The Dentelles de Montmirail
The Coopérative has extended it's appellation area to Gigondas, Beaumes de Venise (including Muscat Beaumes de Venise) in addition to the
Vacqueyras appellation, which was officially set up by the INAO in 1990. Actually, Vacqueyras is a village which sits at a short distance of the scenic
Dentelles de Montmirail, a rocky ridge looking like the giant dorsal fin of a dinosaur near which I visited a good producer a few years ago,
La Ferme Saint Martin. This picture shows a beautiful Provencal landscape and the region has tons of it to offer to the visitor, but when you arrive with the TGV in Avignon (the station is actually kilometers away from the city center), the Avignon area looks like a giant mess of overbuilding, a suburban sprawl completely out of control. Even though the train station is already a long distance outside of the city, you have to drive through kilometers of an ugly semi-urban area mixing decaying houses from the 70s', brownfields, business warehouses and malls, the whole thing crossed by roads with heavy traffic, before you end up reaching the authentic countryside. Let's hope that the construction frenzy, both private and commercial, will spare these hills. I don't post pictures about this, but you'll see by yourself if you happen to drive one day through- or around Avignon, you'll just point to a random village in the middle of nowhere on your GPS and flee...
The tasting counter
The winery facility and its visitor center has been thoroughly revamped, with some touch of new world winery like a large parking lot, comfortable amenities and a wine-paraphernalia shop. It's not Mission Hill yet but

there's a trend here. For those who are wondering,
Mission Hill is a

large Okanagan winery (in western Canada) with an extravagant architecture making it a mix of Disneyland, cathedral, museum and shopping mall.
This tasting room is very user friendly with a very pro-active staff and __very important __ all the wines are being poured for free at the tasting bar, except one top cuvée which is understandable. People can also taste the bib wines and the bulk cuvées (there are still a few of them). Free tasting is still the norm all over France and it doesn't seem to yield excesses in consumption, like, you know, people dropping just to get free booze and leave. As a consumer, I would have trouble to have to pay for a tasting anyway, considering that most wineries can afford this loss with the volumes they make. It's part of our culture and I'd even say that this simple treat may turn into more purchases from the visitors than if they were compelled into paying something. Visitors here at the coop are not only locals but also out-of-towners and foreigners, at least in summer, I saw a few people from Belgium and Holland in there who seemed to know the place. This region like most of the south and Provence has a large number of foreign residents from northern Europe including the U.K. who either bought a second home there or stay in accommodations during their vacations.
The bulk-wine corner
In a corner aside from the tasting bar and shop aisles, there is the bulk-wine section. It's clean like an hospital and not very glamorous but you

can help yourself at the pump, filling whatever

container you brought with you, preferably 5-liter or 10-liter from what I understood (and not 1,5-liter plastic bottles because you spill more than you fill). There are also empty containers (5-liters and 10 liters) for sale if you need one. The pump works almost like a gas pump : you fill the tank and then after pressing a button you get a bill which you pay before leaving. The machine seems to be a one of its kind, made for the coop by a company named
Le Centre Technique Industriel. This is a machine similar to the one Astrid Terzian designed for self-serve in supermarkets (3rd story on
this post). Not all the pumps were active on this self-serve section, the available bulk wines were :
__ a red Vin de Pays de Vaucluse at 1,7 €/liter
__ a rosé Vin de Pays de Vaucluse at 1,7 €/liter
__ a Côtes du Rhône rosé at 2,8 €/liter
__ a Côtes du Rhône rouge at 2,8 €/liter
__ a Côtes du Rhône Vacqueyras at 5,9 €/liter
Wine-pump unit
I may give too much attention given to bulk wine section here, especially that winery managers prefer to focus on the higher, more qualitative cuvées which are sold in bottles, but I'm not shy of saying that I'm very attached at the option of buying wine in bulk : it's like going to a flee market, you look for the bargain vat with in view your freewheeling summer parties. Every vintage being different and the wineries tending (I hope at least) to make a better job every year compared to 10 years ago, I still consider the bulk-wine market with interest for the summer needs or large family gatherings, particularly for whites and rosés.
The Vignerons de Caractère also has several bibs available :
__ Vin de Pays de Méditerranée "Petit Caprice" in red, rosé or white and costing 13,6 € for 5 liters.
__ Côtes du Rhône "A L'Ombre des Fontaines" in red or rosé at 20,6 € for 5 liters.
__ Vacqueyras, Seigneur de Fontimple red at 30,6 € for 5 liters.
Computerized grape corer
Before walking into the facility with Sylvain Decoster, the first thing we saw was the harvest unloading dock, with several large (closed for now) traps leading to either the conveyor belts for the carbonic
maceration (pic on left) or the crusher and/or presses. On the right
side of this harvest dock, we stopped to have a look on the swivel arm of the computerized grape corer. This machine helps analyze almost instantly the quality of the grape gondolas brought here by the growers. The arm digs into the mass of grapes and

