Sébastien Bobinet (Loire)

Emeline in the deep cellar

Saumur, Loire
The Domaine Bobinet was founded a dozen years ago by Sébastien Bobinet, a native from Saumur with a long lineage of growers behind his grandfather. He took over in 2002 the small vineyard surface of his grandparents (1,78 hectare) plus the old deep cellar cave under the hill. Most of the vineyard was red grapes, with 40 ares of white. He kept working with this small vineyard surface until 2010, after which he bought grapes to make wine from other varieties and he also rented more vineyards on fermage, reaching 4 hectares in total that year. Emeline Calvez joined the domaine in 2011 and they took more rented parcels in 2012, reaching today a surface of 6,5 hectares.

Almost since the start (after a year or so), thanks to his meeting some of the first innovative artisan winemakers of the region, Sébastien followed a non-interventionist philosophy, using wild yeast, farming organic, adding little or no sulfites and none of the usual additives and tricks used by wineries nowadays. The first time I may have met him was in 2006 at a street tasting inParis organized by American importer Jenny Lefcourt around several of her vignerons (see this story, 4th picture from top). I remember that evening as being very festive and friendly, Olivier Cousin had his share too and Sébastien Bobinet was not outdone in the vinous performance. When Sébastien had had a training in his youth, so to say, by just helping his grandfather and grandmother in the vineyard and in the cellar. His grandfather didn't sell his grapes to the coop or the négoce, he used to vinify his grapes himself and sell the wine directly. Sébastien Bobinet also got a formal training later, but the person who helped him the most when he started his own domaine was Olivier Cousin whom he met in 2003 through Sylvie Augereau, a wine journalist who was a decisive actor in the nascent natural-wine movement.

The cellar and chai

The family cellar used for generations is dug deep into the limestone cliff, like often in the Loire region. The semi-troglodytic house on the left is also a familiar thing in the region, and Sébastien's grandfather, while not living inside with his family, had still used it for several purposes. The cellar is located a few hundred meters from the tasting room/office along the Loire river (pic on left), the cliff along this road is full of cellars, this is one of them. Until 2010 Sébastien did the vinification (the fermentation stage) in the cellar itself because there were small, unpractical buildings packed in front of this cliff, which prevented him to freely move around large fermenters and vats. Since then, after they cleared several of these buildings, they can press and vinify outside before pumping the juice into the barrels inside. They had the project to build a large roof over this open space but with the last difficult vintages (in terms of volume) they delayed the project.

Apart from Olivier Cousin who was his mentor in his early years, Sébastien also met (in 2004) Bernard Pontonnier, who has a pied-à-terre in Montsoreau not far from here. Pontonnier is a man with many wine-related talents, from being the first to have opened a "natural-wine" bar in Paris (before the name even popped out in the wine circles) to taking part himself to the vinification here and there with friends (more on him here as he was visiting Foillard in Beaujolais). Sébastien met him at a time Bernard was making wine at Chateau Yvonne (he managed the domaine since the early 2000s'). Sébastien and Bernard made a first cuvée together in 2007, it was a carbonic maceration (a first for Sébastien) and it was named Greta Carbo, a cuvée which since then has been a regular at domaine Bobinet. And when Emeline arrived here they all made another cuvée together, Ruben, which is also now an iconic cuvée of the domaine. One of the first "natural" cuvées made by Sébastien was Amateus Bobi, which he named with the help of his friend Xavier Amat (the man behind the guestouse/wine shop L'Ami Chenin, near Saumur), and Xavier as a retailer with good connections in Paris (he was formerly a restaurateur there) put Sébastien Bobinet's wines above the radar.

L'Echalier, a parcel of Cabernet Franc

In his last years in activity, Sébastien's grandfather farmed his small vineyard conventionally but in his younger years he'd plow and use a draft horse like it was the norm in the mid-20th century. Sébastien overhauled his farming practices after he met Olivier Cousin and from 2003 he farmed organic. His grandfather didn't approve the change especially that the vineyard and the rows "looked" less clean and square [oddly a strong motive that prevents farmers to appreciate the intrinsic qualities of non-chemical farming]. And other growers didn't consider the move as serious, Sébastien, although a native from here, was considered an original and an outsider by other growers as well because he departed from the conventional farming. Organic farming was still rare in the region, apart from the Foucault brothers (Clos Rougeard) who were pioneers on this issue.

