Wine News (44)

A quite old Alsace Riesling Summer & autumn 2011
This is a bottle of Riesling from Alsace with an undetermined age, I estimate it to date from the 1960s and possibly from the 1950s if I look at the state of the cork (pic on right), only very old bottles manage to have such nearly-fossilized corks. I found it on a street sale ( or attic sale, vide-grenier in French) in a village in inland Provence and decided to risk the 3 € the elderly man asked for it. It happened to be quite a good surprise when I opened it a month later (alas too late to buy the rest of the bottles, the old man had 4 of them when I stopped at his stand). It missed only a centimeter or two of wine (some of the other bottles missed more wine) There was first this golden color and nice viscosity when poured, the nose was generous and complex, emanating something in the range of ripeness. The mouth had notes of cristallized compote, maybe of pear, then dry grapes, and the whole thing was intense in the mouth and particularly long. You wouldn't drink that Riesling like a normal Riesling, it was obvious that it was not exactly in its ideal time, but it was like making an experiment with shadows of an interesting past. Great experience, believe me, I had bet my 3 € on the right horse. There so much mystery behind this wine : From the label, you learn that it was bottled by the Union Viticole Divinal, Négociant à Obernai, and that the wine was made by the Société Coopérative Vinicole d'Andlau à Barr. This is indeed an old bottle, because ir hints on the fact that this coop didn't even have a bottling line and relied on a négoce for that.

To our summer rosés... This glass of rosé symbolyses all these good and less-good rosés (by far, the latter making the majority of the two) that we came through in summer. The picture is also a good symbol of an important feature in the enjoyment of wine : context. For the rosés that I’m used to buy in summer for the early-evening apéritifs, I’m asking affordability and volume, like many fellow French wine amateurs, and as a result, you get bulk wine or wine in bag-in-box which is standard high-yield wine. But you know, although on the side of my mind I get the obvious feel that we’re not having the best wine of the year, the context fills the vacuum and you’re having a good time because you’re with friends aénd family and there’s Provence all around with it’s crisp, scented air and magic. .. Let’s never forget the importance of context, it may raise a wine from passable to quite good without taking notice to the root reasons of this upgrading. Celine & Sophie Another pic from this summer in Provence, here are Celine and Sophie, pronounce it the German way, they’re from some part of my close family who live in Duisburg, Germany. They’re actually more German than French but spend time in Provence with their Franco-German parents every summer and they speak good French, albeit with a German accent (which is very nice). They pose with these glasses of rosé and white wine, but I’ll be frank, this was for the picture and they don’t drink alcohol, or at least very rarely. But this picture is a pretext to write about the below-the-radar wine exports from France to European countries at the occasion of the summer migration. This family often drives here in two cars, one having enough room for extras, and the father (he is the German half) is stocking up on wine before his way back. This is Europe : we’re supposed to have access to evreything European, but that’s not exactly the case for some reason and if we don't travel to the destination of origin by ourselves, we just don't have a chance to see the product. By the way, It’s been several summers that we talked together of him bringing me a few cases of Alt Bier from the Düsseldorf area when he drives to Provence (DDorf is very close from Duisburg), but we miserably forget and fail to call each other before summer each time. I discovered Alt Bier when spending time with them in Duisburg a few years ago and this was a discovery of the unknown world of silky, dark German beers.
Speaking of German beers, my sister who lives in Burgundy made repeated trips to Munich during the last 12 months as her daughter spent an exchange year there, and she was kind enough to bring me back a few unknown beers from there, like this Augustiner Hefe Weiss Bier on the side. Remember that if natural wine is at home in France but with only a small proportion of the output, beers in germany were until recently (until the European Union dismantled the Reinheits Gebot purity law) all made naturally, that is without additives or preservatives. Brewers still keep making beers the ancient way, from what I know, and this Augustiner beer is made along the Bavarian Purity Law which is at the origin of the German beer law at large.. She brought also a Hacker-Pschorr Münchner Hell (also "Gebraucht nach dem Bayerischen Reinheitsgebot von 1516"), and this 0,5-liter bottle was closed with one of these old-style articulated closures which allow the bottle to be re-used easily.
