This wine made our day a couple weeks ago (actually even two days as we made it last over the course of two diners...), we had opened this bottle of Emmanuel Giboulot, this is a wine made from parcels that were already farmed with biodynamy, and there's no doubt it's related with the exquisite qualities of this wine, so pure and neat, and with this living feel. The wine ferments in old barrels and is aged on its lees for a year. 11 years after it was vinified, it's still a marvel. B. had kept this bottle in a cellar since she bought it during our visit there in 2006, and this wasn't even a very cool cellar at her atelier, means these wines are very stable, they have a life of their own. Sometimes you taste an old vintage and people say, Oh, it hasn't changed, it's well preserved, but it's often because it has been dead-frozen by heavy so2 addings.
A few weeks ago we went to a wine bar/restaurant named Pratz, near Pigalle in the 9th arrondissement, and we had a few wines including this joyful thirst-wine Chinon, full of fruit and freshness, if you're wary of Cabernet Franc try this. It was priced 12 € to go, add 8 € for the cork fee. The wine is made by a guy named Nicolas Grosbois who farms some 9 hectares in biodynamy. This cuvée went through a Beaujolais-type cold maceration, very easy to drink.
Here the manager of Pratz, Thomas Babot, holds a bottle of Philippe Jambon which I'll try one of these days : Allez les Verres !!! (From Allez les Verts, a favorite expression for
the football fans).
There's a
pretty good selection of wines in this bar, with the prices to go clearly chalked on the bottles so that you can
walk in like in a wine shop, choose your bottles and leave. All natural wines.
The selection for the wines by the glass was the following when we visited :
Whites : Vouvray Sébastien Brunet 5 € - Clot de Les Soleres (Catalonia) 6 € - Alsace Demi-Sec Rietsch 5 € - San Lorenzo (Italy) 5 € -Sparkling : Muscadet Landron 5,5 €
Reds : Nicolas Grosbois Chinon 5 € - Domaine des Deux Terres (Ardèche) 5,5 € - Marcel Richaud 6,5 € - Frédéric Palacios Languedoc 6 €.
The small restaurant/bar has several food portions priced between 7 and 10 €, plus some cheese and charcuterie planches priced 10 to 12 €. It's often full at the apéritif time after work and there's a sign saying don't bring glasses outside (neighbors often complain in Paris when crowds gather outside bars chatting loudly). Even if Pigalle is not far from here it's much more quiet near the bar and I woud say, safe in this area, it's more like a family residential area.
Address : 59 rue Jean-Baptiste Pigalle, Paris 75009
Just a couple days before I shot this picture, Laurent Saillard was in New York where in addition to seeing his sons and friends he took part to Big Glou, a large natural-wine tasting taking place at the Wythe Hotel, plus other events in town like the Salon des Vins Libres (to paraphrase the General De Gaulle's words in Montreal in 1967), he says there has never been so many natural-wine vintners in Ne York at the same time, the events were really great, they were about 100 winemakers (twice 50) and the public was really great too, attendees were enthusiast and wine wise, lots of young people in their 20s' or 30s'. Plus the weather was nice and not too cold, this was a nice stay. Laurent sells a lot of wine in New York but he also sells to Japan and Australia. Until now he was short give allotments to his buyers, but he is increasing his surface and production, 5000 bottles in 2014 to 12 000 bottles in 2015 and possibly 25 000 in 2016, meeting at last the demand. He says 2015 is a great vintage, he loves this vintage.
I've cruised twice across these vineyards on different days on the plateau with my old citroën (almost the only car that could maneuver on the muddy grass roads at the time), passing the tower house of Clos Roche Blanche before attacking the slope through the woods and each time once arrived on the plateau among the vines I'd stumble at a time or another upon Panache, Laurent's American-born dog who seemed utmost happy in his new life as gentleman farmer, wandering alone among the rows, paying no attention to this blue Citroën cruising painstakingling along the rain soaked dirt road. The dog had plenty of mud all along his legs and seemed to pursue who knows what, a game track maybe. He would run along the rows, turn, look and smell something and keep going. Happy dog, who would guess this was ages ago a New Yorker familiar with Brooklyn's pavements' smells ?