Time to tell a few words about Emeline : she joined Sébastien Bobinet here in 2011. In her former life she was a professional dancer (for 10 years) but because of an injury she had to switch to another career and chose the wine trade, not on the production side at first but on the retail side, a good reaso being that she liked wine and knew a few good wine venues in Paris. She got her training in 2007/2008 at the wine university of Suze la Rousse in the southern Rhone and went to work with Fred at La Quincave, certainly one of the top places in Paris to buy or drink artisan wine. She stayed 2 years there until early 2010, and if she quit it was because she strongly felt the need top go to the source and live the real experience behind all these wines she loved and sold at La Quincave. She was on the road for one year, spending a few weeks here and there, learning while doing vineyard work as well as cellar work, she'd do everything, depending of the season and the needs of the vignerons. She began by doing the pruning at Puzelat, then she went to Jean-Marie Berrux, Jean-François Ganevat, Marcel Lapierre, Antoine Arena, Guy Jullien, René Mosse, Hervé Villemade, Domaine Breton, and at the Bretons she met again Sébastien. Learning more from each other, she dropped her initial project to set up a caviste shop in Paris and ended up joining Sébastien here in Saumur...

L'Echalier, from above

Here we walk along a parcel of Cabernet Franc that was planted by Sébastien's grandfather himself in 1947. The name of the parcel is l'Echalier, it sits above the hill at a crossroad with a cross atop a mound along the small road, probably a station in a 19th-century calvary. The grass hasn't been mowed between the rows yet recently but they already cut the grass earlier in the season (keeps growing a bit in spite of the dry weather). Their philosophy is to usually plow between the rows and just mow the grass under the row, partly because the vines are often old and this limits the risks of accidentally uprooting the vines. Sébastien also began to work with a draft horse under the influence of Olivier Cousin, a master in this field, using it at the harvest to drag the gondola with the full boxes.
This block makes 0,5 hectare and when conditions are right they make a separate cuvée from this parcel, "l'Echalier".

Another parcel overlooking the Loire : Ruben

Speaking of the vineyard surface, Sébastien and Emeline work on 6,5/7 hectares including the rented parcels, and they also make wine with purchased grapes for the equivalent of an additional 6 hectares, more or less depending of the years, which makes roughly a wine volume equivalent of 13 hectares. They have mostly red, and namely Cabernet Franc, except for a new planting of Pineau d'Aunis (30 ares -- not fully productive yet) and a parcel of Grolleau which they found recently.

The other parcel we visited is a fermage, a rented surface (making 1,5 hectare). This parcel of cabernet franc which sits atop the plateau overlooking the Loire river is the vineyard with which Emeline and Sébastien made their first cuvée together, "Ruben", and on its first vintage they were assisted by their knowledgeable friend Bernard Pontonnier. Pontonnier while having a foot in the region has been a long time fan of the Beaujolais vinification (the carbonic maceration), with long-time personnal connections with Foillard and Lapierre with whom he learned a lot. As Sébastien was more and more interested in this type of vinification around 2010, Bernard was the right person to talk to and ask for orientation, that's when they made the cuvée Greta Carbo. Ruben was soon to follow. The vines here are also about 50 years old. In this type of rental they do all the farming, not the owner of the plot. Here they manage to have yields between 40 and 50 hectoliters/hectare, depending of the vintage. Last year here they had to take down lots of grapes because of the damages caused by the Suzukii drosophilia, and the yields were more like 35 ho/ha. They had to pick a bit earlier but the potential was still 12,5 %. Emeline was going to the vineyard everyday when this drosophilia attack occured, but things stagnated and remained stable on the reds (possibly because of the thicker skins of the cab franc), but at the same time, on other parcels planted with whites, the damages progressed like a wildfire, with the grapes turning maroonish ans stinking like vinegar. As the cabernet franc seemed to handle this drosophilia issue quite well they picked their other parcels of cabernet franc at the usual time, withouit hurrying, and things turned out pretty well, with damaged grapes drying safely because of the nice late summer.

