Encounters in Villié-Morgon (Beaujolais)

At Jean Foillard's Villié-Morgon (Beaujolais)
About Foillard, the bar with the best wine-by-the-glass list, and the barman who helped start all this thing 27 years ago...

Very fruitful visit recently in Beaujolais, beginning of course with the one at Jean Foillard who poured for us several of his current cuvées. But the village of Villié Morgon in Beaujolais which is the hometown of both Jean Foillard and Marcel Lapierre had more in store for us that day.
First, a few words about the wines we had here : This Morgon Côte de Py 2010 was a good introduction, a light color, a wine with a long length and very nice overall. 13 ° in alcohol against 14 ° for 2011.
The following was his Fleurie 2009, a wine sporting more tannins with a deeper color, then the Corselettes 2010, so enjoyable to swallow. But the king of the day was his Morgon cuvée π (3,14) 2009, a selection of the oldest vines of his Côte de Py, which he makes only on years where there's a difference in the wine. Bottled since august 2010. Intense mouthfeel, superb wine, which seems to resonate on the palate. Also a very long length.

Julie and Mathieu, discussing across the bar That evening we went to L'Atelier du Cuisinier for a glass, and we were well inspired (there's not much other choice in Villié-Morgon if I'm right). L'Atelier du Cuisinier is an amazing place, it is probably the wine bar in the world that offers the biggest selection of natural wines by the glass, I couldn't believe my eyes when I looked at the wine list, which is so big that it runs all along the counter above the head. I stopped counting but there are more than 40 wines that you can get by the glass (and also by the bottle of course), and I'm confident that there are enough vignerons dropping by and paying rounds to each other so that they have a safe rotation for the opened bottles.
But the first thing that jumped at our eyes when we walked in was that there were a couple of people we knew in there. There was first this young woman with a Peruvian hat at the counter, Julie Balagny; she was there with two friends waiting to go to the evening session of the movie theater nearby. Julie Balagny is a mounting star of Fleurie in the Beaujolais, crafting outstanding wines from her sloppy vineyard encircled with woods. The big frost hadn't arrived in Europe yet but it was still cold and this warm bar was welcome, and we had a couple of glasses. The guy at the other end of the counter was Mathieu Lapierre, and it was a bit surreal to just drop unplanned in this bar and see the two of them and a few others nearby chatting about wine issues. I took some news from Julie, things were going fine, she had more trouble with this vintage tractor that she had bought (she joked that since we dropped last year she probably had to fix it 20 times). She hadn't seen lots of vipers in the second half of 2011, maybe the short-toed snake eagles had done a good job in eliminating these snakes from the area.
If you want to feel the pulse of the vanguard of the Beaujolais wines, the ones that made the world think differently about Beaujolais and ultimately about wine, there is probably no other place better than this bar... Mathieu Lapierre L'Atelier du Cuisinier is managed by Christian Gerber who also runs a place named Les Platanes de Chénas, which seems to be more upscale. In case you spend a lot of time in this Atelier du Vin and would like to take root there, there's also a hotel in the back, so that you don't have to drive under the influence, which considering the wine list could well happen. But again, maybe it's not a good idea, you might spend all your time between the bar and the hotel..

