Saint-Nicolas-de-Bourgueil (Loire)
I met Fabien Boisard a year ago in a tasting event in Paris and I was impressed at the time by the range of true, unfiltered wines made from organic vineyards. Fabien and his brother Cyril are running this domaine in the northern end of the Saint-Nicolas-de-Bourgueil area. The young brothers started this adventure in
1996. It all really started when their parents bought this
house in the 1990s as a residence, this was a traditional vigneron's house with a 0,5-hectare parcel attached to the property. Cyril & Fabien were teenagers at the time (Fabien was 13) and the former grower showed them how to tend the vines, prune and so on, going all the way to show them how to vinify the tiny parcel for the family consumption.
His brother Cyril loved doing the vineyard work so he went to the wine school of Montreuil Bellay near Saumur, this is a school where you alternate formal courses with training in different domaines, and during one of these traineeship placements he worked for a vigneron who was happening to sell 3 hectares of vines less than one kilometer away. Their father bought the parcels in order to help Cyril, who was 19 at the time, start his own domaine. He kept working for other growers like it's often the case when you start with a small surface. Cyril began alone at first and Fabien joined the nascent domaine in 1998 when another grower showed up with another surface of 5 hectares available for them, this was also around here at a short distance. The owner tended his vineyard the old style in an organic way without an official certification but he relied on plowing and soil work, selling a small part of his wine in bottles and the rest in bulk.
See the pictures of the two brothers on the left, courtesy of the Syndicat des Vins de Saint-Nicolas de Bourgueil (nice portrait by the way).
At this time they weren't equipped in terms of room and tools to vinify the equivalent of 8 hectares, so they offered him to do the transfer progressively, buying him one hectare per year for 5 years, which let them the time to adapt the size of their facility and do the needed construction, Fabien's arriving here in 1998/1999 with himself a degree in viticulture/oenology. Today the domaine's surface further increased, reaching 15 hectares today : since 2003 they're working on reconstructing an experimental vineyard in the nearby village of Brain-sur-Allonnes. They recovered several old parcels of Cabernet Franc that were farmed by an elderly man for his family use (this was still a good surface, 1,5 hectare) and they replanted other varieties nearby since, Menu Pineau, Chenin, Grolleau, Sauvignon Blanc & Cabernet Sauvignon. The experimental side of this recovery is that each time they replant they add bio diversity in the form of trees, fruit trees (they planted 30 apple trees), chestnut, ash & acacia, and also plants. They can't yet fully gauge the effects of this biodiversity since 2003 but their idea is though the plant/insect diversity over there to be able to intervene the least possible and have a balanced ecosystem that fights pests and disease.
Having grown progressively, they never had to sell grapes, or wine in bulk they've been selling their wine in bottles from the very start. Until 2005 they were selling only to private customers and from 2005 because of a rapid rise in their volume of wine, they began to turn to professional buyers, mainly cavistes & restaurants. Today they sell 40 % to private customers (from the domaine or on wine fairs)
and 60 % to professionals including 15 % export. The main export volume is the United States (Jenny & François & Bon Vivant Merchants), Japan (Ma Vie Co.) followed by Canada (Quebec, Wino Import) , Brazil, the United Kingdom (Vine Trail & Carte Blanche Wines), Belgium, Switzerland, Australia (Halle aux Vins), Singapore.
They keep 45 barrels in this cellar and about 40 in the other, a third of their wines having an élevage in old casks. they renew some of the barrels but they're already 5 years old when they arrive here, and they keep them for about 10 years. They get them
from fellow winemakers in Burgundy or Bordeaux, putting rosé inside the 1st year and using them for their reds only afterthen. When the barrels arrive here they haven't been sulfur-wicked but the previous wine may have had SO2 and the rosé interlude helps protect the reds from any interference on this matter. The humidity in the cellar allows them not to have to top up the barrels so often. In 2016 they made much less wine and as a result they're going to have to get rid of some barrels, they'll back others when they need them. They don't like to do sulfur wick (the thing you to to preserve the empty barrels), they prefer to fill a barrel right after they rack the previous wine.
Here on the side you can see the chimney-sized aperture going up to the chai, that's through this passage the wine is going down to the barrels, by gravity.
Speaking of the vinification, they use zero additive during the vinification including SO2, they've set up different strategies to be able to vinify naturally without getting faults in the wine and a lot has to do with hygiene.
We visit a first parcel just above the house on the slope, it's a recent replanting, it's now in its 3rd year (3rd leaf), this is Cabernet Franc and they'll have the first harvest with it this year. From what I understand it's a fermage, they rent the land, that's the
reason they keep the trellising
and other features because they can't really do what they want on the rentals, while in Brain-sur-Allonnes where they do their experimental vineyards they're more free to innovate. This is a very small parcel that was planted before, ity was uprooted 10 years ago and the owners wanted to have it replanted.