Anyway, I love having drinks coming from the blue, it’s like if drinking and tasting leads to travelling, makes me think I got to go back over there one of these days.... Too late for a pic That's about a wine which we got in one of these music concerts in historical settings in Provence. You get these concerts all over the region in summer, with sometimes like here an outdoor dinner before the concert. Some of these summer concerts and festivals display way too much hype or have overgrown to such an extent that they became mass events, like the one of La Roque D'Antheron which is to my mind pretty boring and pretentious.. But here in Vins-sur-Carami, there's still the confidentiality and intimacy of a local event. I'm possibly putting too much light on this place and I hope it'll not overgrow because of this post.
The Chateau de Vins was a ruin in the 70s when Jean Bonnet (pic on left) purchased it and decided to restore it. The village council was not of any help and he struggled to repair the castle. The cultural revival of the place was to bring people in summer for live concerts, augmented with a joyous dinner on the Chateau grounds. My parents have been going to these summers feats for years and I ended up doing it too with B. this summer. Very nice experience, and speaking with Jean Bonnet who at 78 still manages the place with his son, I understood that strong-willed individuals can change things for the better.
Now, this wine : There were a few wines you could drink freely during this dinner, and I chose the red, served in unmarked bottles, obviously bulk or bib wine, I thought. Ichose to drink the red, and it happened to be a delicious, lightly-tannic red wine which was breathing the truth of a wine made naturally. It's too bad there was the concert afterwards and that I had to restrain, because you really drank this wine with ease and pleasure. As Jean Bonnet passed near the tables, I asked him about this wine, and he nonned with a smile, he had chosen the wine himself and this one was a bulk wine from the village of Correns, from the local coopérative, which works from organic vineyards only. For the information, the two reds on sale in bibs in this Correns coop this summer were a 10-liter bib, a red Vin-de Pays-d'Argens at 25,2 € and a 5-liter bib red AOC Côtes-de-Provence at 18,7 €. This concert with dinner was at a cost of 40 € per person, a great deal for the experience (and with wines at will). Reservation and payment in advance, see the website for infos and schedules.
make sure to attend a concert with dinner, some of the concerts (on certain days) don't have dinner with it. Switching to white In summer, I don't know about how most people do, but on our side we rely on two categories of wines : on one side there are the bottles that we pick in the cellar or select in a shop for a particular dinner or apéritif, and on the other side there is the "volume wine", the one we can count on without restraint, be it for the loww-key lunches or the daily apéritifs in the long evenings. We usually tap a bib right from the fridge, something that must be affordable and plentyful.
When you're in vacation a couple of weeks, you don't always want to spend days and energy from winery to winery to select your bulk wine, so there's room for chance and luck, with a bit of intuition maybe. We were in the middle of a disappointing bib of rosé this year (they're often a bit heavy and sugary in Provence) when we visited Cotignac, a cute village of inner Provence (pic on right). It's in the vicinity of Correns, the 100 %-organic village, but you'll find here many more cafés and restaurants to relax. As we dropped there, sitting at a café terrace, I happened to ask for a glass of white and was served something that I found refreshing (pic with the kitty on the left), the wine was fruity and hadn't this heavy alcohol side of many cheap rosés around here. I asked to the waiter about its origin and he told me that it came from the local coop, the Vignerons de Cotignac. So, right after our time there, we walked to the wine coopérative on the lower side of the square to enquire and possibly buy something. We tasted a few interesting things in bottle, rosés at respectively 4 €, 4,8 €, 5,3 € and 7 € a bottles (didn't take notes though). But for my volume wine, they had what I wanted, a 5-liter bag-in-box of white, the very one that I had at the local café, a blend of Rolle and Ugni-Blanc for a mere 13,9 €. I think that Provence whites are a good alternative to rosés for easy drinking occasions, and I'll try to look in this direction next year too.
Cotignac is a good visit destination by itself, it's obviously being colonized by urban types and parisians, but it retains a cool, relaxed side, like some sort of Saint Tropez of the interior. There are indeed a few Art galleries and other visitors-targetting shops, but it's not yet a tourist circus like Saint-Paul-de-Vence (yet). It is sitting at the foot of impressive cliffs which you can climb along a trail.