A few weeks ago the respectable spirits maker Suze organized an event in Paris to promote its Suze-based cocktails and conquer a younger public [I didn't link to the company's website because they have this stupid, ubiquitous, usuer-unfrienly webpage where you have to type your date of birth before entering the site]. The Suze as well as Absinthe and other liqueurs are produced in an old factory in Thuir (south of France), it's open for visits although I heard the new visit is shorter and less interesting than what it used to be
The event took
place at Le Perchoir on a roof bar in Paris
with a great view. The theme of the event was the Alps and old-style winter sports, with a feel of mountain cabin or refuge. An unscheduled power cut probably caused by the electric grill to prepare the sandwiches to go with the cocktails helped reinforce this mountain hideout feel.
They worked with mixolgist Stephen Martin who runs a bar named A La Française in the 10th arrondissement (a profile here with pics) at 50 rue Léon Frot in the 11th arrondissement. The man loves all these old French spirits and he works with them for new cocktails recipes, trying also to makes drinks that are lower in alcohol like the ones we had that evening.
The cocktails we tasted that day were not very bitter, that is, we were said, because they target a younger public which isn't yet into bitter notes. I asked the young man we spoke with (and who seemed to know a lot about the issue) about what changes the Suze drink went through since its creation in 1889, and he said that at the beginning it was 35 % alcohol, then because of regulations and taxes went down to 20 % then 15 % to remain under the tax ceiling of the time.
In 2010 they launched back an older versuion of Suze with 20 % alcohol with more concentration in bitterness agents so that bartenders and mixologists can use it as a base. Last year they also launched a line of Suze bitters high on key aromatic components that can be used by bartenders like Angostura bitters.
among the cocktails we had that evening I preferred the Coquetel d'Eau Fraiche, made with peach syrup, suze, Gin and tonic water.
I'm not ma&king this up, here is a bottle I found at the flea market of Porte de Montreuil in Paris, for guess how much ? a couple of euros €.... The guy was selling maybe 6 or 7 different bottles, the rest being like 20-year-old supermarket junk wine and in the middle of the lot there was this bottle with obviously missing wine in the
bottle but not that
much when you guessed it was a very old prestigious bottle. The guy wasn't aware of what Chateau Kirwan was, he was just selling these bottles as old wine, and doing it honestly like telling me I shouldn't open it because the wine might not be drinkable, I should just buy it for the fun of it, for the decoration. I made a deal for a couple of € after initially (and foolishly) walking away.
I thought this bottle could be from the 1950s' maybe, the neck lable where the year was initially printed was gone, so it was just about guessing its age, anyway this was an exciting bargain. Back home I emailed the picture to a friend who is knowledgeable on old vintages, and he told me it was much older than that, probably from between 1925 and 1935....
Edit : I just spoke to Philippe Delfaut of Chateau Kirwan at the tasting of the Union des Grands Crus de Bordeaux yesterday [more on this later] and this bottle could even be older than that, possibly from the early 20th century.
I haven't opened the bottle yet but I'll do it with B. one of these days.
I went to Omnivore recently, this is a large foody event with workshops, conferences and some wine and other fine drinks. I met chatted with Kristin Frederick, the American expat who launched years ago the food truck wave in Paris with Le Camion qui Fume (means the smoldering truck) where she made athentic American hamburgers. The last news is that she just opened (barely a month ago) a brick-and-mortar restaurant, also named Le Camion qui Fume, it's 168 rue Montmartre in the 2nd arrondissement.
