Wine News (54)

Les Affranchis - professional tasting event This was one of these well-sized professional tastings that I like : small enough, relaxed and friendly tasting with nonetheless very beautiful wines to sample. I still couldn't attend but for an hour or two, after work, and with the well-timed tip of Kenji and Mae who called to tell that we could meet there or afterwards for a glass. The entry fee was 8 € for which you were given a nice glass that you could keep afterwards.

The event was organized by Laeticia Laure who until recently had been working for the AVN.
The tasting event, which should come back every year at about the same time is named Les Affranchis, with as subtitle "35 Vignerons de Loire à Paris !". Enough to compell you to make a visit, especially if you know that all these wines are made from organic grapes and go through the cellar uncorrected. I knew of course a few of the vintners there but I still had to know better some of them :

Alexandre Bain, Clément Baraut, Thomas Batardière, Pierre-Olivier Bonhomme, Puzelat-Bonhomme, Guy Bossard & Fred Niger Van Herck (Domaine de l'Ecu), Mikaël Bouges, Emeline Calvez & Sébastien Bobinet, Vincent Carême, Agnès & Jacques Carroget (la Paonnerie), Ludovic Chanson, Florent Cosme, Mathieu Coste, Xavier Courant (Domaine de l'Oubliée), Sébastien David, Nathalie Gaubicher-Chaussard (le Briseau), Françoise & Philippe Gourdon (Tour Grise), Reynald Héaulé, Emile Hérédia (Domaine de Montrieux), Laurent Herlin, Mélanie & Emeric Hillaire (Clos Mélaric), Maï & Kenji Hodgson, Grégory Leclerc, Chahut et prodiges, et Anne Paillet, Autour de l'Anne, Jérôme Lenoir (Les Roches), Josette Médeau, Christine, Joël & Jérémy Ménard (Sablonnettes), Thierry Michon (Saint-Nicolas), Noëlla Morantin Romain Paire (Pothiers), Marc Pesnot, (Sénéchalière), Philippe Peulet (la Perrière), Géraldine & Christophe Pialoux (Le Picatier), Pascale & François Plouzeau, (la Garrelière), Pascal Potaire & Moses Gadouche (Capriades), François Saint-Lô Luc Sébille, Marie Thibault-Cabrit, Hervé Villemade, Jean-Marie, Julien & Thibaut (Les Roches sèches).

Kenji & Mai Hodgson I first walked to the table of Kenji & Mae Hodgson, who were to although they hadn't anything to sell; they would have some wine later when several scheduled bottlings would go through. Several people were there too including Laurent Saillard, who came with Noella Morantin (I didn't taste her wines but knew I would be able to do it soon).
__ Kenji & Mai Hodgson Faia 2011. Vin de Table. On the market since september. A mineral and fresh wine. Chenin, aged in old casks.
__ Kenji & Mai Hodgson, Heart & Beat 2010, a rosé vin de table made from cabernet. Very light color. The nose is very candy-like, with grenadine character and blackcurrant notes, pear too. They still had a bit of it to sell (not sure they have now). Very long élevage on lees. Costs 7 € without tax. I like the tannic type of mouth here.
__ Kenji & Mai Hodgson Ô Galarneau 2011. A nice cabernet franc that I always like to taste again. Sold out of course, Kenji says that's since the Renaissance wine event in Angers. Generous nose with fresh undertones. Quite delicious. Cost € wo tax when it was still available, and 10 € tax included at the facility. You keep the vibrations of the wine in the mouth for a while. Romain Paire (domaine des Pothiers) I tasted then a few wines from the Domaine des Potiers in the Côte Roannaise, on the far east of the Loire area. This appellation (Côte Roannaise) is not very well kown because from what I understand most wines there aren't very interesting but a few vintners from this Gamay region are rising above the flock.