There are a handful of other wineries in Cotignac. Can a wine lie ? Does a wine lie ? Many things can distract us when we try to evaluate a wine we’re tasting, there’s the label and other background factors which may have nothing to do with the intrisequal qualities of the aforementioned wine (we often take the face value of the label for the real thing, which may ease the way for a deceiving wine). Then there are the aromas and distinctive palate qualities that we’re used to look for and lead to high scores in professional tastings. But do professional tasters take enough into account the truth and the life of a wine ? Not sure. For that maybe, they'd need to add this unconventional criteria, and also drink a bit, not just rinse their mouth and spit, because that's when the wine is fully in your system that you aprehend it wholly. I’m always amazed by how tasters can review dozens of wines in a very short time, they are way more capable than me in that regard, for sure. The much-sought-after tasting features that lead to high scores in the wine trade can go along with lots of deceiving manipulations and additives tricks in the cellar. And there are more and more people who prefer the truth and the life in wines than the square obediance to qualitative norms that can actually be faked with modern enology and additives. Until now, truth and life can’t be easily industrially reproduced or faked and that’s what makes true wines unique and with a growing following, even if many of them need a careful approach and are not devoid of defaults.
I shot this picture in Chalon in Burgundy when we visited my sister on our way to Provence. We don’t have TV in Paris and I didn’t want particulary to watch TV that day but others in our party did... The wine featured here is a Domaine de Rimauresq 2008 (an English-owned estate in Provence), an intense wine with spicy notes and a bit of oak that goes tather well with meat. Plenty & healthy fruits... I shot this picture at a village street sale (vide-grenier, or attic sale) in Burgundy last summer. This framed poster from the 1950s’ (my guess) is glorifying the singing tomorrows of the chemical revolution in the fruit growing industry. It was encouraging the use of Pacol, a pesticide made by the French chemical giant Rhone-Poulenc. I didn't find much content on the web about Pacol, but it sure has been used by the farmers, possibly (I should say undoubtly) at the expense of their own health.
Isn’t this almost-soviet-looking young revolutionary farm woman convincing ? The message is clear : use our wonder products and your apples will be healthy & beautiful and the market will love them. No need to say how similar this situation is with the additives companies lobbying in the backstage to have commercial wineries use their products for their standard wines and pave the way for a smoothly-running business. But unlike fruits and vegetables about which the average consumer's awareness is now real, the reality behind the wine image is still very hazy for most wine consumers who ignore in the first place the existence of all these additives being used to enhance their favorite wine. Just walk into a viticulture-products shop anywhere in the world to have an idea of what you're been served unsuspectedly when you drink commercial wine. Most of these purchases are now made online though, which allows more confidentiality for a potentially very-sentitive issue. Shiny, bright apples I shot this picture a month ago on a street market in Paris. The dream of the 1960s’ is still pursued by many consumers, encouraged of course by the fruit trade. And for a change, let's put more blame on the consumers, they're the ones who vote overwhelmingly for these fruits, and if they really prefered the real apples, the growers would listen to them some way or another.
Here are well-formatted apples with all the same shades of color following the same design, and a cute stamp to add a touch of seriousness. The inside of the apple has been samely formatted, nothing below, nothing above the chosen norm, just to be sure that you get always the same product. The parallel with the majority of wines that are being made in the wine industry is almost visual, here; instead of taste & aromas, the engineering has been working on color, surface aspect and crispness. Make no mistake, most of the wines we find in shops and supermarkets are the liquid brothers of these apples. Weird-looking apples Here are apples that I picked in the Loire. A very different story telling here : defaults, weird shapes, worms sometimes, a very heteroclit picking indeed . Seem to send a message like "You sure you want to eat me ?!?" Some of them have been partly eaten by birds, or wasps, not very attractive for a consumerist public looking for shiny, square apples. But these are the best fruits you can get if you look beyond the defaults-that-the-industry-made-you-believe-were-defaults, delicious fresh apples, that you can eat whole, without second thoughts about the skin. For a change, these apples are old varieties, grew without any spraying or accelerating trick, and got all the time they needed to ripe on the tree, so much that I actually picked them on the ground.