I tasted the wines of Yohann Moreno, a young vigneron from the Languedoc (Corbières) whom I forgot to shoot a picture of, even his bottle or full glass of wine, so here is my report :
Yohann set up his domaine in 2013 and is making a single cuvée of which he is selling right now the first vintage. He bought two parcels, one of Carignan and one of Grenache for a total surface of 1,4 hectare and he blends the two for his cuvée (Gre 60 % - Car 40 %). In addition to this surface he got some family vineyards that were in fermage -grenache, carignan, syrah and mourvèdre) but he still have to sell most of it to the local coop because of the contract, for now at least. He now farms a total of 5 hectares already and for the 2015 he will have several cuvées.
__ Yohann Moreno Vin de Pays d'Oc 2013. Not in the AOC Corbières because there's no Syrah, the compulsory variety in the blend here. In the mouth, the wine is appealing, gouleyant and warmful with yet freshness. Grapes are hand picked, Organic farming, 15-day carbonic maceration with whole-clustered grapes, pressing, one year and a half élevage in vats (fiber and stainless steel), addig of 1,5 gr SO2 before bottling. The alcohol level is very reasonable for the region : 13,2 %. He wants to make a wine that is easy to drink. Pro price is 6 €.
Ludovic Engelvin works on 6,5 hectares in the Languedoc, he started his domaine in 2010 (not a family inherited winery) and already exports 80 % US : Avant Garde, Japan : L'Avenir). He makes 5 cuvées in all, 2 young vines and 3 old vines.
__ Blanc de Noir Espontaneo 2015, a Languedoc white Vin de France made from Grenache Noir, direct press, that's why it's white. It's a bit yellow,
it's not oxidation he says it's just the vintage because in 2015 there was very little juice in the grapes.
Very tasty, a great white from the Languedoc, balanced (makes between 12,5 & 13 % alc.) and easy to drink all the while offering a solid structure. Very nice. Sells for about 15 € at the domaine. 4500 bottles.
__ Cru-Elles, Vin de France 2014. He refuses to use Syrah so he is barred from the AOC, he says he loves the Syrah in Cornas, but not in his region, and he doesn't care about the AOC, he produces few bottles and they sell without problem. 10 000 bottles. Costs 14,5 € at the domaine.
Cru - Elles (means also cruelles) is made from young vines (less than 40) of Grenache & Mourvèdre on limestone with élevage in vats. Unfiltered. Very enjoyable nose with intricated aromas of ripe flowers and garrigue.
__ Vieilles Vignes 2014 "I bring You My Flesh" 2014, old vines of Grenache Noir. Very nice, with more refineness and a complex nose. Costs 58 € at the domaine. 1700 bottles
__ Les Vieux Ronsard Vin de France 2014, old vines (1950) on sandy clay on northern exposition. Grenache Noir again. Also nice, deep flowery aromas, peony. Well tamed tannins, good job. Was bottled in september and goes on sale in april. SO2 : none in the vinification, and adding of 1 to 1,5 gr/hectoliter before bottling. It's neither fully destemmed or fully whole-clustered, it's case by case and a bit of both. Yields are 15 ho/ha here.
They don't plow the soil, they cut the grass and in summer it dries anyway.
__ Blanc de Noir, vieilles vignes "Sans Titre" Vin de France 2014. Grenache Noir. Very ripe, very enjoyable.
Oronce de Beler and his wife Victorine are based in Vosne Romanée, Burgundy, Oronce set up a négoce there working with selected parcels he buys the grapes from throughout Burgundy. His wines labelled under his négoce name La Maison Romane were certainly the best surprise of the tasting event. He started his business in 2005, buys fruit from 4 grower s to make half a dozen cuvées for a total volume of 10 000
bottles
__ Eaux Vives, white Vin de France 2012. Very turbid, unfiltered
Chardonnay, with grapes coming from several terroirs including Chablis. very lively color There's a little bit of SO2 added at racking before bottling. Very nice white with a very strong but lovely acidity, almost a veil-wine feel also, it's because of the oxidation during the élevage in casks as the fermentation (on wild yeast) took longer than expected. Costs 9 € without tax.