takes data out of sample grapes. This system is coupled with the Qualiris

Vision technology which allows to estimate through a digital-photography overview of the grapes how clean the load is regarding leaves, unripe grapes or other unwanted debris (see this
short article in French). This will help determine very quickly what destination will take this load of grapes, what larger cuvée it will be part of. This sophisticated machine was designed and made by
Sodimel, a company specialized in electronic measurement technology. According to
this document (in French), the system can be parametered with the type of grape variety and with the quality level sought, then it will estimate mathematically the proportion of unripe grapes, the proportion of leaves and other debris (which may be high with a combine harvest) and translate the homogeneity of the harvest (or the lackthereof) through numerical data and figures. Part of the sensitive technology has been taken apart from the swivel arm and will be put back in place before the harvest. This measurement system is manned by two people, one for the digital-picture analysis and the other for the grape corer data collecting. This computerized analysis is just decision support, the human factor still having an important role in the grading of tha harvest quality.
Considering the volumes and truck loads of grapes arriving at the winery during the harvest peak, this system helps the coop check if the quality of the delivered grapes is correct, and adapt the price paid to the grower. We're not speaking of the same terroirs or know-how of course, but these docks and grape corer made me think to this large winery that I visited in southern Russia,
Chateau Tamagne, which was working on an even larger surface, 1600 hectares.
Underground press
We then walk inside the facility, away from the deafening cicadas which are all around the winery and really mean summer for us northerners. It's really hot outside and the cool bulding gives us some breathing respite. The gravity has been well thought all over the winery, even though pumps are still being used to jump a level here and there. Here we're watching the press and conveyor belt along the wall, they all lie underneath an unloading dock which may be used alternatively for a direct press or

for a carbonic maceration (the grapes being brought as intact as possible

in a vat in this case). There's a non-walled control room overlooking this machinery with tools allowing a clear understanding of which grapes/juices go to which vat, which is I guess very important when so many gondolas arrive all day at the peak of the harvest and their grapes or juices need to be redirected to the right fermenter. The coop processes 30 000 or 40 000 hectoliters a year and each truck or gondola brings an average of 3 metric tons on average, so the traffic may be dense at times here. Each truckload gets a quality notation taking into account not only the data collected by the system but also the tasting estimation and visual glimpse of the quality of the harvest. This will not only be crucial to decide where the load will go to (which cuvée, which type of wine), but also which price the grower will get in the end for his grapes. A given load can go from "A" (the best rate) to "B" (20 % price loss) or worse, to "C", in which case the wine will be downgraded as Vin de Table (Vin de France). Let's take grapes from Vacqueyras or Muscat de Beaumes de Venise which is paid routinely 600 € an hectoliter, if the load is downgraded because of the overall poor quality of the harvest, the grower will end up receiving only 50 € per hectoliter, which makes a big difference and is a big incitement to take care of the vineyard management, green harvest and harvest. Compared with the times when growers were all paid by volume without consideration for the quality of the grapes, this can't but translate in better wines than the ones made, say, in the 1970s'. In addition to the electronic measurements on the loads, a technician tastes sample grapes from every incoming truck, says Sylvain.
The floor above the fermenters
We then proceed further and after passing along big Pera Presses (pic on right) we reach the upper floor where you can see the top of the fermenters. This part of the winery facility is where the Domaines-et-Châteaux range of wines are vinified : since 1997 the coop has split its production between the generic wines and the Domaines-et-Châteaux wines which are individual cuvées made from individualized parcels of