I don’t know why, but I feel that they rewarded me for my patience... Bernache on sale in supermarkets !!! I bought some bernache in a supermarket in the Loire ! This was of course during the harvest season. It was at an Intermarché supermarket but I think that other retailers sell this type of products also, and not only in the Loire (I remember buying this similar "Vin Nouveau" in Alsace some years ago). That's quite weird because bernache, this savory juice turning into wine and already having some alcohol content, is very difficult to handle and transport. The thing is that it MUST NOT be sealed tight with a cork or any other closure, because the bottle might explode. This one was just closed with a pieced plastic closure, so that the gaz could come out, but there was still the tarrif stamp on the top like on ordinary bottles of wine (a blue one, like for table wine). I paid 2,25 € for this bottle, a bit expensive as most vignerons I visit in the area give bernache for free (usually in 1,5-liter plastic bottles, when you bring an empty one). But, still, I applaud the move of the supermarkets to sell this very elusive and temporary drink. Kudos to them ! My prefered apéritif at harvest season Locals in the Loire (in Touraine at least) often stock Bernache from nearby vignerons and keep it in the fridge for the apéritif, and that is really a drink that I accept very easily when I'm dropping at some acquaintances there. It's quite healthy to drink and has usually not seen much SO2, even when it's taken from conventional vignerons. That's the thirst wine you dream of, even if in this matter, it's somewhere inbetween juice and wine. Makes you feel good without knocking you down, which is not the case for other apéritifs. Some people even put plastic bottles of bernache in the freezer to take them out later, like at Christmas. Natural wines on a Paris market ! Can you believe that ? The other day I was visiting the sunday market at Place Des Fêtes in Paris in the 19th arrondissement (near the Buttes Chaumont) and you can imagine my surprise when i sdpotted a stand with lines of bottles which seemed to have unconventional labels. I stopped for a look : the guy was selling 100 % of natural wine.... on a street market, can you believe this ? There were people I knew like Dard & Ribo, Villemade, Lemasson and others, and also vignerons I didn't know (with prices starting at 6 or 7 €), plus real fruit juice and organic artisanal beer (75 cl size) from the Touraine (Loirette). Things seem to accelerate somehow, I didn't expect to find some day a guy selling this sort of wines and products on a street market. I know, there's no real obstacle for such a thing, as you find organic vegetables and stuff like that, but I don't know, I didn't expect natural wines to come along. The guy also runs a wine shop/ bar or restaurant nearby named Ô Divin, and he has been selling here on the street market of Place des Fêtes fridays and sundays (mornings) for a year and a half...
If you're wondering where to buy a few good wines on sunday(until 1pm), remember that there's this stand at Place des Fêtes (until 1pm). A great wine from Beaujolais B. and I had some painting and home refurbishing work recently in Paris, helped by a Japanese expat who is quite an expert on this field. When it was all almost finished, I opened this bottle of La Tranche Pressée, a Beaujolais table wine made by Philippe Jambon and with his dedicacion on the label. I think it was a 2005, it's the press part of the cuvée La Tranche, which makes barely 2 casks, so it's a very small volume. The wine is sulphur-free like all of Philippe Jambon's wines and I kept the bottle in my wine fridge since my visits thee a few years ago. This was a beautiful, tasty and easy drink, and our Japanese friend who takes part to sharp wine tastings with a group of friends, had here some sort of introduction to non-conventional natural wines. He frankly liked, and the bottled was downed quite quickly. With the taste still in the mouth some time later, I thought that this sort of wines have the capability to make you happy, that's makes a big difference. Guennadi Oparin [left] with daughter Lisa (Novorossyisk, september 2010) I am very glad to learn that Guennadi Oparin whom I visited last year near Novorossyisk in Russia, had his wine singled out during an internation contest in New Zealand featuring garage wines (article in Russian) earlier this year. His Sauvignon was was scored second on the list, showing again how much Russia could gain on the wine scene if its administration could let free rein to its talented artisan winemakers. What I've tasted from Guennadi as well as from Ivan Karakezidi (also near Novorossyisk) and Aleksey Tolstoy convinced me that thee's a bright future with small-size wineries in Russia. These people have the talent and passion to put the best terroirs of southern Russia on the map.
