Domaine Breton visit (Bourgueuil, Loire)

Pierre opening an Avis de Vin Fort Domaine Catherine & Pierre Breton, Bourgeuil (Loire)
Short january visit along the Loire at Domaine Breton, in Cabernet Franc country... Winter visits at vignerons help have an opinion about the current vintage whereabouts, even if tasting a wine not yet finished has its down sides. Winter is also more relaxed for growers, the pruning is the only task, a semi-urgent one as it is usually spread between january and march. Knowing the vigneron helps as he will not always receive the anonymous visitor, and Pierre Breton was kind enough to receive us for a couple of hours (I was accompanied by someone in the trade) for an instructive indoor and outdoor experience. What I like with wineries like this one beyond the wines themselves, it's that the owner lives right in the same building as the facility itself, he's not just a manager with a team of subordinates and enologists to take care of all he dirty work.
Pierre Breton was a bit tired, we learned that the previous day he had spent the evening with 4 friends in a local restaurant (excellent food and wine list, see below) and that the party had downed 15 bottles. My source may have exaggerated the number of bottles involved, but having a vague idea of the type of wines they chose, I think that might be plausible and without horrendous health consequences.

Discussing the vintage We had of course a few wines, sitting at the long wooden table in a cellar beneath the vatroom, with casks lined along the wall.
__ Breton Avis de Vin Fort 2011. From a cask. A thirst wine first, with a very clear color. Carbonic maceration, fermented in casks. Good to drink wine, he says. Very fresh wine, with fruit, light tannins. Easy drink indeed. Among the cheapest cuvées at Breton, sells well, he says. Bottled soon.
__ Breton Trinch 2011. From a cask. Bottled soon, in february. Pierre Breton says that it's important to leave the wine too long in casks, just the winter, no more.
__ Pierre Breton Vouvray 2011 (Chenin). 3 or 4 grams of sugar remaining, just finishing the fermentation. Great vintage for the whites in 2011. Very bad weather in july, otherwise quite good. Harvested 15/18 of september when usually it's october 10th. End of blossoming was 1st week of may, which was considerably sooner than usual (around june 24). The cool and rainy july delayed a little bit the supposed-to-be-earlier harvest. The fermentation was easy in 2011. They use refrigerated containers to cool down the grapes and ease the cold maceration. The fermentation lasted 3 or 4 days, same thing many people witnessed around. Autumn and mid-september was quite wet and humid, a bit tropical one could say, which helped yeasts develop rapidly. Nice white. Avis de Vin Fort 2010 __ Breton Avis de Vin Fort 2010, just to compare with 2011. That's nice, the thirst wine grew up, here. He says that the wine sells well because it's affordable, if not as complex as the upper cuvées. The 2011 has more freshness and more on the fruit but this one goes down well too, no question, with more maturity. Pierre Breton says that's it's a wine thought to be had in the range of three years ideally, not more. Storage has to be good, not necessary airconditioned but in a relatively cool environment, because they have not lots of tannin and structure.
__ Breton, les Galichets 2010. From a bottle. This Cabernet Franc wine will show its best during the 3 newt years. Already quite nice, including on the nose. Tasty wine. Gravel soil, here. Pierre Breton says that he uses quality corks from northern Spain (Catalonia), some as long as 49 mm for the best cuvées. He uses also synthetic corks for the cuvées intended to be drank young. The grass road along Clos Sénéchal
__ Breton Bourgueuil Clos Sénéchal 2009 (bottle). The 2010 is to be bottled sometime in the following weeks (around march maybe), when the right conditions are gathered. Beautiful wine, very refined and onctuous, the vineyard must be on some good terroir. He says this goes well with eating meat. Best is to decant it, he adds. Soil is 30 centimeters of clay more or less, named argile éolienne in French, or clays sedimented by the wind in a geological era. Beneath this clay lies the tuffeau stone, a chalk-like type of limestone, that's where the roots dig in. Pierre Breton says that they've a few months to prune the vines on the whole of the vineyards. Vines are aged between 30 and 40 years there. It's a family vineyard since the French revolution time. This particular climat makes 10 hectares in all, and he owns 1,5 hectare of it.
They're two people to do the job. His son may also help from time to time, during his holydays time. In winter, they also have the topping-up thing to do, which they do when it's too cold outside : he says that just for topping up the casks, which is replacing the wine that sort of evaporates through the casks, he uses the equivalent of 3000 bottles a year, that's a a lot of wine... That's one of the reasons why people don't always like to age wine in casks.