__ domaine des Potiers Hors piste 2011, "Vin de Pays d'Urfée". A white made from pinot gris on granite soils. Light wine, rather easy to drink. 12 ° in alcohol. Vinified and élevage in 500-liter old barrels.
__ domaine des Potiers Fou de Chêne 2011. Vin de Pays too. Another white, chardonnay. Quite gouleyant with this pleasant gliding feel on the palate. Lots of minerality too with the granite. Vines : 25 years old. SO2 : 30 SO2 total, the only adding being at the bottling. Costs 12 € tax included.
__ domaine des Potiers Granit Rose 2012, a rosé of course. Very light color, they made half in fre-run and hald in first press. They use a type of Gamay on the estate named Gamay Saint Romain, not so usual from what I understand. Frzsh wine, a bit high in alcohol maybe, at least in the mouth feel.
__ domaine des Potiers Fou de Chêne 2011 Côte Roannaise Référence. Gamay St Romain on granite. The wine feels concentrated on the nose, the color is dark too. He says that the grapes are smaller on the St Romain variety of Gamay. Costs 7 € tax included. SO2 added at bottling only. Vines : 15 years old.
__ domaine des Potiers Cuvée Domaine, old vines (from 35 to 70 years). Gamay Saint Romain. That's nice, I like that wine. Organic/biodynamic farming, hand picked.15-day maceration and élevage in cement vats. Costs only 4,2 € without tax for professional buyers and 8,5 € tax included for individual buyers.
__ domaine des Potiers N° 6. Gamay St Romain again. On clay and sand, the whole on granite undersoil. 1,5-hectare parcel, 10 years old. Nose : soft spices. Onctuous wine, nice flesh. Costs 9 € tax included.
__ domaine des Potiers Clos du Puy 2012. Red (Gamay). Sample taked from a 500-liter barrel. Will be bottled in september. Mouth : nice and precise, chiseled.
__ domaine des Potiers L'Intégrale 2011. Côte Roannaise, red from Gamay Saint Romain like the other reds here. A selection from their best grapes, 100 % destemmed. Maceration, 3 weeks in barrels, then, pressed. 0,5 hectare, or 2000 bottles. The mouth has an austere side, like if the wine needed more time in the cellar to show up. Géraldine Pialoux (le Picatier) I then tasted a few wines from the Domaine du Picatier, another Côte-Roannaise winery, about which I had heard from both Julien Altaber in Burgundy and Romain Weinstock at Coco Farm in Japan as they all had spent time together in the wine school at some point.

__Le Picatier Petites Causeries 2008 (red), Vin de France (table wine). Partly-destemmed gamay. enamelled vats. Very light gamay wine with an evolved color, like for an older wine. This wine changed while in the bottles, Géraldine says. Speaking about the table-wine status and the AOC, she says that they used to try to get the agreement for the appellation (Côte Roannaise) but they stopped because of the trouble. Costs 3,5 € without tax (pro) and 6 € tax included at the winery. 2000 bottles in all. SO2 : only at bottling, 2g/hectoliter. Here is a light, thirst wine.
__ Le Picatier Cuvée 100 % 2012. Gamay, table wine. First year for this cuvée, made together and harvested together with a bunch of friends includingJulien altaber and the chef de culture of De Montille. 100 % was meant as 100 % pleasure with friends. I don't know if the frienship plays a role but I loved this wine with its aromas of generous Burlat cherries. Ample mouth, gourmand and elegant at the same time. Carbonic maceration for 15 days. Unfiltered. SO2, none added, they just got some smoke from a sulfur wick on the wine. She says that 2012 was a nice vintage with superb fruit but lots of grapes were damaged by hailstorms. 6000 bottles in all. Costs 7,2 € tax included. A steal.
__ Le Picatier, L'Intro 2011. Vin de Table. Gamay more or less growing on granite rock. There's indeed a mineral side here that come to you. 15 days of carbonic maceration. I can't read my notes here but they then did something and waited 15 days more. Elevage in demi muids for 8 months, bottled november 2012. The mouth is sharper, with minerality. Costs 5,4 € without tax or 9 € tax included for the general public. Julien Delrieu (Villemade in the background) I then tasted some wines from Les Roches Sèches, an estate located in the middle of Anjou. Yet another group of young guys who are popping up on the natural-wine scene. The 3 friends took up together a farm along the Coteaux du Layon after their wine-school time and work in separate wineries. They converted the vineyard to the organic ways in 2010. They make already quite a few cuvées, here are their whites, and you'll find their reds here.