Oparin was born in 1961 in Nizhnyi Novgorod where he became a civil engineer, he then went to the military and worked in different wine businesses from 1990. He set up his Semigorie winery some 4 years ago, planting his own vineyards on selected slopes above Novorossyisk. He still can't sell his wines because of the Russian administration and relies on his restaurant at the winery to make it know by Russian amateurs. This is one of the top tables to go to if you pass in the area. Now read or google-translate this passionated and well-documented Komsomolskaya-Pravda article (in Russian) written by Nokolaï Krivomasov in may, you'll learn the challenge faced by people like Guennadi in modern Russia to be able to make and commercialize their artisan wine. they're obviously Russian wine as its best, and they're fighting an uphill battle just to keep working because of the administration, when the booming Russian economy could put them into orbit very quickly.
I'm proud to read at the end of this article what I already wrote a year ago in this post (first story, last lines) : two very important politicians of this country have invested personally in land and vineyards on two locations of the area, respectively Anapa and Gueledjik. We all know who these two people could be, and like the article implies, it could mean a change in the way the administration deals with artisan winemakers, as these persons of importance will see the issue from close now that they've sort of joined the trade, and first of all, they'll understand how much Russia could gain by letting artisan winemakers work and sell. How to make a barrel You don't need to understand Russian to enjoy this excellent video on how to make a barrel. This informative video found on the Russian TV channel STS was shot at the Böttcherei Messerschmidt cooperage in Germany. Very nice job and good report. This artisanal cooperage is located in Neu Zittau in the Brandenburg Bundesland (east of Berlin), a region which was part of the DDR before the reunification. Seems to hint that under the communist regime there were still a few artisans in this trade. New Russia helping put under the spotlight an artisan cooperage from the former DDR, I love that... Barrel making, Russia (with a Georgian accent) I found this video on Maks Portal (макс портал), an information network created in Sochi, Russia in 2010 for the 2014 Olympic games. It features news and other info on the greater Sochi area, and among them this video, with this artisan making his casks the good old way. Watch also this other video on the same artisan. You also learn a lot here just by looking how this old cooper works. Amazing. Train scene in blue & pink Follow-up on the SNCF issue
I’ve heard on the radio recently (late august or early september I don't remember) that following some legal action, bus/coach companies would be allowed to open routes between a few French cities to transport passengers. It’s quite a revolution in France where the state-owned rail monopoly SNCF has been blocking the setting of ANY private bus connection between cities , using for that purpose a law dating from 1982. This retreat will not ease the situation for the struggling SNCF, which relied in part on this trick to keep part of its customers captive. Few French know that, although as a result they’re offered no choice but to pay outrageous prices for transportation for inter-city connections. Somehow the bus companies in Europe must have sued the French administration or lobbied in the European bodies because after resisting European-imposed freedom of trade, France (and the SNCF !) began to allow recently a few routes for bus connections, allowing prices to drop dramaticly compared to train (with prices only a fraction of what train tickets cost). It began with 6 bus routes earlier this year and seems to extend by te end of 2011 (see this article in French). The mainstream media was very discreet about this change (like it has been for years about the SNCF-inspired blockade--I myself discovered it quite recently) and what I heard myself was a short sentence on the State radio network, France Inter or France Info I don’t remember which. Amazing discretion for news which should have received extensive coverage and commenting, the journalists there were probably too busy bashing Sarkozy or maybe it was some solidarity-motivated silence to take the heat away from their fellow job-for-lifers of the SNCF. There was more coverage on some independent blogs like this one, but on the whole, the media was looking the other way. Foreign travellers have complained for years on forums about the issue (see here on Lonely Planet), as travel costs were so high because of this.
There’s almost only one bus company able to set up routes overnight on the French domestic routes : Eurolines, a company which was previously allowed to serve international destinations from inside France, but not sell tickets between cities within France, even though the buses would drive through many of these cities en route to other European destinations. Until now, you can check on the Eurolines website that it’s impossible to view the schedules between the French cities, even though many of them are serviced.
Now on, it seems that there could be more companies setting foot on the French market, to the benefit of the travellers with lower revenue, or just of the people who prefer road travel. International travellers (young people or families) who are often shocked by the rates of the SNCF will also have here a much cheaper alternative, with also the advantage of fewer strikes and a better guarantee of service (almost all the strikes take place in the public sector, in France).
