Brendan Tracey at la Cave des Papilles

Brendan Tracey pouring his wines A couple of weeks after visiting Brendan Tracey near Vendôme in the Loire, I kind of stumbled upon him in Paris as he was pouring his wines at the Cave des Papilles wine shop in the 14th arrondissement near Denfert Rochereau (OK, I had actually read the Cave's newsletter). I had missed alas Kenji and Mai who did the same thing here for their own wines the week before, being myself in the Loire region at that time, but went to Brendan's tasting, especially that there was a couple of wines that I didn't taste during my visit.

The Cave des Papilles is a very resourceful wine shop where you find can artisan wines made with the best ethic, beginning with cuvées costing a mere 5 €. Paris has now a good number of such wine shops (I'd say a few dozens) selling mostly natural wines, these wines made without any additives or tricky correction, if only occasionally with homeopatic doses of SO2

Some of these shops have a pleasant soul that make a tasting there very pleasant, and this is the case with the Cave des Papilles. I'll try to go to other wine shops as well in the next few months to share these nice tasting experiences where you can meet the vigneron and relax sipping their wine.

The wine shop is located on rue Daguerre which has a pleasant pedestrian section (video on the left), an open-air commecial stretch where you can shop for meat, cheese, fish and other stuff or sit at a terrace. There are by the way a few other wine shops there, although not of the quality of the Papilles (but it's always good to check there are certainly good values, for the Papilles you need to walk to the non pedestrian section, you can't miss it it's the golden yellow shop at a corner.
Brendan has been selling his wines in this wine shop since 2011, it's the first Paris wine shop where he had his wines, thanks to Pascal Simonutti who also sold his wines here.

The bottles This tasting was free like always in such wine-shop tastings and you could drop at the shop from 4pm to 8pm on saturday to get more familiar with Brendan's wines. I arrived early after the beginning of the tasting event and there were only a couple of amateurs.
The first wine that I tasted there was the cuvée Rue de la Soif (nice label, which helps) 2012, as I only tasted the still-fermenting 2013. Very good sauvignon, different from the usual cat-pee version, it's liquid food, a balanced and generous wine where the lees have kept the wine vivid and alive. Unfiltered wine. I may have forgottent to underline this point in my recent report but Brendan bottles his wines only in colorless "white" bottles (except for the long-aging romorantin) so that you're not cheated on the color and the turbidity, and I must admit that while I usually don't like too much the neutral-glass bottles, it doesn't upset me here. I must confess that I'm among the people who get exccited by an occasional turbidity, my reaction being, here is a wine that has been left with a chance to exchange with its solid sediments, its haze.

I asked Brendan about the making of this sauvignon, and he said that first, what is important here is the maturity : in 2012 there was a nice late season with sun before the harvest time, and also not too much disease pressure and thanks to that all he could pick the grapes almosr just before the grapes fell by themselves on the ground. His idea here was to find the expression of the fruit side. It was hand picked of course, the parcel, which planted with old vines, is also located in Saint Julien de Chédon along the Cher river, further south in the Loire region. The grapes were transported in cranes and he made a direct press, and the fermentation and élevage took place in old barrels which he got from Thierry Puzelat. The winemaking took longer than usual because in 2012 the indigenous yeasts were not hurried (he adds that all the winemakers who rely only on wild yeast witnessed the same slow pace that year). It was only in late july that the sugar was all gone and that the sauvignon was ready, and after a racking he ended up bottling it only early september, which is not so long ago actually.

The wine is also available in the shop in magnums (picture on right), the Caves des Papilles being by the way very well stocked in magnums from what I guess would be your favorite winemakers, a few dozens different cuvées.

Explaining his wines to tasters Still speaking about this sauvignon 2012 (Rue de la Soif), Brendan Tracey says that he didn't filter the wine. He likes to work like Axel Prüfer, a GDR (East Germany) native who came in France in 1998 and settled in Languedoc to make wine after an experience working with Eric Pfifferling. Brendan considers his cuvée Le Temps des Cerises like the type of wine he loves. He met Axel on a wine fair and they exchanged bottles, staying friends. He loves this style of substance in a wine, the living feel which is underlined by the non-filtration. helikes the fact to leave the sauvignon on its lees, it's already used with the Muscadet but even here he considers that it yields more aromas, it keeps the wine more alive. there is very little SO2 here, only the one remaining from the use of a sulfur wick in the barrels before filling them with the juice. This wine is also impressive in the sense that you'll not find the cat-pee side, it's a whole different dimension. Brendan says that some people find notes of elder berry in this sauvignon.
Toward the end of this short video above, you can spot a few magnums among the wide selection of the shop, the cave des Papilles offering a few dozens of them, all natural wines. Brendan pouring wine to a visitor At one point, Pascal Simonutti walked in the shop. Simonutti is a Loire winemaker whose natural wines are well remembered in part because of the names of some of his cuvées, you can't easily forget his Vin de Bagnole (bagnole is a slang word in French for car) On S'en Bat les Couilles (means in French we don't give a fuck) also going under the name Boire Tue (Drinking kills)... This is one of those exciting thirst wines, a Vin de Table, a natural wine of course, and made with a majority of Gamay and the rest being Pineau d'Aunis. You can see the magnum of this cuvée on the right, they sell it at 34 € at the wine shop.