__ Chablis Grand Cru Côte de Bougros 2010. He stopped vinifying Chablis but still has some in his stock to sell. Unfiltered also but looks crystal clear because of the long decantation. Pro price : 35 €.
__ Chateau de Berzé, Macon 2012. Old vines, he says, 80 for the oldest. His reds are vinified 100 % whole-clustered, he likes vinifying this way he says, it gives fruity aromas ans aerial wines, more on length than on width. The color of the robe looks a bit turbid, milky, with a color almost évoluée, it's directly a feature from the whole-clustered fermentation, he says, the the color stays where it is after that. Very nice aromas, I love that, excellent. Costs about 14 € pro price, looks expensive for a Macon but you must taste it before voicing an opinion, it's really a nice Burgundy red. He says they pick very late these grapes for a good maturity of 12 °, here it was between october 15 and 18 (and in 2014 it was october 28). He isn't looking for extreme maturity but for a nice sap yielding great wines.
__ Marsannay Longeroies 2014, bottled recently during the harvest 2015. 100 % whole-clustered grapes again. Mouth : great, sharp acidity. Oronce says that he likes volatile acidity, he isn't looking for it but he let's it come during the élevage, he says it's part of the backbone of a wine. In the early years of a wine you can feel it a little too forward but after some years it will blend into the wine and with the aromatics of the wine building up in the wine it will be a plus. In the mouth the texture is very refined. They use old barrels, which he buys from La Romanée Conti, his neighbor in Vosne Romanée (he buys them 4 casks every other year), and in order not to use slfur wicks on the casks he fills them just as the previous wine is racked, this way the barrels remain always full. This wine costs about 19 € pro price.
__ La Justice Gevrey-Chambertin 2013. What a nose ! Such a beautiful fruit with a hint of freshness and also discreet notes of flowers. Color : lightly turbid. Mouth : very nice indeed, delicious. 55 year old vines. He says La Justice is an interesting terroir, there's a vein in the soil with stones surfacing and it yields wines with a sappy character. Pro price about 30 €.
He exports to different countries, like Japan (Orveaux), Spain (ViLa Viniteca), Denmark (Domaine Brandis) In Paris he sells mostly to restaurants. Some of wines can be found on the wine list of some of the best restaurants abroad, like Can Roca in Spain and Noma in Copenhagen (Noma just took one of his Chablis, I can't but urge them to come and taste these terrific reds instead...).
The wines of La Maison Romane.
Here is a young vigneronne who heads an organic domaine in Chablis, her ,name is Athénais de Béru and her family domaine is the Chateau de Béru. Until relatively recently the vineyards were managed by someone else under the fermage system (French long-term rentals for agricultural land), and 10 years ago in 2006 Athénais decided to have these vineyards back progressively and launch the family domaine. The vineyard surface is 15 hectares, the whole being farmed organic and with biodynamy, and this from the start, she felt this was the only way. The Chateau de Béru is also a real Chateau
where you can stay (they rent rooms) and they run a bar with charuterie/cheese there for two months in summer (july-august).
__ Chablis Côte aux Prêtres 2014. This isn't a Grand Cru but Béru has its own terroirs and Arhénais works a lot on the parcellaire to let the terroir stand out. Nice texture and mouth touch. From the start the grapes are picked in 15-kg boxes and they sort the grapes.
__ Chablis Clos Béru Monopole 2013. There's a clos in the Chateau grounds and here is its wine. Athénais took part a few days ago to the Big Glou tasting in New York, she says it was great, it was the 1rst natural-wine tasting of this scale in New York. She loved the way even non-professionals were interested and knew a lot, and other restaurants organized dinners where they were invited, it was a great experience.