__ Les Roches Sèches, les Varennes. Chenin on schists.No notes, sorry.
__ Les Roches Sèches, Les Essards 2012, red Vin de France (table wine). A semi-carbonic vinification of Grolleau.
__ Les Roches Sèches,Les Saint Martin 2012. Sample taked from a cask, 2500 to 3000 bottles in all. Dark wine. The mouth is a bit perly. No SO2 at all yet at this stage. I love that wine. Costs 6,45 € without tax or 11 € tax included for the general public.
__ Les Roches Sèches, Le Jeau 2012, a red taken from a vat (not bottled yet). There's a white Le Jeau but this one is a red made with Cabernet Franc growing on schists. The nose is suave, sounds great... Mouth : So nice, a real pleasure to swallow. Costs 14,5 € tax included. There will be about 2500 bottles of this cuvée. Mathieu Coste Here is a wine I didn't take note about, but one that I remember as very enjoyable. It is made by Mathieu Coste and is named MC2, in reference if I remember of Mathieu's father who's first name is Michel if I'm right. This red hasn't had any SO2 at this stage and it was a delight. I really think that beyond the challenge to make wine without added SO2 all along, there's a reward in terms of liveliness and pleasure that corrected wines can't beat. It's not a question of ideology or militant thinking, it's there in your face and the glass. Causes and effects ? When I saw these dead vines along a vineyard in the Loire recently, obviously casualties from the esca disease, I couldn't but wonder if the weedkillers-soaked soils here weren't in some way responsible of the heavy count. In a recent article by Jancis Robinson, I learned that the weather turmoil of last year has accelerated the losses in this regard, with some vineyards loosing up to 50 % of their vines. She tells of other leads, like the pruning that may spread the disease, and the vigor of the rootstocks (or the lackthereof) which may play a role. Very interesting.
Read again this story of mine about Didier Barouillet who deals with esca in a very innovative way. A beautiful Chinon This is a beautiful Chinon from the Chateau de Coulaine, an estate which I discovered not long ago through another cuvée, samely delightful.
This particular cuvée is named "Les 4 Terroirs de Coulaine", meaning it is made from 4 parcels. The estate is organicly farmed. The cabernet franc gives a good expression with a marked color, a rich substance and lots of small red fruits. Really a very enjoyable wine, probably unfiltered, this is liquid food to make you high. Filling back an emptied Champagne bottle : miracle in Jerusalem If you wonder how to get back your spilled Champagne into the bottle, take a look at this viral video by Messe Kopp, an Israeli video artist who shot an impromptu-looking scene in a Jerusalem street. Watch the video first, it's fun and enjoyable, with an intriguing walking-dead feel in the way the guy walks. And here is the original video behind this backwards show. You can see on the Russian-language blog post how this all was shot, with staff and actors. It gives another image of jerusalem, one that is much closer to Tel Aviv, with the style of people you see coming and going. A recent survey says that the city enjoys an economic boom but failms to entice enough young, secular students to remain. More French emigration to Russia... The majority of the French youth wishes to settle abroad, according to a recent study. Welcome to the "French social model" which (supposedly) everyone in the world envies us (the mantra of all big-government supporters here).. Here on this video we can see two French guys who seem to have found their way to set a foot in Moscow, Russia : offering crêpes to the passerbys... After initial problems with the local Russian police, they ended up being allowed by the Moscow city council to continue their generous voluntary work here in this park, using the opportunity to possibly find sponsors and employment in Russia. The 2 guys speak in English on this video and they seem to be happy at the prospect of making a new life here.