Pascal is a biker and came from his Loire home on his Ducati. He first found a secure place for his helmet in a warm corner (I also came by bike to the shop but left mine chained to the bike). We talked about our respective itinerary from the Loire to Paris (I'm not going to the same Loire sub-region but it's still interesting to know). As I wrote in a previous post, Pascal and Brendan are playing music together regularly and they're very active on the Blois/Villebarou scene.

Pascal and Brendan know each other for a long time, and music was the cement. Pascal is 10 years younger than Pascal and they became friends from the time Brendan was still working in the local radio and was giving concerts with his punk-rock band. Pascal Simonutti made his first wine in 1997.

Pascal has his own two cuvées 2012 which are not yet bottled, he waits a crip winter cold to come for the optimum bottling time. Tere will be only gamay and sauvignon, from purchased grapes, he didn't make any pineau d'aunis in 2012 (the vintage was pretty difficult for many growers). The sauvignon is from massal selections growing on a stony terroir, he is optimistic in the resulting wine.

Pouring at the cashier's desk I of course tasted again Brendan's other wines, beginning with Pour une Poignée de Bouteilles. The wine is made through a semi-carbonic maceration like in Burgundy, Brendan says that thanks to the enzymatic exchange there's a fruity extraction with a forward expression of the grape. He says that the wine can be served lightly chilled, the idea being again an easy-drinking wine, Some of the tasters are not familiar with the lightly perly side of the wine and Brendan explains that as he doesn't add sulfites, he capitalizes on the natural CO2 coming out of the wine to protect the wine, instead of SO2. This CO2 is responsible for the light tickling on the tongue, as it tends to come out after the bottle opening, and he adds that this can be cleared by just carafing the wine or even shaking the glass but otherwise helps protect the wine. This is interesting to witness this explanation because it proves that people visiting these natural-wine shops are not only hardline experienced wine rebels but also novice wine lovers eager to learn (I hate writing that, I feel like a patronizing elder...). Brendan says that there are ways to prevent the CO2 to doing this in a natural wine, he even knows how to do it if he wanted to, but he loves the wine the way it is and he adds with a smile that like his wife says, he is very selfish and so he makes the wines that he loves to drink...

Notice the two books on the counter, they're the best sellers this season on the French natural-wine scene : Tronches de Vin, a guide and profile of a hundred of rebel winemakers, and Mimi, Fifi & Glouglou, an hilarious comics featuring 3 friends who are blind-tasting their favorite wines (which happen to be wines that you probably know). You can find several of the book's mini stories on Glougueule, and if you read French, you'll love them. See here this page or also this other one, you don't need to fully understand French...

A direct-press Pinot Noir Brendan also poured us some interesting and promising cask samples, including this pink pinot noir 2013, a direct-press wine with a nice color. The wine is lovely, fruity and still with a shade of tannin that hints at its pinot heritage. On the nose there is a striking acidulous character, very candy like. In the mouth there's a little bit of sugar left, but it's really very light. Very pleasant wine already at this stage. The alcohol level here is indeed also very drinking-friendly : only 11 %... >Brendan says that it's good to get lower-alcohol vintages after several years of higher maturity vintages, even on Loire standards.
With the white, colorless glass that Brenda uses for all his cuvées, you get a clear picture of the color nuances. This wine is still in barrels (about 12 years old) right now but the pinot tastes already very well and Brendan says that he will be bottle it next spring, especially that he has little wine left to sale (the output from 2012 being very limited in volume). The 1st hour of the wine-shop tasting Brendan told me at one point an interesting story about a prospective transmission : He has two grownup children and while his children (a boy and a girl) aren't particularly into wine (it often comes at a later stage in life), this seems to be another matter for his grand daughter : each time his 5-year-old Soisic visits here, she is very impressed and watches intensely as Brendan is doing his winemaking work. She says repeatedly "I want to help you work", she really seems to be fascinated by this life and now and then he gives her a few drops of juice or wine on the lips to show here the differences. At first she was surprised at the prospect of tasting the wine, saying that she thought it was not for children, but through a couple of drops she showed curiosity and already potential expertise for her age. A magic-lantern-style label for Lapalu's Beaujolais Nouveau Here is a now-probably collector bottle, the Beaujolais Nouveau 2013 of Jean-Claude Lapalu with a special label made specially for the Caves des Papilles by the design company Onomatopée, which seems to have conducted several projects related to wine. It's pretty imaginative, you just slide slowly a 2nd, plastic label wrapping the main label and you have an impression of animation and movement. They made only 120 bottles with this label and when this visit took place there was only 4 bottles left. The bottle was priced at 12 €, which seemed a good deal for the rarity and also for the wine inside...

Comments

[sargise]

Ah la rue Daguerre, une bien belle tranche de rue parisienne... bravo pour la stabilité de la prise ! Marise