__ Chablis Clos Béru Monopole 2006. Same terroir but this is the 1st vintage by Athénais, when she started the family domaine anew. The wine has a somehow greenish color and in the mouth it's a bit green also, I find. Athénais says that at the time she was only beginning to get the vineyard back on tracks, plow the soil and so on, so her wines changed a lot since. Also she says she used more SO2 on the wines compared to now (and in 2006 because of the vintage she had to put some on the grapes). She likes to open this 2006 from time to time because it aged quite well even if its aromas have evolved, it retained lots of freshness. Speakling of SO2, today she begins to make wines without any added sO2 but that's not for the hype of it but that's because the wines have reach such a balance thanks to the vineyard managment and biodynamics, that she can vinify without SO2 naturally. She does that when the vintage allows it but it's more easy now. In the early years her wines had a total SO2 of maybe 50 which is already low for Chablis in general, and today her wines sport between 0 and 10 for the no-added-sulfites (self-produced SO2) and 20 total SO2 for the cuvées where they add some.
Asked if it's more difficult to farm organic in Chablis, she says no, she's not sure. She tells about 2013 which was a terrible vintage in terms of weather and conditions. The issue, she says is what wine you want to make. At Béru they resorted to doing drastic sorting, putting down half of the fruit because it was spoiling quicky and they didn't want to put sulfur on the incoming grapes or do some fining and other corrections [which mainstream wineries would have been ready to do in order to keep the total volume of the grapes]. She says the pickers felt sick to be obliged to put away all these grapes, but in the end they could vinify naturally even the 2013 and get nice results. Other wineries certainly did less sorting and corrected the vinification with various enolgy tools and products, something she refuses to do, she says she and her staff wanted to work this way from the start and they don't want to make exceptions under the pretext that the grape conditions are not optimum.
Her shortest élevage is one year, otherwise it's 1 year and a half or more for the parcellaire and the Clos Béru is 2 years to 2,5 years. Long élevage allows her to bottle unfiltered wine, especially that her cellars are cold and the wines settle quickly. She says biodynamy brought a great balance and energy on the juices. She hasn't farm animals except hens and sheep but a neighbor has more and she has the vines plowed by his draft horse.
__ White Vin de France vinified in amphora. 450-liter volume made with grapes from the Clos. She says she loves maceration wines and that's an experiment. The wine has a nice tannic presence in the mouth, there's a nice tension in the wine with an enjoyable chew.
Prices of her wines start at 16 or 17 for the Chablis Villages and the priciest cuvée, the Clos Béru costs 40 €.
She says she exports 3/4 of her production, much in Europe including Scandinavia, in the U.S, Japan (Vortex).
The wines of Chateau de Béru
I tasted several wines of Sarnin-Berrux, this is a terroirs négoce based in Monthelie (Burgundy). Jean-Pascal Sarnin was there pouring the wines :
__ Gamay, Vin de France 2014. Very nice acidity, I love these nothern-latitude wines. Delicious. He says this is made with 80-year-old vines that have been uprooted since. Too bad, this is delicious, but I guess the yields were very low with the missing vines. Costs 14 € at a caviste, good deal, excellent wine.
__ Bourgogne (générique) 2014. Nice intensity in the mouth with a power feel when you swalllow.
__ Monthelie 2014. Excellent wine, costs 35 € in a wine shop. Vinified like the rest : whole-clustered and in open-top tronconic fermenters.
__ Volnay 2014. Again, what a pleasure, nice chew.
At Omnivore I was to have many good surprises, here with a French-made Gin. It was so intensely aromatic and smooth to swallow, I was just baffled, I could feel the smell of the juniper berries when you crush them with your finger nails, I do it regularly when I walk through the garrigue in Provence and pass a wild juniper. Great experience, don't pâss this Gin if you have the opportunity to sample it. The distillery is barely one year old and It's great that they can already produce such a quality.