On a related issue, the one of Depardieu's exile in Russia and Belgium (where he bought a property), I found this very enjoyable video interview of him (in French) that took place in Belgium and where he speaks in a very relaxed way about the French government and about the demonization he has been through. He says many things including that he knows many French people including farmers and that the French are fed up, something that is not taken into account by the French gov. This refreshing interview gives another, first-hand image of Depardieu, very far from the demonized character displayed by the French politically-correct media. He speaks also about his film jobs this year, first in the US (the infamous DSK story), then in Russia and Kazakhstan... and there was room too in this long interview for his gastronmy projects, and he may have such plans in Belgium where he might open a restaurant soon... Moonshine Depardieu wine... An intriguing bottled which I spotted recently on a Russian photography blog : a bottle containing supposedly (according to the label) wine illegally imported and stolen from the cellar of Depardieu. In French, the label reads : "Le, importation illégale - Est volé de la cave de Depardieu", this sentence with a mistake ends with a signature (supposedly from Depardieu) and the mention "le magnifique". Now if that wine is not Depardieu's, I'd like to taste it nonetheless, it may be one of those surprisingly-good Russian home-made wines.... A Japanese-kosher restaurant in Paris I made a surprising discovery the other day while looking for a Japanese restaurant in the 17th arrondissement : the Japanese-kosher restaurant concept. We were looking for a Japanese restaurant in the vicinity of the Boulevard Pereire and we stumbled upon one of them, Missada, which had an odd sign on the front window : a stampel of "Beth Din de Paris" proving that the venue was kosher and kashroot compliant. I never heard about the issue and even though the restaurant has higher prices than another (obviously Chinese-owned)Japanese restataurant not far from there, we decided to go there, especially that we were with American friends-visitors who happened to be jewish.
The restaurant next to this one is also a Missada restaurant, same owners, but this other one is a Chinese-kosher restaurant. It had a terrace and was full of couples and young men wearing a kippah.
The manager of the Japanese restaurant was a young jewish man and to our surprise he told us that there were quite a number of such restaurants in the Paris area, and I found this list afterwards.
We learned to to be kosher compliant, they must use only fish with scales and fins. I didn't even know that certain types of fish were exculded from the traditional jewish rules.
We already knew that the Japanese food authorities had set up a "Japanese restaurant authentication plan" to fight against the fake Japanese restaurants (read : Chinese owned), but this "Sushi Police" will have another target to investigate : the Japanese kosher restaurant...
After a while (we has gone there quite early), people began to came in and it was surprising to see traditional religious-observant jews sitting in a Japanese restaurant.
The food was so-so, especially for B. who has quite a deep experience in the matter of japanese food. For a know-little like me I was disappointed by two serious downsides : they hadn't any green tea and the place of the Asahi beers that we had ordered, they brought us Tsingtao beers in the pretext that the Asahi was not cold. To be frank, the idea of leaving the place right away popped in my mind.
This is still a place to try, considering they probably have corrected these lapses.
We didn't order sake but I think they had some. It is not clear if there's anything like kosher sake; we know about kosher wine, even produced by non-kosher wineries where they make special kosher cuvées with the hiring of a religiously-observant staff, but I never heard about something like that in sake breweries. Les Affranchis tasting in Montpellier (january 2013)

Comments

[cyril]

J'aimerai bien savoir de quoi ils se sont affranchis....pas du soufre en tout cas, puisque la plupart des vignerons présents ce jour la en utilisent...
From what are they freedmen?...not from sulfits at least...as most of these winemakers use some...

[Dan]

Today for the first time I tasted the wines of Mathieu Coste. Your comment about MC2 prompts this reply -- you and I have very different tastes! 2012 MC2 truly smells of the barnyard after a heavy rain. The wine is extremely volatile, which is not the same as kaleidoscopic, more like a spinning top without a centerweight. A wine where beer, ale, mead, cider, and wine mash it up. Almost childish. Which is weird because Coste's 2010 Les Tetes de Chats is composed, tactile, full of fresh fruit, a satisfying drink on its own or with many styles of food. Since sulfur was used here, do you know the rationale for the different techniques? The third wine tasted was 2008 Biau in which a very low sulfur treatment was made. The vintage is a favorite of mine for its perfect balance in almost all grape varieties and Chats expounds on this aspect, particularly on the palate. Aromas are a bit shaky. Coste needs to heed Arianna Occhipinti's mea culpa or Didier's Dageuneu's admission that many of his vintages didn't last well in bottle. Or just taste his own wine with an eye to the future. The man makes exciting wine. Give us a chance to taste it.