Grapes growing fast (Ruben parcel)

The leaves look gorgeous and healthy, with the shoots going up generously toward the sun. Emeline says they're going to trim the vines but they do it as late as possible otherwise the vine canopy becomes thicker which causes ventilation issues in the foliage. Normally at some point the shoots stop climbing but last year for example they seemed to go up forever, she says. She is quite happy with the grape load and the health condition right now, there's no didease pressure. They cross their finger, she says, knowing that nothing is guaranteed and that anything can still happen until the harvest. After a few difficult vintages she hopes this one will be smooth...

Old tractor still in use

Emeline says that when she met Sébastien he used to buy grapes in the Loir-et-Cher département further north-east from here, for his table-wine cuvée Du Rififi à Beaulieu. This cuvée was deemed to be a thirst wine, on the light side, using carbonic maceration. His cuvée Amateus Bobi was a cabernet-franc wine with more serious structure and length, and he wanted to keep it that way but do on the side this type of easy-going wine for every day. Ruben was a cuvée focused on a more aerial wine experience, and all these cuvées show a different expression of cabernet franc. Emeline laments the commercial slogan of the Saumur Wine Syndicate (the local AOC administration), they always sum up the Saumur wines as being "light Loire reds" when you can actually show so many facets of Cabernet Franc in the Saumur area...

Speaking of their grape purchases, they buy mostly to a guy, a friend, Bruno Richard, who is located near the village of Varrains just outside Saumur, his parcels are located on a lieu-dit names Les Landes. He farms the vineyard along their own specifications, he's not certfied organic but he farms organic like they asked him to do. He makes wine too but he likes selling grapes also, which is less heavy than selling bottles. They pay him much more than a coop or the négoce would pay him because the grapes are organic and the yields lower, and it's a good deal for him. She says the concept of négoce, buying grapes to make wine, is not always well considered among the artisan or natural-wine people, possibly because the word négoce reminds an era when it involved massive purchases to make low-quality bulk wine, but when you do it properly, buying the right fruit this is just fine. They also buy him some sparkling because they're in shortage with bubbly, his own is good, and they specify on the label that he is the winemmaker behind it.

Back to the cellars

Before they tore down the buildings in front of the cellars, they had just a tiny courtyard to move around, and now it is much more easy to move the press and the vats around. Right now the fiber-glass vats are still stored with the tractors, near the tasting room and the bottle storage room, but come the harvest season they will be swiftly brought back here. They also had to fasten the outside walls of the cliff as well as the ceiling here and there because the sandstone deteriorate with time and it may collapse if not reinforced. The main cellar is behind this droglodytic house on the left, you can't see it on this picture but there's a vaulted opening on the right side of the stairs.

We first walked in the white-wine cellar, a comparatively-smaller room with a dozen barrels, the door was somewhere on the right in this courtyard. This cellar had two rooms, the first (pic on left) having been used as a cowshed a century ago, even more recently as Sébastien remembers that his grandmother would keep her cows there, and you still can see the custom-made feeder for the hay, beautifully carved into the rock. The second room on the right is where they store the few barrels of whites. This cellar is not deep and Emeline keeps the door open for a while to have the temperature go up, because the wine hasn't had its malolactic yet.

Emeline grabs a wine thief to have us taste a barrel ot two. The cuvée here is Les Gruches, a Saumur Blanc made with Chenin, last time I had some was with Mr Ito at Yuzu in Paris, it was a 2012 and it was so good. The wine is turbid, work in progress. After a sip I had the feeling there was some remaing sugar but she says no, it's dry, they just waiting for the malolactic. She says that if it doesn't do it she will filter the wine because otherwise it will start working again in the bottles. She says they don't mind for themselves when the wine starts working again after bottling, but many consumers aren't open to this contingency, they are stressed by the tickling on the tongue for example. In the mouth the wine fares well, vivid and alive. She says that Sébastien likes it like that when it doesn't want to do its malolactic, and he certainly would have bottled it already. But since they got a baby they switched roles and she is doing the cellar work and vinification and he does the commercial part, driving in Paris and visiting the bars and restaurants. Regarding this Chenin she says she prefers to wait more, the wine feeds itself on its lees, she is just curious to see for the malolactic. This year for the 1st time they stir a bit the barrels to keep the contact with the lees. The balance already is very nice, very enjoyable wine.