It's made by the little-known Distillerie de Paris which was created by Sébastien and Nicolas Julhès, the two brothers who run the excellent Epicerie Julhès also known for its great tastings of spirits. They set up a crowdfunding account to finance their project and this was a huge success. Watch these guys, they're into terrific spirits, they just used to sell them, now they make them, expect the best. The Gin should be distributed soon by Lavinia (price not displayed yet but the guy at the stand told me it'd sell for 43 € / 50 cl)
Article (in French) about this distillery.
Also at Omnivore I tasted Mezcal, look at these two cuvées the one from Oaxaca and the one from Durango, this is just so good and intensely aromatic, a wonder to swallow ! They're organic and totally artisan stuff, they're sold by Mezcales de Leyenda, it's a must-try Mezcal, believe me. From what the guy at the stand told me, it's not found in retail in Paris yet but only in bars (also cocktail bars I guess). In the US it can be found for about 70 $ a bottle, not cheap but from the two I tasted, well worth it.
Reading the news tells you a lot about the changing texture of the French society, even when the mainstream media doesn't dare to name things properly by sheer political correctness. Here in this article we learn that a group of women have organized themselves in Aubervilliers (naming their group "Place aux Femmes" or "make room for women") with the goal to have a visible presence as women in the town's bars where they otherwise feel excluded (see on the left the official poster of this group). What the newspaper article doesn't say is why on earth would women
feel excluded in bars in Aubervilliers at the door of Paris (or in any of these suburbs by the way), would there by chance be a certain culture (I dare not say a religion) behind this feeling of exclusion by women ?...What could be the common cultural
trait of the men in bars or in the street along the terraces that behave in a way that women feel excluded and have to resort to such an organized resistance ?!?. No information on that in the article, but the French (like other West-Europeans) are now used to interpret and decode the politically-correct soup they're fed with everyday in the media. This self-censorship regarding the imported cultural shifts [I'll not be more specific, to stay in line with this article...] makes Western Europe look more and more like the Soviet Union where the people used to read news and understand the untold reality beyond the coded jargon of the official press. It's more than just sad, it's really worrying, especially when you remember the atrocities of Cologne (women involved again) which the mainstream media, the German State-funded TV and the German police tried to keep under the lid for the public eye.
Speaking of political correctness and Soviet censorship, in our progressive West, forget the archaic tools like the paper files, Rolodex and tape recordings, thank God everyone prints his/her opinion in a single media and Zuckerberg just offers his services to fight the pro-capitalist rightists hateful racists, the Stasi itself would have dreamed of that... Add to that the shadowbanning technique used discreetly by Twitter and you wonder, who needs a formal dictatorship ?
I smile at the idea of someone coming here in Paris straight from the past, let's say a wild woman like Edith Piaf for example reading the aforementioned news article. She was certainly familiar with women in bars and also with the quartiers populaires referred to in the article (another newspeak code word we'll brief her about). She'd think "what the hell is going on in 2016 ? Women having to organize fight to go in bars in the quartiers populaires ?!?" She'd end up going to Aubervilliers herself and then, OMG she'd understand in one glance. Welcome to 1984 2016, Edith...
Other article telling about the bad stares by "youths" when these women began to sit at bar terraces in Aubervilliers.
I tried recently an even-cheaper way to travel than car sharing (I don't even mention the overpriced SNCF trains) : buses. France has at last been
forced to accept the competition of bus companies which is making travel through France very affordable. All these past years we owe the lack of inter-city bus lines in France to the secret lobbying of the SNCF which was given some kind of veto right each time a bus company wanted to connect two French towns, and the French government also helped in the enforcement of the SNCF monopoly by fear that the until-now captive customers would flee the overpriced SNCF en masse, pushing the heavily-subsidized train company closer to bankruptcy.