The vines' shoots have not been trimmed yet, their philosophy is to do it the latest possible because the apex (which is the sensitive part at the end of the shoot) is very important, it captures the sun's energy and works like a brain. In certain parcels they don't cut, they don't trim, they just roll the shoot around the wires. Here they wait theend of blossoming. I feel that vines that are not trimmed look so much happier, I always feel bad when I see these clean-cut conventional vineyards, the grower is usually very proud of his square-looking rows but I feel bad for the vines and I have the vague impression this will reflect alas in the wines..
As we were walking to another parcel we spotted Fabien's father who I think was tending the vegetable garden further down on the slope. I don't think the vineyard in the background is theirs.
We walked to another parcel on the other side, passing on the way the farm's stock of firewood under a corrugated iron roof.
Speaking of the frost they had a 60 % loss last year in 2016 here, on the 27th of april the temperature dropped to minus 6 or 7 C (21,2 or 19,4 F) and they made only 30 % of a normal harvest. This year the frost hit also, mostly april 28 & 29, they had fewer losses with 15 to 20 % of the buds hit, they estimate the losses to 10 or 15 %, considering the recovering of the vines at the time of the visit, which is much less than the 70 % loss of last year. They were helped by a couple of wind turbine for some of the parcels, they co-own them through a CUMA (regouping several farmers buying tools together) and they also bought a mobile turbine, a Frostguard, a machine you can put wherever you want and blows hot air all around, it's quite an investment at 8000 € apiece and it works better when you have 3 or 4 of them that can cover together a large surface, so they may invest progressively in more such tools. The one they had protected 30 ares but not the whole one-hectare parcel.°
Near the heating wood we passed also the open barn with the tractors and other tools, here Fabien is showing me the walk plow, it's a décavaillonneuse which the growers use to plow under the rows, going carefully around the vines. They use it in the old parcels, it's still pulled by a tractor but the fact you walk behind (actually two people walk behind) and hold it gives you a direct control over the plowing, and you have less casualties among the oddly-shaped vines, you adapt the swinging of the plow better. Of course they also have a recent décavaillonneuse with an hydraulic sensor, the type which is used all over, it's more appropriate for straight rows with well-standing vines on a sandy or at least soft soil. Otherwise they have the other usual tools, the one to scratch the surface of the soil for example in order to get rid of the weeds.
They also sow cereals and legumes in certain parcels between the rows on a 50-cm stripe, either to limit the vigor or to bring nutrients when they mow the weeds later. That's the case when they grow winter beans between the rows, they mulch it and 3 months later it normally transforms into natural nitrogen for the soil. This will turn into better fermentations for the wild yeast later in the cellar.
This is the historic parcel which was part of the property when their father bought the house, it was planted in 1963 and that with this parcel that the family began to learn the skills of tending a vineyard. Cabernet Franc also of course. Speaking of the straying they use bouillie bordelaise (copper) and sulfur, they use the least possible of these,
on average in a year between 1,5 and 3 kilograms copper per hectare depending of the vintage, they prefer small doses more often, and blended with various herb teas (comfrey, nettle, wicker, fern, horsetail) which allows them to have an overall lower volume used. For example if it's
nettle, they pick it the previous day of the spray, leave it marinate a night in a jute bag in rain water (they only use rain water for the sprays) and they'll use this same water for the copper the next day.
They also do biodynamic preparations and sprays since 2007, they're part of a 8-strong group of growers to prepare the silica and horn manure, the others are Sébastien David, Xavier Amirault, Laurent Herlin, Bertrand Galbrun, Christophe Deschamps, Xavier Courant and also the Domaine de la Chevalerie. They usually bury the horn at Bertrand Galbrun because he has an appropriate location but the picking of herbs is done here and there by more-or-less all the people. They're also helped bu Guy David, an expert market gardenerwho has been using biodynamie for decades for vegetable growing, he taught them lots of stuff. There's a dynamizer they all use in common, it's stored at Sébastien David's but the Boisard brothers have their own also here (pic on left, in front of the cement vats). They use biodynamie for the whole surface of their parcels.
They have not yet done a 501 this year (the 501 od the biodynamic spray that energizes the foliage, the plant), they 're waiting the right time, the vines look good for now, the staff is busy doing the debudding, kind of preparing the pruning of next winter. Pruning is important in the management of sap flow in the vine, and it is now known that faulty sap flow is related to Esca, this disease that kills many vines in the region. They're 5 to work in the domaine, the two brothers plus 2 full-time workers and a part time. One good thing is that on Saint-Nicolas-de-Bourgueil there are 20 % of organic vineyards now, which is a good improvement compared to 1996 when they were the only ones farming this way. In bourgueil it's even more, with 28 % of the surface. This means more and more neighbors working the same natural way which is good for the soils.