the different estates providing the grapes. The winery invested for the

D & C facility in a new concept of hanging fermenters (pic on top) which allow a very easy use by gravity. The investment is portrayed as being part of the sustainable development initiatives of the coopérative. If you are fond of sustainable development and other carbon impact narrative, you'll be happy with the winery politics as it displays the issue high like a virtuous flag of ecological sanctity (read
this document__in French). The facility complies to many charts (ISO 9001, IFS, ISO 14001, ISO 26000) and there's even a fair trade chapter in the document which sounds like a paperwork produced by a Conseil Général or another French administration yearning for justification of their living on the taxpayer's back (my rant, of course). While many of the actual choices dictated by this narrative are sound and common sense, the sustainable development issue is I think a bit fuzzy in its origin and somehow temporal, reflecting the ideological mark of the immediate present : every car maker or big company seems to be sustainable these days, and I wonder why I never read such charts when I visit the artisan vignerons profiled on this website, although their
impact (to use the newspeak of this world view) is probably well rated. In short : too many large companies joining the bandwagon of sustainability and fair tradiness could prove to be counterproductive in the long run.
On this picture you can see the efficient ergonomy of this upper floor as a workplace, the conveyor belt on the right bringing the whole clusters when needed for the carbonic-maceration cuvées. the two resin vats in the far are used to make a sudden
délestage-remontage of the juice over the cap in the fermenters : the juice is pumped into the 2 mobile vat after they've been positionned over the upper opening of the fermenter, and when it's full, the 4 valves (2 per resin vat) are swung wide open to provide a flush remontage flowing powerfully through the cap. These resin vats are very easy to move around when empty and they can do this flush remontage very comfortably on any fementer they select
.The two 30-hectoliter stainless-steel vats on the side (pic on left) are used for their new upper cuvée. These
Della Toffola vats are temperature controlled.
The hanging fermenters
Here is an impressive view on the hanging fermenters. There are 43 of them, with a volume of 200 and 250 hectoliters. They are held by these cement pillars and you can walk freely beneath them or move heavy machinery. As these vats are self-emptying models, the must can be moved away without having