I also remind the young (and less-young) travellers of the great share-a-car schemes which allow you to find very easily a driver going from a major French city to another (and this, for evey day of the week) and pay very decent prices for a travel in good company. I’m thinking for example to covoiturage.fr which I use from time to time. Registration is free and when you’re logged in, you often have access to the cell phone of the driver, which helps a lot. This happens to us one day or another... I' come across these comics several times but I like this one particularly. they're all made by Tolmer and they tell of funny sides of the wine-tasting and the wine-connoisseur world, things that we think sometimes, or witness, but never dare to say. You can see them on Glougueule, the excellent and humor-filled wine blog of the French journalist Sylvie Augereau.
This particular comics story depicts a scene of friends wine amateurs beginning to taste a decanted wine they think to be a Bonnes Blanches 2007 (Anjou, Loire) by René Mosse, from what the guy pouring announces. The two friends of the host begin to marvel at the typical mosse Chenin, until the host realizes that he made a mistake and poured another decanted wine, a Savagnin by Jean-François Gavenat (Jura).... Alela Diane in Paris Went with B. at a concert of Alela Diane. Great time in the Trianon near Montmartre, the place is no big and you have a good view of the whole thing. Although I was a bit disappointed that she didn't sing Rake, one of my favorites songs, and also I sort of felt that the drums part was too heavy on the show in some pieces, I prefer her songs with just a couple of guitars, including of course the one played by her father. This guy plays beautifully too, almost too discreetly on the far end of the stage. Doesn't want to steal the show I guess. Here is a beautiful video with a song of this concert (no drums in this one either), the video seems to have been shot from very close from where B. and I were seated, but it's not mine (the guy on the left with the guitar is Alela's husband). Very good shooting, by the way I wished it could be mine, I shot a few videos but they're not as good, although there's this one I like because of the song, but I missed the beginning. Do you know that she is from Nevada City, California, a dream country of wooded hills and small communities with also a great and atypical winery in its midst : Renaissance.
When I listen to her, I feel like there's a perfect alchemy between her melodies, the lyrics and the way the instruments interact, and that's also something you find about great wines, everything is there, but with a plus, a magic of some sort. I looked several times to websites with the lyrics of her songs to try to understand some of the magic, not easy, but I'll try again. There's a French singer in my opinion who has a secret talent for that alchemy too, Alain Souchon : you find in some of his songs like Le Baiser or also Tailler la Zone, something very compelling, with an almost visual aspect. Alain Souchon also lives very close from great vignerons : Puzelat and Villemade. François Barmes in his cellar This very sad and unexpected news came a few weeks ago : François Barmes died after having been hit by a car while riding his bicycle near his home and winery in Wettolsheim in Alsace. I had met him with his wife at a few occasions, one of them being when I visited the Barmes-Buecher winery last year. My thoughts go to his wife Geneviève and his children.
He was a passionate, energetic winemaker, fully involved in the biodynamic management, and not just for lip service, going as far as investing in costly architecture modifications in the cellar so that the wines could benefit from the best energy. His wines are examples of what biodynamics can make on wines, and during my last visit I was particularly impressed by them, including by his two Pino-Noir wines.
Having been myself what I could call a convinced Steinerian since the age of 24, I saw in him an authentic follower of Rudolf Steiner who had gone deep into the understanding of the esoteric side of the world. /Provence in summer As we're soon entering the cold and dark season, here is piece of the magic of Provence in summer, summed up by this nature morte shot during a hot afternoon when everyone is having a nap and waiting for the cooler hours...It's a question of patience, this will be back very soon.

Comments

[Eric Martin]

Hi Bertrand - Here in Ontario, Canada (I believe you were here a few years ago) our bureaucracy is different from yours but very difficult to deal with and to comprehend as well. Scenes of wine being sold in the street and the marketplace would never happen here because the government has a monopoly on the sale of most forms of alcohol in government owned stores.
The good news is that in the last 10 years small( from 500 to 4,000 cases) wineries have opened who are dedicated to growing natural or "live" wines. Most of them have to sell directly from the winery because they can't get space on the store shelves. The government prefers to import 100 shirazes from Australia that all taste the same.
I wonder if bureaucrats have to be trained or were they born bureaucrats?

What a great find to come across the bottles of Alsace Riesling. Past it's time but still a pleasure to re-live it's history. The bottles are a keepsake for sure. Hope more unique finds come your way. Thanks for sharing.