We actually drove with Pierre Breton to this Clos Sénéchal vineyard. He took us in his vintage Renault 4L (I heard it's actually Catherine Breton's car). The vineyard is on a gentle slope, it's easy to recognize its location thanks to this small ruin on the side. A magic walk in Domaine Breton's cellar After the walk in Clos Sénéchal, Pierre Breton drove us to his cask cellar, where I had never been before. If there's a couple of cask cellars beneath the winery, most of the casks are stored in a large cellar in the middle of the vineyard. Don't ask me where it is exactly, I didn't pay attention to the exact way we took to get there, but it is in a very quiet place, the doors of this group of cellars being in a wooden patch where the chalk undersoil emerges. These were individual quarries at the beginning and they were later converted in wine cellars. Really a wonderful place, even if by experience I know that there are many such cellars all over France used for wine storage. There are several interconnected cellar rooms with quite a number of casks where Pierre Breton keeps his wine for a long élevage. The doors to the cellars stand in the shade, along these cliff-like limestone walls where you can see the tree roots dig in and melt into the table rock, the place is magic both in the inside and the outside. Good way to visualize the vineroots looking for nutrients too. If vibes play a role in the making of wine, this place can't be neutral, you feel like if you entered a church or a sunken ship, it's amazing, especially that the cellar is not open (or embellished) for visitors. The casks are not new ones, but the ambient humidity makes them look even older, which adds a touch of sealed cellar forgotten by its owners. One of the cask rooms __ Breton Nuits D'Ivresse 2009. Tasted under the winery, the large cask cellar was just for a quick look. From a bottle. He says that he put these bottles at a tasting temperature long before we came, which makes a difference. This wine is a blend from several terroirs, he says that it's more interesting for this wine, also he wanted a good volume as this cuvée makes 15 000 bottles. And this wine is sulfur free (and unfiltered). The other wines that we tasted here went through their vinification and élevage without a single adding of SO2, but they had a small adding of it before bottling. This Nuits d'Ivresse didn't get any at bottling. Speaking of the other wines, they may have between 5 and 10 milligrams of free SO2 when bottled, which is nothing. Sometimes the lab analusis doesn't even detect any. The law allows 120 mg total SO2 and the people who work corectly have 60 mg total SO2 in their wines, just to give you an idea of the different sulfur dosage found in wineries. Pierre Breton says that he is not doing this in the mindset of a sulfur-free purist thinking, but this way the aromas are way better and the wine remains alive. You just have to be careful for the transportation and storage, the wine can go through temperature changes but better not high temperatures during a long time.
__ Breton Bourgueuil Les Perrières 2008. Chalk undersoil. Stayed 30 months in barrels. Just beginning to reach the market. Very good indeed, full bodied and elegant. 49 mm cork for very long laying down. The top cuvée at Breton, comes with a price but this Cabernet Franc is a long-term investment which can go through a long laying down. But we all know that we never keep the bottles that long, except for those who can afford buying a case. That's not a cellar, but a temple...
__ Breton Chinon Beaumont 2010. Cabernet Franc from a different terroir compared to Bourgueuil. These are rented vineyards near Chinon, organic farming (not biodynamic). From what I understood, Pierre had a prior rented vineyard in the area but the people weren't happy that the vineyard was organicly grown (too unkept-looking maybe ?), so he let it down and two years later he found a young guy in 2006 who was happy to farm this way and to be paid twice the price for organic grapes compared to what the local coop paid. 4 hectares on Beaumont.
__ Breton Chinon Saint Louans 2008. Very old vines, 70 years old, near an abbey. Nearly 30 months in casks too. Two summers in barrel is important, he says, for this type of wine. He says that if he left the wine in vats, it wouldn't yield the same evolution and satisfaction for the consumer. One hectare of Cab Franc there. 