Using Flixbus or Eurolines you can go to Tours for only 9 € one way and to Angers for 12 €. For the Cher valley I took a bus to Chateauroux (9 €) then from there I took another bus from the company L'aile Bleue (3 € to go back 50 km north to the area south of the Cher, it stops in many villages). Their prices are similar but Eurolines is cheaper to go from Paris to Bordeaux (18 €). You can have 2 large bags plus one in the cabin, and there's wifi in the bus and you can plug your tablet or phone to keep your battery full. Amazing.
EDIT : Paris to Bordeaux costs 8 € with Megabus and this company goes also for example from Paris to Tours (3 € !) or to Angers (4 € !), some days being cheaper than others, plan ahead....
I didn't go by motorbike because it was too cold and B. needed her car, so the bus seemed the good option. Plus it was to snow heavily shortly after I arrived (a day after) and I even had to cancel my visit to the saturday morning market in Saint Aignan. Snow in early march is not uncommon, but not on this scale, that was a great day to stay near the stove.
We had this Misiones De Rengo Cabernet Sauvignon - Syrah 2004, a Chilean wine which I was given some time ago by a relative and which none of us could really drink. I don't know if it has to do with the vinification mode they used or the climate over there in Chile but this was was so concentrated and over extracted, it was difficult to enjoy. Plus, after just a couple of glasses (not full) I was knocked out and fell asleep (not really asleep, I was knocked out), terrible thing. So we thought we'd use the wine for a Boeuf Bourguignon or ox tail which we cook also in tannic red but as we didn't have really the opportunity and time to do the dish B. thought about using the wine to soak dry figs in it. The result was very nice. She added a couple of spices in the thing but I'm sure you can try that if you have some similar tannic/over-extracted leftover.
I visited the Vivre Autrement fair the other day in the Parc de Vincennes near Paris, it's a mixture of a fair dealing organic products, healthy foods and other, more bizarre holistic stuff that I'd say have 1960s' New Age flavors. The attendance reflects this and frankly I was wondering what I'd find here, not even sure I'd find interesting wines or other objects of interest. But at the end of an alley I found at last a great stand, the one of Kokopelli, the group dealing with ancient and local vegetable
seeds which was sued and heavily fined by the French government
and a large industrial seeds company for daring to distribute these authentic seeds not registered in the European Authorized Seeds Catalog [sic : there is indeed such an Orwellian catalog in the EC, guess why so many people want to leave the EC....].
I was looking at the bags of seeds on display when a giu came to me (I was taking pictures) and we chatted about dill (aneth in French), I told him about my own Russian dill (укроп in Russian) which I sow every year in the Loire and he showed interest, asking if I could send some seeds to him, to which of course I agreed [I hope the European Seeds Police is not reading this...] and I told him about Russia being a big unknown organic player, to which he agreed, grabbing a book that was on display in their bookshop, it is the story of Russian scientist Nikolai Vavilov who played a great role in promoting plant diveristy, collecting plant seeds and creating the world's biggest seeds bank in Leningrad. He fell in disgrace from Stalin for opposing the
pseudoscientific ideas of fellow productivist scientist Trofim Lisenko and was subsequently arrested in 1940 [mugshot when arrested] and sentenced to death, dying in prison of starvation in 1943.
The book Jocelyn holds in his hands is Aux Sources de Notre Nourriture : Nikolai vavilov et la Découverte de la Biodiversité (English-version title : Where Our Food Comes From: Retracing Nikolay Vavilov's Quest to End Famine), this is a good reminder about the role of the Russian botanist in our culture of plant diversity (here is the Amazon link for the English version).
Article in French about this Nikolai Vavilov book
Jocelyn gave me a DVD made by a friend, Guillaume Bodin, La Clef des Terroirs, it's about terroir, biodynamy and connection with nature. Guillaume Bodin is also the author of Insecticide mon Amour, a documentary dealing with insecticide in the vineyard, and rebels like Emmanuel Giboulot who refused to spray insecticides even when ordered to do it by the government (the Préfecture).
