press where the first batch was waiting. We said hello to Noëlla who was resting this morning after a few days busy with labelling and preparing orders.
The unexpected problem which happened is that the tractor in the background had an electrical glitch that kept it from moving, even though the engine could be heard running fine. Didier tried to fix it but the fuses kept blowing and he had to find another way to pull the gondola until he figured out to solve this in the following days. Catherine driving the older tractor That's where I ended up being useful in this story : I drove Catherine back to Clos Roche Blanche where she would take the older tractor as a rescue, an International which was running fine. It was parked near the press on the vineyards level, she drove it accross the woods (pic above) to the workshop outside the house, unscrewed the tool in the back (I helped there too) and drove it to la Tesnière. Here again, the less technology and electronics you have in a car or tractor the easier it will be to repair a problem. Unloading the grapes At last the devatting can start. Catherine and Didier guide the grapes onto the conveyor belt which unloads them over the gondola. Didier tells me that there's twice more grapes in there than in the other one, about 60 hectoliters maybe, and 100 % Cabernet Franc this time. The vat is an intelligent type of vat, which can be programmed to do certain things at certain hours, like pumping over and other things. Some of these operations can be timed in the middle of the night, which is very useful sometimes. It's also temperature controlled if I remember. It's a Selector System made in Italy by Gimar Tecno.
the fermentation in here lasted 10 days, with destemmed grapes also. By the way, the frapes come from a 20-year old vineyard located on the left just before you enter the courtyard of La Tésnière. It has always been farmed organicly. Filling the gondola Didier says that he likes to do very short pumping-overs, lasting about 2 minutes each time. During the first two days of the fermentation process, he may do it every two hours, to get the right tannins. He says that these two first days, when there's barely any alcohol, is the only time it's possible to do something on a red wine. After these two days, you just follow the wine and overlook it.
Under which name will you find this Cabernet Franc ? Could be part of the cuvée Pif, which is a blend of Côt & Cabernet Franc, but he might as well decide to make a single-variety cuvée of it, he will decide in the coming months, depending of how the wines will behave in winter and spring.

Comments

[Hunter Goss]

Bertrand, I don’t think you should worry that you are posting too many articles about the décuvag. As you observe, there are so many real differences to each winemaker and region. I think these articles are quite informative and I hope others are enjoying them as much as I am.

I also like the part about the black trumpets.

[Rick Rainey - Forge Cellars]

Bertrand,
I will try and send some pictures shortly of our little project in the Finger Lakes of New York where we are making Pinot Noir and Riesling. This is interesting because the team consists of two Americans and one Frenchman - Louis Barruol from Chateau St. Cosme in Gigondas.

Last week we were emptying our fermenter of Pinot and though the fermenter is of very good quality from the cooper Taransaud, the door to remove the spent grapes is VERY small. We must shovel everything out through the door into buckets and then hoist them into the air with a fork lift to put them in the press.

I'm finding all your articles VERY interesting as they are giving me some ideas on how to improve our situation. Thank you very much for your detailed writing and photography.

BTW - I too love the trumpets, we've had a wonderful year for mushrooms.

[Buy Wine Online]

I have just discovered your site and as an avid wine lover, Frequent visitor to France and an avid photographer I must say it is exactly the sort of content I want to read regularly. I look forward to a lengthy read.