The weather was pretty good until now (besides the frost) and the pollination seems to have gone smoothly without coulure or millerandage at this pivotal stage of the grape, they'll finetune the work along the next weeks. Of course many other things can happen, you have storms, hail, disease, but to this day it's pretty nice.
Picking is done manually with 18-kilogram boxes, with the goal to avoid berries being crushed in the process, there's no back basket neither for the same reason, then they bring these boxes to the chai where 4 people (two on each side) check the grapes on a sorting table, taking into account that normally the sorting has already
be done in the vineyard by the pickers themselves. The team is more or less the same year
after year,
so the pickers know how to do their job. They also have a destemmer (pic on the side) that doesn't crush the grapes, it works very slowly and keeps the berries intact without the forceful bleeding often occuring with destemmers (it's made by Egretier). Normally there's a crusher beneat the destemmer but they took it away and they asked for a dimmer so that they can work at a slow pace.
As a result, 95 % of the berries are whole and they reach the vat with a conveyor belt. This careful destemming (after the careful picking) allows them to work without sulfur at this stage, the norm for most vignerons being to add sulfur on the incoming grapes because of the bleeding juice that can yield problems. It allows them to also preserve the fruit aromas because during the fermentation there's some sort of mini-carbonic maceration taking place in the intact berries. They also work hard to avoid getting the bitter tannins of the Cabernet Franc. Each cuvée having its own fermentation, case per case, for sandy soils it's like 15 days maceration in cement vats, a pumping over (without oxygen) every day for 5-10 minutes. On gravels, 18 days in cement vats with élevage in foudres/barrels. And for the clay/limestone slopes where they grow their most-structured wines, they'll use open-top wooden fermenters like the ones above for 25 days to a month, with daily foot stomping and no pumping over.
The tronconic vats were here before they were shipped to Grenier for transformation and renovation, they must be 40 years old, Fabien says. The Grenier cooperage removed thickness, keeping 3,5 centimeters instead of 4 intially. Right now they're coated with tartar which they will clean away with heat before the harvest. Normally, like the barrels these vats are never empty, they're used for the fermentation/vinification as
well as for the élevage, but because of the low volumes of 2016 some of they stay empty.
On the picture
above, Fabien pumps the floating lid of this fiber vat back to airtightness. The wines see no sulfur no SO2 during all the vinification & élevage, the only adding they make is before bottling when they add 10 mg so2, they try to adjust to between 10 mg and 15 mg free so2, as the bottling stage is a sensitive time for the wine. They're always under 30 mg total SO2 for all their wines, and you can have the info for each cuvée on the back label of the bottles. I remember to have noticed that when I first tasted their wines in Paris, and I wished that all wineries display the lab results for the so2 on their back labels (I think I'm a dreamer...). This should be compulsory as the consumer can be badly impacted by the enormous amounts of SO2 many commercial wineries add to their wines. Whan you buy a bottle, you should be informed about the alcohol content (which is already the case) and the total so2 content. And at Domaine du Mortier they use so2 of natural origin (from a mine in Poland), not the one extracted through oil wells. They burn it themselves, they don't use liquid so2.
__ La P'tite Vadrouille 2016. Mermot 55 %, Cabernet Franc 45 %. Because of the heavy frost of 2016 when they needed grapes they found some to buy
from friends farming organicly in Dordogne (Bordeaux region), they picked the grapes themselves over there and brought back the grapes in a refigerated truck to vinify them here in Saint-Nicolas-de-Bourgueil. This is not usual for them (they don't do négoce) and they created this cuvée for this shortage year. This year (2017) they'll be allowed also to buy grapes but this parcel in Dordogne ironically also froze in 2017 (and at 90 %) so they'll turn to another source.
Vinification : 12-day maceration, semi-carbo without pumping over, leaving the grapes still all that time in order to get the fruit aromas. The color of the wines isn't too dark for a Bordeaux. Yields are 41 hectoliters/hectare as you can see on the back label. The total so2 content is missing exceptionally.
__ Les Sables 2016, Cabernet Franc made from a 4,5-hectare surface through 7 different parcels on the flatland on 2 to 2,5 meters of Loire silt deposits, then underneath the compact rock
table through which the roots can't sneak through. The cuvée isn't into great complexity but rather on the fruit, that's the terroir. This vintage is more concentrated than usual because in 2016 after the frost losses they made only yields of 13-14 hectoliters per hectare. It's their biggest cuvée, they normally make 20 000 bottles of it, and with the frost in 2016 they made only 6000. Different nose here, it's 100 % cab franc. Unfiltered wine, this is the norm here. Smooth mouth feel, onctuous with freshness, very pleasant, you feel the tannins but it's OK, especially for a young vintage (2016). He the back label reads 26 mg total so2.