Speaking of this wine list, here are a few picks, i took note of the glass price and the bottle price at the bar. Note that the glass price is almost the percentage price of a bottle in the retail, amazingly cheap...
Morgon Breton 2009 : 2,5 € (bottle : 26 €), that was our first glass here, the same wine chosen by Julie -- Morgon Clos de Lys Chamonard 2009, 2,8 € (bottle 25 €), this was our second wine. -- Morgon Descombes "Vermont" 2009 2,8 € (26 €) -- Morgon Desvignes Côte du Py 2010, 2,8 € (26 €) -- Morgon Jean-Paul Thevenet 2010, 2,9 € (28 €) -- Morgon Depardon les Charmes 2009, 2,5 € (23 €) -- Morgon ExF Bulliat V.V. 2009, 2,4 € (22 €) -- Morgon L. Thevenet "Petit Perou" 2010, 2,4 € (22 €) -- Morgon Calot cuvée Jeanne 2010, 2,3 € (21 €) -- Morgon Bodillard "Marie Louise" 2009, 2,6 € (24 €) -- Morgon L & N Bulliat vieilles vignes 2008, 2,6 € (24 €) -- Morgon J. Grolet Bellevue 2010, 2,2 € (20 €) --Morgon Sornay 2007, 2,5 € (23 €) -- Morgon Burgaud 2010, 3,8 € (36 €) --Beaujolais rosé Cuvée Caroline, 1,3 € (19 €) -- Beaujolais Villages Damien Cocquelet, 1,6 € (19 €) -- Morgon Foillard Côte du Py 2009, 3 € (28 €), Morgon Savoye Côte du Py Vieilles Vignes 2006, 2,6 € (24 €) -- Moulin à Vent Guérin Domaine d'Eole 2009, 2,5 € (22 €) -- Same in v.v. 2010 : 2,5 € (23 €) -- Domaine du Tremblay 2008, 2,6 € (24 €) -- Moulin à Vent Chanudet v.v. 2010, 2,5 e (25 €) -- Moulin à Vent Rochegrès Noir 2008, 2,5 € (23 €) -- Chiroubles D. Cocquelet 2009, 4 € (24 €) -- Chiroubles N. Demont 2009/2010 2,5 € (23 €) --, Côte de Brouilly Chr. Pacalet, 3 € (27 €) -- Brouilly Descombes 2009, 2,7 € (26 €) -- Brouilly v.v. Lapalu 2010, 2,7 € (25 €) --Brouilly Coudert 2010, 2,1 € (21 €) -- Brouilly Dutraive 2009, 2,9 € (27 €) -- Regnié Descombes 2009, 2,8 € (28 €) -- Regnié Bodillard 2009, 2,3 € (21 €) -- Regnié Breton G. 2009, 2,5 € (24 €) --Saint Amour Trichard 2009, 2,6 e (25 €) -- Juliénas Trichard 2009, 2,4 € (22 €) -- Macon Villages White Corsin 2009, 2,3 € (21 e) -- Saint Véran Corsin 2010, 2,6 € (24 €) --Macon Chaintré Larochette 2009, 2,6 € (24 €) -- Macon Chaintré Valette 2010, 3,3 € (33 €) -- Viré Clessé Domaine Michel, tradition 2009, 4 € (37 €) --
There are more than I didn't take note of, among the Fleurie, the Chénas and other terroirs...
There were a few Champagne by the bottle, priced 48 € to 71 € (Dumont, Lassaigne and a couple cuvées of Gosset) and a Crémant Loron at 3,5 € (27 €). They might have also wines from other regions but at that point, I didn't even think to ask... Bernard Pontonnier But our good star had one more surprise for us : As we were quietly tasting a few wines at the dining table of Jean Foillard with the kitchen in the background, there came three guys, among whom Bernard Pontonnier, whom I had never met and who can really be credited to have sold the very first natural wines in his Paris bar, setting off a movement which by the only power of word of mouth (also understood in the sense of mouthfeel of course) would soon bring fundamental changes in the way we understand wine today. As you may know, a few people in Villié Morgon started to make wine without sulfur or any other corrective additives in the early 1980s', the core members of the group being Jules Chauvet, Marcel Lapierre and Jacques Néauport. These handful of rebels challenged the destructive utopia of standardized wine by using wild yeasts, avoiding SO2 during the vinification and doing carbonic maceration (did I sum it up right ?), and in front of what was obviously outstanding wines, they were soon be followed by other vignerons among whom Jean Foillard. But beyond putting into question the singing tomorrows of the conventional winemaking, these wines needed to have some kind of market to survive, even if the whole volume was very modest at the beginning. The fact is, they were out of the wine-orthodoxy mold (at least the one of the agro-chemical revolution) and didn't have a distribution system of their own, they didn't have a media or glossy magazines to publicize their ways, so what to do ? That's where key individuals played a central role, and if we can choose one, it must be Bernard Pontonnier. Pontonnier & Foillard Bernard Pontonnier took part to the very beginning of this wine craze, and oddly, that was shortly after he closed the Café de la Nouvelle Mairie in 1986, even though he had met Marcel Lapierre there for the first time in 1982 or 1983. Yes, the world is small, Bernard Pontonnier managed this bistrot with a soul in the vicinity of the Panthéon from 1979 to 1986, until it was closed among lots of laments. See this page and scroll down to see on a B & W picture Bernard Pontonnier standing among his patrons and friends on the final day before the closing of la Nouvelle Mairie. Shortly after that episode, in 1990, Bernard Pontonnier opened La Courtille with François Morel on the hill of Belleville in the 20th arrondissement, overlooking the Parc de Belleville. This was maybe 