35 ho/ha here while on Beaumont 45 ho/ha, that's why there's more density on this Louans Chinon. Tjhe terroir is very good here, clay and Limestone. It's on the plateau near the abbey of Louans up the hill from the Vienne river. Café de la Promenade : the best in Bourgueuil That's where we ate after this visit, on the tip of Pierre Breton : le Café de la Promenade. Pierre Breton is a regular of the place, like quite a number of vignerons I guess, but for a reason : this is the best valued natural-wine restaurant I've seen in the countryside so far. I knew that the French provinces begin to get their lot of smartly-managed restaurants with artisan wines all over their wine lists, but this was still such a good surprise... Ludovic Ragot The place is managed by Sophie and Ludovic Ragot, the outside of the building looks like a former school or train station, and they even have a few rooms in the back (see this page), which are at the same time very casual and clean. The courtyard/garden on which the rooms overlook is just relaxed enough so that you feel you're staying in a private home, whith a couple of sofas and armchairs in a corner which seems to be in the shade in summer. There's even a small swimming pool. Terrific place.
Even unannounced, Eric Ragot offered us a glass of Chenin Blanc before our quick lunch. Excellent fresh food, we loved the charcuterie plate, and their prices are good value.
The linked page says something quite unsusual : Les bouteilles de vin sont en libre service à la cave merci de nous les présenter au comptoir pour que l’on vous les débouche, which means something like "You can help yourself with the bottles in the cellar, just bring them at the counter so that we can open them for you" (cork fee of 8 €). Amazing place. A cellar wall One of the first thing the owner told us was indeed that we could just walk in the surface cellar which we could guess behind a glass door, and from what I understood then, we could just grab a bottle there for our lunch, or take it home. The room had three walls with bottles that were all tempting for a well-informed amateur. Of course the cork fee of 8 € applied when drinking the bottle in the restaurant. I didn't take any notes but you had in there all the artisan wines you could dream of, all regions included, and at reasonable prices. I understand why Pierre Breton and his friends could have downed 15 bottles in a single dinner. You also have a wide range of wines by the glass, between 8 and 10 (pic on right), some on the counter plus others in the fridge, at prices starting at 2,9 €. Another rare thing in a country restaurant. I know people who would spend their entire holidays between their room, the bar and the cellar. Maybe it's not a good idea to have a room in the back : too damn tempting.
The restaurant is located in the vicinity if the Super U supermarket, just on the outskirts of Bourgueuil. This place is the living proof that things have been gearing up fast recently, in the world of wine : first we have noticed that somewhere in the last couple of years, new restaurants and bars serving natural wines were opening all over Paris on an almost routine pace (every other restaurant, I heard someone say). But now it's the French provinces which are becoming the new frontier in terms of serving artisan wines (and food) to demanding customers. It's not really more expensive and the customers seem to respond to the offer. This is really amazing.
Café de la Promenade map.
Google Street View of La Promenade (great view indeed ! Kudos to google !)
phone 02 47 95 10 87

Comments

[Mack Owen]

Great article! He say's he uses 3000 bottles for topping a year. How many barrels does he have?

[Bert]

I don't know, but there's a lot of wine vanishing in a cask, it may not need to be a huge number of casks to need this volume.

[Mack Owen]

I ask because I myself work at a winery w/o a cave, as the assistant and am interested in this subject of how much wine you lose through evaporation(humidity as the variable)

This vintage we have recently installed a humidity system ("Smart Fog",@$5000 )and it keeps our humidity about 75-80%. We produce 3000 cases/year annually and I'd say we lose 200-300gallons or 3 to 4 barrels(25 case/barrel)through evaporation. I'd be interested to know his humidity and case production.

[Bert]

Mack,

I understand. I'll ask him how many casks more or less he has to top up. I know that these relatively-humid and cold cellars allow to spare in the topping-up volumes along the year, but I don't know really how much. I keep you informed.

[Hoffy]

Hi, absolutely love your site. however I often wonder at some of your numbers. For instance, when you mention that a wine contains 2-4 g of SO2 I presume this is 2-4 g per liter?

Just curious..

[Bert]

No, this is always per hectoliter. Winemakers calculate their dosage for a vat.