__ Les Graviers 2015, Cabernet Franc from a single parcel making 2,5 hectares on the plateau or terraces on a mix of 70 centimeters of sedimented sand
with clay-silex, small stones. Underneat there's a layer of friable limestone through which the roots can dig, and then lastly there's the rock table 6 to 7 meters deep. As a result this cuvée gets more complexity.
20 day maceration in cement vat and élevage 2/3 in tronconic foudres, 1/3 in barrels for 10 months, this wine was bottled in june 2016. I find meat juice aromas here, Fabien says the bottle was opened a day or two before, may have been more fruity at opening. More rustic than the previous wine which was very seductive, already easy to reach. Here you certainly need more wait.
__ Bourgueil les Pins 2015, from a 2-hectare parcel, 50-year-old vines on lots of clay, then friable chalk, the, the liimestone rock table 12 meters under the surface.
Here the Cabernet Franc ripes much later, this is usually the last parcel they pick. Maceration in open top wooded fermenters for 25 days, the, élevage for 10 months. They've been making wine from this parcel for 9 years, it has always been farmed organic because the original owner who farmed them since the 1970s was a pioneer and never used chemicals or herbicides. When he retired his 8 hectares were bought/split among 4 vignerons.
The mouth is pretty majestic here, very nice wine, also a good length in the mouth, very good. Total SO2 is 25 mg per liter here. Like the other wines, saw no SO2 thoughout the whole vinification, just got 10 mg at bottling.
__ Graviers 2016, sample from the tronconic vat, will be bottled next september. Still a litle bit of gas on the tongue, Fabien says they'll take out the CO2 with nitrogen before bottling (one week before, through a racking).
__ Dionysos Saint-Nicolas-de-Bourgueil 2015, from 3 parcels on the top of the slope, 1,5 hectare surface on clay/limestone, 50-60 centimeters of clay, then 7-8 meters of friable yellow chalk, then the rock table some 9 or 10 meters deep. 25 days of maceration, then in foudres & barrels for 13 months. Still some astringency in the mouth. Bottled end of march 2017 but will be on the market beginning september 2017, will certainly get smoother in 2018. Very promising wine in the mouth.
__ Des Pieds et des Mains 2014, Vin de France (table wine) from a small (70 ares) and very old parcel (1920) soon 100 years old. This parcel is one of their precious sources for wood when they plan massal selections (they rely on two other parcels). Yields here is about 10 or 15 hectoliters/hectare. Maceration in a small, open-top cement vat for about amonth, with only some foot stomping from time to time. then the juice goes into barrels for 24 months, until it completes its autolysis. this one in 2014 made 30 months in barrel. They bottled this wine a month ago, not ready for the market yet, Fabien says. Nice wine.
__ Cuvée 180 jours, Vin de France (table wine). Grapes macerated in an old barrel for 180 days (6 months), they make this cuvée 2010. the idea is get all the gustative qualities of the skin and the seeds. They don't top up the barrel which remains tightly closed, they just turn the barrel every day during the first 2 months to keep
the upper level of the grapes (the cap) wet. Then they put a fermentation bung with water and leave it this way unril april,
after which they open the barrel, which is lost in the process because they have to tear it open to let the grapes out (they use the oldest barrels for that). THey don't make this cuvée with the same parcel every year, it depends of the conditions, and they don't make it every year (they made it in 2014 & 2015 but not in 2016). They had 5 barrels filled with grapes (it takes 1 hour & a half to fill a barrel) which made at the end 3 barrels of wine (that's the usual ratio).
They didn't try to get the appellation, first because they're too atypical and they could get obstructed, and also they want to be free to use parcels on both Bourgueil and Saint-Nicolas-de-Bourgueil if they feel like, they focus on the wine they want to make and don't want to be bothered with the AOC requirements.
Superb wine, so good, what a chew and substance, a delight... And this is totally without added SO2 including at bottling. They don't export this wine, too few bottles, and Fabien says he capped the sales to 12 bottles per customer so that everyone can get his share. Costs 24 € tax included here at the domaine, a must-buy certainly, no doubt about it, and very good deal.
I spotted this lovely loge de vigne or vineyard shack in Touraine (I think it was near Loches) on the way back to the Cher valley. There were certainly vineyards all around when it was built around 1900 because that's the typical miniature construction farmers would build at that time to accomodate the workers and store the tools. Gets everything including a window and a fireplace for the winter days, and I'm sure workers downed quite a few liters of 9 % alcohol thirst wine along their pauses in there....
Comments