The Cartoonist and the Wine

Willem and Medi Holtrop La Ficelle in Paris
This was in Paris in the last week of november : Christine Ontivero and her wine communication agency had organized a special evening and dinner at Le Café du Commerce around what is known under the name of La Ficelle, the 26th edition of some sort of Nouveau-day centered on the wines of Saint Pourçain, a little-known AOC and wine region part of the Loire and Auvergne. The event was about the Union des Vignerons de Saint Pourçain, aka the local coop, which vinifies 400 hectares of vineyards on a total planted surface of 600 hectares in the appellation area. The appellation whites are Chardonnay blended with Tressallier and the reds are Gamay and Pinot Noir. The Saint-Pourçain coop decided in 1983 as a wise marketing tool to hire every year a different cartoonist to design the Nouveau label and since then, every Nouveau has got a new cartoonist draw the cartoon du jour, adding a fun note in an already-festive event around what is a typical bistro wine. Let's remind that the Auvergnats who have been for ages behind the bistro and café business in Paris used to import primarily the wines of their own regions for the counter wine. In the past, wine was often had à la ficelle meaning that you'd pay what you'd drink : the waiter would leave a full bottle of wine on your table and you'd pay depending of the level measured with the knots on a string attached to the bottle, in short, wholesale price for wine or pay-what-you-drink.

The bottle adorned with Willem's cartoon Willem was the artist chosen for 2012, this Dutch-born cartoonist is vey well known in France, he worked for years for Hara Kiri and Charlie Hebdo, two satirical magazines that were at the same time hilarious and borderline offensive, and for sure they were not really for children because of the often-graphic content of their cartoons. Charlie Hebdo which still exists today has proved recently that unlike the once-bold and now-submissive self-righteous PC crowd, it was able to stay on the edge and take some risks by making fun of a certain totalitarian ideology masquerading as a religion. In short, they remained authentic rebels, true to their roots, while much of their initial cohort has since alas opted to look at the present through a rear-view mirror and turn a blind eye to unsettling threats not listed in their Party book.
Knowing Willem's cartoons from what he drew in the past, you might worry about the double-edged effect of having a somehow provocative scene on your dinner table with children watching, but the Union des Vignerons de Saint Pourçain (the coop behind this Primeur event) had ordered a few of them so that they could vote and choose the most consensual one for the bottle serigraphy. That's something I suggested to Willem, to make a counter event between adults with the left-over labels which I don't doubt are probably a bit more spicy than the one on this bottle...

The Saint Pourcain La Ficelle 2012 (the red) is a blend of 75 % Gamay & 25 % Pinot Noir, made from a traditional maceration for 6 to 9 days and pigeage and pumping over every day. The élevage lasted 30 days in stainless-steel vats. the wine is fruity and light, an easy counter wine. On this linked press relase we learn that the public price (tax included) at the coop for a bottle is 4,55 € and same for the white.
The document lists also the cavistes and bars in Paris where you can find these wines, and among the bars there's of course Le Petit Vendôme near the Boulevard de la Madeleine, an eager advocate of the Saint-Pourçain wines. Blanc Primeur 2012 The first glass we were offered was the Saint Pourçain Blanc Primeur 2012, which is the Nouveau white of the small appellation. It was of course the coop's wine, and the bottle also had an interesting serigraphy in the place of paper label. This wite is a majority of Chardonnay (60 %) and the rest being Tressallier, a local white variety which brings the vivid character of the wine. According to this page, Tressallier is a local variety from Allier and is the result of a crossbreeding between Pinot and Gouais Blanc which has some aromatic similarities with Viognier. The appellation area has a 30 % surface planted wit Tressallier, which is quite big for such a little-known variety. Tressallier is not vinified as a single-variety wine, although it could be made one day maybe. The wine is pleasant anyway and I didn't need to be forced to finish my glass, this is curious to dring a Chardonnay with this vividness and also this flint-stone feel, too bad this easy (and probably cheap) wine is not so easy to find.
Another problem is that the coop doesn't list the real price of the wines on their website : their web page lists only the price per case including the delivery in France, which is not very helpful if you just want to know the bare price at the door of the winery. I think they need to rethink their strategy here, especially that they have other wines apart from these two Nouveau wines... Willem & Medi B. and I were stiting near Willem (actually B. was sitting next to him) while Ophélie (another wine writer, see below) was sitting on the other side, so we had the opportunity to share a few impressions of his on different matters. We learnt that Willem arrived in Paris from his native Holland on a hot year in many regards, 1968, and he began to work right away for the satirical magazine Hara-Kiri and subsequently also for Charlie Hebdo. I guess Paris was a dream then, for a young traveller and expat living the bohême. Medi who is from Norway arrived shortly after in 1969 and after they met they never parted. Medi is also an artist and she took part in many exhibitions and publishing work. I think that there were good vibes between her and B. and she took our address to send her a book of her works.
The guy on the other side of the table was the man behind Paris-Bistro.com, a website devoted to the bistro culture, and you can see on the linked page his story from last year's Ficelle.
I was also siting next to someone I forgot the name of, and who works for VSB, a professional B2B newsletter focused on the wine business in France and abroad (here is an example issue if I'm right). Willem & Ophélie Willem, feigning surprise with Ophélie at his side. Ophélie runs one of the major French wineblogs, Miss Glouglou, and you might soon have a story there about this evening. Facing her (in the background on the 2nd picture above) was Antonin, who also runs a popular French site, No Wine is Innocent.
Willem and Medi were wise enough to leave the Paris mess and they live most of the time in an island off Brittany, the Ile de Groix, which is at a 45-minute distance on ferry boat from the continent. They eat lots of fish and regarding drinks this Island has if I remember 11 bars so there's a way to go from one to the other without leaving the place, and actually they live in a place which was formerly a bar, they actually also pour glasses but they have not the Licence IV (the one needed to sell alcoholic beverage in a bar) so they just do it for friends. Willem likes beer too and he seems to like particularly the beers from Belgium and from Ireland, a country which he visited a lot. Asked about the problem of beer or wine and driving, he says that he doesn't drive, he has no driving license and so is Medi... I'm free, he says with a smile, rhey walk a lot on their island, things like half an hour one way and same to come back for the longest distance they walk there...
This Ile de Groix seems very interesting and what I learnt made me try to look beyond my main anchor regions which are Provence, the Loire and Alsace (I have neglected the latter a bit these last years, sorry). Brittany is for B. and me a new frontier we're thinking to explore, although it looks very far and with a rainy weather. La Ficelle 2012 (Willem) La Ficelle 1997 (Dubouillon) La Ficelle 2011 (Lerouge) La Ficelle 1996 (Piem) La Ficelle 1991 (Loup) La Ficelle 1994 (Avoine) La Ficelle 2010 (?) La Ficelle 2007 (?) La Ficelle 2001 (Blachon) LaFicelle 1988 (Piem) La Ficelle 1998 (Soulas) This press pic was better than mine...