The deep red cellar

Walking out briefly, we walk into the deep cemmar tunner where the reds get their élevage. This is a 160-meter deep tunnel with sometimes a low ceiling and reasonable width, and sometimes opening on huge rooms with cathedral-high ceiling, very impressive. The cellar went through several stages along the century but they have a document stating that it existed already in the 1640s', that makes quite a lot of Saumur wine flowing down from here.

At the door we walk first in a room located right under the troglodytic house, that's really the chai designed a couple of centuries ago, with water access, actually an age-old fountain sitting on a water table which they had analyzed and the water was very pure and safe. In this front room there's enough width to move around the modest tools of that time. The vigneron living above would just have to go down a few steps to go check his babies in the cellar, having a few sips in the way of course.
We also walk by chai tools like pumps and fiber-glass vats, hoses and so on. The pumps look like antiques but they're locally made by A. Fabre in Saumur and if old (probably from the 1950s'), they've been refurbished anew by the small company that still exists to this day. Occasionally like during the war people would grow endives and mushrooms in there to soften the food-supply hardships. I think all these cellars were dug to extract the stone first, and build houses and chateaus, then winemaking too the relay as well as mushroom growing or farm animal housing, in short, almost a Steinerian dream of a cellar, a miniature farm with all its good vibes.

Further in the long cellar tunnel

Most of the white-plastic vats are empty, and many of the casks to, the last cuvées that are still in this cellar are Amateus Bobi and another cuvée of red which they make with grapes purchased to their friend. This year they made a total of 450 hectoliters of red, so a few months ago this cellar was pretty full of wine. Thy vinify the négoce here too, they don't have to use a separate facility.

As we walk deeper in the tunnel-like cellar, we pass what I'd call intermediary rooms, some odd spaces that they use for a particular cuvée maybe, like here on the right, taking advantage of an almost separate room that can hold the desired number of barrels. I guess that in the past, cellar rats would use torchs to see what they were doing, but even with the electricity, the place retains its magic. I know I'm not original in my assertion, but I use to say that such age-old cellars with centuries of wild-yeast ghosts entrenched deep into its walls can't be neutral on the wines, this is almost a micro-terroir by itself. I must admit that I'm more inclined to feel attracted by a wine that I know has been made in such an environment than in a clean, square facility. But wine is mysterious and I came across several great wild wines made inside drab cement buildings.

The large cellar room

The large room at the end of the tunnel is very impressive, it is very high in the middle (possibly 12 meters or more) and the place looks like some sort of temple. Emeline says about all these barrels that they buy them used

We taste from a first barrel, the red comes from a parcel named Bois Blanc, it is part of the cuvée Amateus Bobi. Exciting, lively nose. Hard to spit she says, but be sure, for my part I don't spit. In the mouth there's a bit of gas but it's still delicious.

Next wine we taste is cabernet franc again, coming from Les Landes, the grapes they purchased to their friend. This is a brand new cuvée, first vintage. Could be names Les Lazndes but not sure yet. A bit of reduction on the nose, it's still working she says, and the wine swings between different expressions each time they taste it. For my part, delicious wine at this stage. She says that on this terroir there is more minerality and austerity somehow, when the previous wine we tasted was more on the generous, vividness side. I like what I'd call the saline side of this les Landes, the touch on the palate.

Emeline says that the soil is packed with limestone here and it's indeed very mineral. Speaking of the structure, she says that like Sébastien she doesn't like prominent tannins and while looking for substance and extraction, they make sure to have a velvety touch, nothing harsh. Their press is not the smoothest you can find on the market but they press very slowly in order to get this smooth end in the wine. After the débourbage (settling of the gross lees) they start the maceration but without stirring the juice. This wine is indeed very velvety beyond the gas at the first sip. This wine should be bottled at the end of september, before the harvest.