staff go inside and fork out the thing, which is known to be a hard work

and also a dangerous one because of the CO2. These hanging vats were made by
Pera, and the odd thing, Sylvain says, is that they began to set up the vats first, and the walls and construction around was built afterthen. The concept was designed by Pera following their requirements for easy-to-handle self-emptying fermenters.
When the juice has been racked to another vat or to the barrels in the cellar and it's time to empty the remaining must and hard sediments, a forklift receptor is positionned under the opening and the large blades in the conic bottom of the vat begin to turn and push the must out into the mobile receiving container. Of course, the carbonic-maceration grapes don't follow the same procedure and they are pumped to one of the presses nearby. Sylvain says that everything is recycled here, like the must is going to the distillery with the stems, and at the distillery they put apart the grape seed to make oil and use the last-end must for compost. He adds that for the cleaning of these vats they work with a service company that will recover the tartar on the vat walls and recycle the tartaric acid, shipping it to an enology-products company which will sell it as winemaking additive. I asked later Pascal Duconget (he is the
directeur général of the coop) if they re-acidified their wines but he said no.
The tangential filter (crossflow filtering)
They invested in this new tangential filter for crossflow filtering which is a very secure filtering method. This tool is made again by
Della Toffola in Italy. The earth filtering bring side issues like what to do with the residues or how to prevent health problems for the workers (when dry, these thin powders can be inhaled inadvertedly). Also, they had some tastings of the same wines going through different type of filtering techniques, and this particular seemed to preserve tyhe best the wine, in addition to offering a filtering mode without residues and inhalation risks. Also, they use less water with this type of filter.
The older part of the facility
Before leaving the winery facility, we moved through the older part of the winery, the original building which was built in 1956. That looks more like what we know as a coop. Still lots of investment has been made there too, with temperature-control systems in the vats and a recoating of the inside of the cement vats with epoxy resin so as to ease the cleaning. This move helped them also reduce the volume of water needed to clean the inside of the vats from the sedimented tartar each year. These vats are used for the more simple wines, the generic appellations. Cement has its advantages, Sylvain Decoster adds, like thermal inertia.
Olivier Bres
We visited a few parcels not far from the Dentelles de Montmirail, accompanied by Olivier Bres who is one of the growers working organicly. The vineyard here is not his vineyard, but it's part of the ones farmed for the coop. This area is located in the Gigondas appellation, on which the coop also produces wine. From the 1000 hectares used by the coop, 85 % are in
agriculture raisonnée (integrated farming) and organic farming. Organic farming (including the surface in conversion) makes 8 % of the whole.
Agriculture raisonnée is a concept difficult to translate in English, in short, it's as conventional as the chemical farming but they "do their most to use as small doses as they can".
The coop hired a vineyard technician (a young woman) whose job is to check the maturity and health condition of the grapes, she goes to every parcel making the 1000 hectares and also checks the number of clusters per vine for example. They try now to check the grapes not only when they arrive at the winery but well before so that they can give advice to the grower in time. Also, during the three weeks prior to the harvest, the grower bring grapes samples from their parcels to the enologist for tasting and analysis so that he can determine if it's fine enough to begin picking or machine-harvesting. The grower wouldn't benefit from bringing intentionally samples which are riper than the average of his parcel because the trick would be discovered when the harvest load reaches the unloading docks. In short, the grower can only begin to harvest when he got the green light from the coop enologist, and then he has to proceed quickly. In the past, the grower would more or less decide of the harvest schedule, which could yield a harvest of low quality. This precise harvest decision control was put in place around 2007.
/>The vineyards in the heat of summer
We climbed a bit among the vineyards under the scorching sun with the (deafening) sound of the cicadas. From the upper slope we could see the village of Vacqueyras in the far (we can guess the first buildings in the upper far left). With the heavy heat we were not at ease to ask questions about the vineyards around, I think it was mostly Grenache there, they seemed to stand the heat even though some leaves seemed to show some stress it seemed to me, but that was normal after all. Beyond, in the far (we can't see anything at this distance of course) you'll find the Rhone river flowing perpendicularly, the Chateauneuf-du-Pape region along it, and further south (left - out of the frame), the __gasp__ mega-suburban mess of Avignon...
Speaking of the growers deciding to turn organic, there's an incitement in terms of a higher price paid for the grapes : 7 % more during the conversion years (3 years), and 20 % more (compared to the non-organic) when they reach the fully-organic stage. Farming organic meaning more workforce and possibly smaller yields, it's not sure from my point of view that the price difference is sufficiently attractive to compel the growers to change their farming practice.
Pascal Duconget & Bernard Manganelli
After this facility visit and before the vineyard walk, we had lunch with Pascal Duconget, the general director, and Bernard Manganelli, the president of the coop. We were 6 guests with them and the lunch took place in the restaurant sitting underneath the visitor center,
L'Eloge. It was the occasion to taste several of the wines. Both Mr Duconget and Mr Manganelli had things to say, and the only thing I regret was that Stéphane Cardona, the chai master, the guy who really overlooks and manages the winemaking, was not available at that time. Mr Manganelli had this joyous communicative style of the vigneron-turned-coopérateur, and he was in a very cheering mood.
__ Vacqueyras Blanc (white) Seigneur de Fontimple 2011. Made fromthe equivalent of 10 hectares, a volume of 300 hectoliters. This cuvée is sourced from:the parcels of several growers. 7 white varieties here with a majority of Viognier and Bouboulenc. Cold pressing, very early in the morning, then a débourbage with a rotative filter separating the thick parts. The picking was made in 2 times, the Bourboulenc having a late maturity. 10 % of the wine spends time in wood. The wine sports 13 ° of alcohol on the label, it has aromas of dry fruits and ripe fruits. Costs 13 €.
__ Vacqueyras Blanc (white)
Eternité 2011. From the "Grands Vins de Création" range, an upper cuvée priced at 25 €. This wine is vinified and raised in wood. Made from Grenache Blanc, Roussanne, Marsanne, Bourboulenc & Viognier. This cuvée makes a volume of 3000 bottles. The coop makes