Also at Autrement I found this winery, the Domaine du Mortier from the Bourgeuil area, it's a 20-year-old, 15-hectare domaine managed by two brothers, it's organic from the start and it makes nice unfiltered wines that are very consumer friendly with affordable prices.
__ Les Vignes du Mortier, Brain de Folie, Vin de France 2015. Here it's made from an experimental vineyard
made of cab franc parcels intertwined with wood blocks, like 60 ares of vines with 40 ares of woods
around it each time. The wine is a light
thirst wine vinified whole-clustered, a 14-day carbonic maceration. Very fruity with some light bitterness on the side. No SO2, unfined, unfiltered. 6000 bottles. Just bottled 15 days ago. Should be better in a few weeks because of the recent bottling I think.
__ Domaine du Mortier, Graviers, Saint-Nicolas-de-Bourgueil 2014. Cab Franc of course. Soil : Loire sediments (sand) on 30 cm at the surface, then silex and gravel (60 cm) and then friable chalk and the limestone bed rock is at a 6-meter depth. Vines from 1963. The grapes are destemmed here, but remain whole. 18-day maceration. Very enjoyable wine, more depth and dark fruit. 10-month élevage. 9 € tax included at the domaine, very nice deal (they made the same price at the fair).
__ Domaine du Mortier Les Pins, Bourgueil 2014. Soil : clay on the sirface, 1,2 meter, with friable limesone then underneath. Cold terroir because of the clay, gets warm later, same for blossoming and ripening, makes more complex wines. 25-day maceration of destemmed grapes in large oak foudres with foot stomping. All their wines are fermented with the indigenous yeast, the vinification is done without
any SO2, they just add 1gr/hectoliter before bottling. What's great at this domaine is that they print the free-SO2 and total-SO2 levels on each cuvée on the back labels (I dream of a day when all wineries will have the guts to do that !). For this cuvée there's 25 mg total SO2, it could be considered like a silfites-free SO2 but they actually added a bit. 12 month élevage for Les Pins, unfiltered 10 € tax included, excellent deal !
They export 20 % of the production, to Brazil, the United States (Jenny & François in N.Y. and Bon Vivant in Oregon), Canada (Quebec - Martin Landry), Japan (Ma Vie, Mr tamura.).
__ Domaine du Mortier, Dionysos, Saint-Nicolas-de-Bourgueil 2013. 60-year-old vines. 100 % cab franc. Difficult vintage as you know in 2013 and that's why only 11,7 % alcohol for this cuvée, with acidity at 4.12 (Les Pins 2014 was at 13,4 % and acidity 3.4). The wine is indeed beatifully acidic when swallowed, I love that, lovely wine with ths crisp mouth. 23 ho/ha yields (also printed on the back label.
When I passed this stand I suddenly remember reading Isabelle Legeron's book on natural wine, I learnt there that Nicolas Joly was a fervent consumer of birch water or birch sap, which he'd go find himself in the woods (he's probably doing it right now, we're in the middle of the birch-sap harvest. Birch sap (sève de bouleau in French)
is said to be full of healthy properties for everybody (but some say it may be a temporary craze), and I was eager to taste that for the first time :
It's not very aromatic, tastes almost like water I'd say, interesting, gives me the idea to go in the woods and learn how to collect sap. You have to respect the season window and stop in time so that the tree doesnt suffer of the drain. I understand that you can collect quite a volume in a single day.
They collect the sap like they do in Canada for Maple trees, just that here they don't have to process it, you can drink it as is, no preservatives added, no pasteurisation (neither flash pasteurisation), no filtration and no alcohol additive. It is "fresh" birch sap and it's taste can evolve with time because of the lack of preservative, the man at the stand says that when you finish your birch-water treatment it may become perly in the bag-in-box. Here at Vegetal Water they sell a 5-liter bag-in-box for about 60 € (retail price in organic shops).
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