This year becase they lacked wine to sell, they created a primeur cuvée named Piack, which they released early in the season, it's sold out now but these 8000 bottles helped them go through the blank time and give their buyers some wine to sell. For these cuvée they used their youngest rented vines, parcels with high yields that usually don't mature totally but in 2014 they matured very well and the wine was very fruity and enjoyable, if not very concentrated.

Old vertical press

While we walk back to the outside we stop a minute at an old vertical press with a cement floor, another proof that people would use part of the cellar (the front) for the vinification, the bottom being used for the élevage.

Here the base is made of cement but this cellar has probably seen several generations and models of presses along the centuries. Here you can see the metal structure, you just have to put back the mobile basket (made of wood) around it and it can be used again. Sébastien Bobinet actually used this press until 2010. The juice can flow freely from this cement bed into a vat carved into the rock, Emeline showed me the thing as there's a corridor on the left leading to another cellar room, and immediately to the right, there's this dark deep hole in which the juice would deposit it's thick lees and must for the débourbage before being pumped into the barrels. Really an efficient and simple winemaking facility. You must remember that at the time people wouldn't work from so many hectares and they were farmers doing also other crops and vegetables.

I am always bewildered by stumbling into so many ancient vinification facilities in this country, most of them disused and abandonned. As I showed in this photo story (this was in a village along the Cher river) virtually every country house in much of the Loire valley has somewhere in an outbuilding or in a cellar everything you can need to make wine, it stay untouched and idle since the 1960 but could be resurrected pretty quickly.

Emeline pouring the sparkling

Back in the wood-paneled building with the tasting room, we taste a few wines.
__ The first one is Hanami 2014, a cabernet franc and Saumur-Champigny AOC, the first vintage of this wine was in 2012, this was the first cuvée they made together, it is made with purchased grapes, with the négoce they set up also in 2012. Their goal with this new cuvée was to make a wine that was even more on the fruit side than Ruben, and which they could release earlier (this one is bottled in march), like some sort of , even since, she says with a laugh, they reinvented another primeur (the cuvée Piack, soldout alas now). It is vinfied in the white tanks but it still has a few months of élevage in [old] barrels (from end of november to march). Piack, on the other hand, doesn't see any wood. Volume : 15 000 bottles.
Nose : generous smells of matured flowers. Mouth : The wine is fruity with still a pleasurable chew, very enjoyable wine, some tannin but still very onctuous. 12 % in alc.
We speak of the alcohol level which is not high in their wines and he tells me about what Pierre Overnoy told them recently as they were travelling together in Brazil to visit clients : in dry cellars alcohol tends to go up during the élevage while in humid cellars somehow alcohol tends to be "diluted", and their cellar here has a good level of humidity, which may explain the low alcohol. Hanami like Piack is an entry-level wine.

__ Ruben 2014, also a Saumur-Champigny (cabernet franc). Made from the second parcel we visited (plus another parcel somewhere else). Bottled since end of may, after racking the barrels together, the bottling taking place on a fruit day of course. We taste tyhe wine after roughly one month in bottle, bit in 2014 it tastes quite well early after the bottling shock. Makes also 12 % in alc. Volume is 10 000 bottles.
Nose : exquisite, with fowery, peony notes, complexity with cooked fruits notes too. The wine is tasting very well indeed, the chew is more palpable. Supple wine with saline touch, juicy wine. Not yet on the market. The Ruben 2013, which they love personally she says, is a bit reducted at opening and some people may be surprised and puzzled, so they're careful about who buys it, especially at export because if people don't go beyond this reduction thing it may be a problem to recover the bottles. I tell her with a laugh that in these circumstances she better never sell to the Canadian monopolies, which are known to me the most obtuse interlocutors in this regard (I heard first-hand several awful stories in this issue)...