right now 4 cuvées in the upper range category (Grands Vins de Création). Very oaky wine, at least for the first mouth, the second minutes later

being more moderate. Rather fresh wine, with ripe aromas. I asked Pascal Duconget (the director of the coop) if they used to re-acidify their wines, and he toold me that they don't do that. They instead choose carefully the harvest date because it's particularly important for the whites, he says. We ask about the chief enologist and chai master Stéphane Cardona, he works there since 2006, when the previous enologist retired. He worked in Bergerac and also in New Zealand among other places and he has a good experience with the whites.
__
Petit Caprice Rosé [2011 I guess], Vin de Pays de la Méditerranée. I didn't take any notes about this wine but I liked it. Made from Grenache, Cinsault, Syrah and bottled in colorless glass. I'll need to try it again (subliminal message to get some more). Price : 5,8 €. The reason I didn't take notes was that we spoke of the one-man, one-vote, which was the rule in the early coops but has evolved in a pragmatic way to be more efficient and quality driven. There's a weighting of the vote system, especially that as said above, 20 % of the growers make more than 50 % of the surface load here. One thing interesting we're told too is that in Vacqueyras, there a monoculture tradition with grapes, the farmers have always been growing grapes only, no other crops on the side. Also, this coop began to bottle its wine very early, in 1958, which at the time was not so common.
__ Seigneur de Fontimple Rouge (red) 2010. Quite powerful wine. Ample mouth, a bit burning though. Made from Grenache, Syrah, Mourvèdre on a terroir thick with cobble stones (
galets roulés). Costs 13 €. We're speaking of carbonic maceration (I think this wine went through one) and our hosts say that the coop was the first to introduce carbonic maceration in the Rhone region in the 1970s'. The conversation switches to the Carignan, and we learn that until 1990 the INAO used dubious ways to force growers to uproot this variety under the pretext that its yields were too high. The vignerons has a 10-year ultimatum and for every hectare of Carignan that a given grower didn't uproot, he saw 3 of his other hectares downgraded in terms of appellation status. With this bullying method, they had many growers getting rid of beautiful vines. Since then some growers succeeded to convince the INAO to backtrack on this issue, because with the right pruning, Carignan gives very beautiful results in the wine.
__ Vacqueyras L'Absolu d'Eternité 2010, a red. This is a new cuvée, not yet on the market. The bottle by the way bears the number 0004. This will be the top wine among the
Grands Vins de Création range. Beautiful nose of cooked fruits and candied fruits. The glass shows nice legs on its inside. The tannins are refined and elegant, without asperities. There are notes of liquorice, that's a nice wine. The whole thing is well blended. 14,5 ° in alcohol. The wine will be sold in individual bottles packaged in a canister. Price : 49,5 €.
Speaking of bottles, the coop managed to reduce the weight of the bottles by 20 % whilst still keeping the nice feeling of a solid bottle when you hold an empty one. Working on the issue with the bottle maker
Verallia, they brought down the weight from 620 grams to 390 grams, making a 130-gram reduction. Another halo for their save-the-planet sanctity...
The winery sells 20 % of its wine direct, through the Internet or in the visitor center. It exports in around 30 countries internationally. The export rate is about 50 %, in northern Europe, the U.S.A., Canada, Singapore, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Taiwan, Dubai and Brasil (the latter being their new export destination).
Vignerons de Caractère
BP1 - Route de Vaison la Romaine
84190 Vacqueyras
phone + 33 4 90 65 84 54
fax + 33 4 90 65 81 32
History of the Coopérative (Pdf)
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