10 meters from les Envierges (at 11 rue des Envierges), which was managed by François Morel and Jean-Pierre Robinot (If I understand it correctly). Bernard was friend with François Morel since 1984/85 and had met the new generation of winemakers there. He remembers micro wine-events there in 1987 or 1988 with the few vignerons who were on the track of this no-additives, non-intervention winemaking, people like Marcel Lapierre François Dutheil de la Rochère, Ptit Jean (Jean Foillard), Paul-Po (Jean-Paul Thevenet), Gramenon, Yvon Métras, that's about all the people who were making natural wines at the time. In those pioneer years, Bernard Pontonnier brought these wines to a growingly-thirsty public in Paris, connecting people in the way, like Jean-Pierre Robinot who thanks to him met Marcel Lapierre (piece written by JP Robinot, in French). Another wine venue opened in those years (in 1987) in the same neighborhood : Le Baratin. This now-iconic wine bar/restaurant is still there today, managed like at its start by Raquel (the cook - see this piece about her in French) and Philippe Pinoteau.
Patricia Wells wrote wisely in 1995 about La Courtille "But one of the main reasons to come all this way is for the wine, well selected and well priced. Favorites include Marcel Richaud's 1992 Cairanne ($29.60), perhaps the finest, most concentrated red Cotes-du-Rhone from that Provencal village; and Domaine Gramenon's 1992 fruity white Viognier ($38). Many wines are available by the glass" (source) Bernard Pontonnier pouring Speaking of P'tit Jean (Jean Foillard), Bernard Pontonnier sold his first wines in Paris in 1988, but it was not at La Nouvelle Mairie, it was at Les Domaines, a bar that he had took over after the closing of la Nouvelle Mairie. Les Domaines was located near the Arc de Triomphe and the Champs Elysées at 56 rue Francis de Pressensié in the 8th arrondissement, not the typical place where you can think of for natural wines today, but it may have been then the first or the second such bar (after les Envierges) in Paris to serve natural wines. The bar was very Bordeaux-centered when he arrived there, especially that Philippe De Rotschild was among the decision makers there, but as soon as Philippe Pontonnier took the its management, he tried to convince the owners that there were other regions than Bordeaux, adding these still-unknown vignerons in the process.
At La Courtille in the depth of the no-fuss 20th arrondissement, he was more at ease to deal with these vignerons, and from 1990 to, say, 1997, he along with François Morel and Jean-Pierre Robinot quietly supplied a small but growing crowd of thirsty wine lovers for whom these wines were an awakening. They even sold primeurs wines from Jules Chauvet in these years, somthing which seems incredible today. Asked again who where the "founding fathers", the first winemakers of this vein, Bernard Pontonnier says that it was undoubtly the 5 guys of Villé-Morgon : Lapierre, Foillard, Jean-Paul Thevenet (Paul-Po), Guy Breton (P'tit Max) and Jean-Claude Chanudet (le Chat). Then came the second wave with Foillard, Dutheil, Gramenon, Puzelat, Frick, Descombes, Dard et Ribo..
To rewind back further in the past, Bernard Pontonnier worked some time in Le Rostang, a café overlooking the Parc du Luxembourg in Paris and owned then by the parents of Nicolas Carmarans. This was before Pontonnier managed the Café de la Nouvelle Mairie (1979) and Nicolas Carmarans was a teenager then. Bernard is very grateful to the father of Nicolas who helped him through a loan to open the Café de la Nouvelle Mairie in 1979. Without this loan he wouldn't have been able to start his first bar. That's from this time that Nicolas Carmarans began to dream of managing the Nouvelle Mairie himself, but he was too young to do it in 1986 when it closed down. It took almost 10 more years before Nicolas Carmarans could follow suit on this iconic venue...

Bernard Pontonnier keeps the link alive with real wines even though he isn't working in the bar sector anymore, and he vinifies himself special cuvées with friends vignerons. Otherwise, he works now on interior architecture and remodels homes. He is the one who designed and renovated the Chambres d'Hôtes (bed & breakfast) of Agnès & Jean Foillard, which are located right along the winery and home of the Foillards.

Read Jean-Pierre Robinot's essay (in French) on natural wine and about these very first years, he was himself among the first bar managers to serve natural wine in his wine bar in Paris (L'Ange Vin). This lasted close to 15 years, before he went to Jasnières to make wine himself (Jean-Pierre Robinot's winery profile).
Read Patricia Wells' review of la Courtille in the early 1990s'.

Comments

[PieperRon]

De beste wijnboeren uit een van de meest smakelijke streken van Frankrijk!

[Brian M]

Awesome story! Thank You!

[Binnotes]

Very helpful - looking forward to visiting the area next week. Santé!