Amateüs Bobi 2013

__ Amateüs Bobi 2013, Saumur-Champigny AOC. This year was very rainy and the wine is more on minerality than on the fruit because of that, but overall she says that given the circumstances and wheather they're pretty happy with the result. This was picked early october (had to wait for maturity) under the rain and they had to sort both at harvest and at the cellar door, this was weird. Speaking of the filtration, she says that until 2013 they wouldn't filter, or they'd filter rarely, but because of this reduction problem they determined that the cause was the excessive remaining sediments in the wine. In order to correct that, from 2014 they first initiated double débourbage and they did a tangential filtration on top of that. She first feared it would take away too much substance but it was fine, the Hanami and the Ruben which I've just tasted were filtered and they're fine indeed. This now should be the rule from now, and would reverse only when they buy a pneumatic press because in this case there is much less turbidity. Here we taste the 2013, which had no filtration.
The color is clear. In the mouth, less substance indeed compared to the other vintages I tasted, but very enjoyable and still fruity.

__ Ruben 2013, this is the wine that was not filtered and had some reduction issue. Nose : a bit of reduction indeed, she says that when it's the nose only it isn't really a problem for her. On the sulfites question they either don't add any or they add very little. For Ruben 2014 they bottled a batch with 1,5 gram (just before bottling) and the other half without anything. The batch with SO2 has been labelled and is being shipped and later, they'll release the no-added-sulfites batch and label it differently. Mouth : intensity, and freshness along that. Balance feel, a joyous wine.

__ Du Rifi à Beaulieu, a natural-sparkling table wine (Vin de France) made with chenin & chardonnay by their friend Bruno. Zero added SO2, no dosage. They did this cuvée because they had a demand from abroad for a sparkling wine.
Honeyish aromas, a fresh wine I appreciate on this hot late-june day. 1200 bottles.
Du Rifi à Beaulieu is their table-wine range made with purchased grapes, a cuvée name they apply on different varieties, the first one Sébastien made was with still reds, a Côt, a Gamay and a Pineau d'Aunis, he was buying the grapes in the Loir-et-Cher département and it was a bit far to get the grapes, so they stopped buying there.

Gustave Eiffel's work in Saumur

Speaking of the commission d'agrément where they have their wine ckecked before getting the AOC, she says that they are always refused on the first pass but get accepted on the second [and they have to pay for each session....]. The administrative paper following this second (and successful) commission d'agrément often says "non conform" in the beginning of the report and "accepted" at the end, which is indirectly quite a compliment coming from the AOC commission... On a cuvée she remembers they noted "lack of fuit", and she understands that because the commission guys [who are from what I know usually conventional winegrowers] are used to tasting wines made with lab yeast which boost artificially the fruit side, and when they taste a real wine made with wild yeast they're not trained to understand and appreciate the experience.

If you have no time for the Eiffel tower in Paris, you can visit in Saumur a beautiful bridge made by Gustave Eiffel. It seems that in the 2nd half of the 19th century he made tons of bridges across France and the world for a living, see here the list of bridges he built, this one was made in 1975 along with 3 others in other regions.... At the Eiffel tower you have to face the countless pickpocketing gangs working under the nose of the police (too busy arresting nude-selfie artists...), but here in Saumur, no tourists (and no other typical Parisian annoyances either) and with the low river in summer you can approach the bridge easily. I even saw along the road a fenced area (easy to climb over) behind which you had stairs overgrown with weeds leading to the tracks and the bridge. I don't think the bridge is much used, or maybe just for a few slow freight trains.
On the picture on right you can guess in the far the old stone bridge of the city of Saumur, which sits on the left bank of the Loire river.

Domaine Bobinet's wines are exported (50 %) to the United States (Percy Selections, also Selection Naturel in Boston, and Garagiste in Seattle), in Canada (Quebec : Primavin, Ontario : Sedimentary Wines, Brazil, Japan (Oeno-connection), Hong-Kong (la Cabane), Australia (Lofi Wines), the United Kingdom (Gergovie Wines), Sweden (Wine Trade), Norway (Autentico), Denmark (Lieu-Dit), Finland (Gusto Partners), Austria (Wein Skandal), Italy (a few shops actually), Spain (L'Anima del Vi), Belgium (Troca Vins) plus a bit in Holland.

Domaine Bobinet Sébastien Bobinet & Emeline Calvez 315 route de Montsoreau 49400 Saumur phone + 33 2 41 67 62 50 mobile + 33 6 87 62 31 14 Facebook page