The vat room
Because they started with such a small vineyard surface, they got no state/farm subsidies, here in the Médoc you need to have 3,5 or 4 hectares to be entitled to public subsidies. With a smaller surface the administration considers you're not economically viable as their mindset is formated on conventional viticulture/winemaking. Asked if they could get these subsidies after enlarging their surface, she says no, and they're too old also because the system also sets age limits for these subsidies...
Laurence Alias herself comes from the Gers départemment east of Bordeaux, she has a degree in agriculture engineer and before starting this winery with Pascale she worked for regional administrations on the management of sensitive natural areas.
All their vineyards are fermages (long-term rents), the rent being indexed on the real estate value of the vineyards, and in the Médoc it's pretty reasonable compared to other, more exclusive terroirs. Purchasing prices are another story because there's speculation here in the south Médoc because the terroirs are considered particularly valuable, sharing characteristics of Margaux which lies nearby. You have to pay about 120 000 € for an hectare of vineyards in the Haut Médoc, which is a quite heavy investment to absorb. Just for notice, it's about 10 to 12 times more expensive in Margaux...
The farming tools
These cost and real estate value issues are a big impediment to start a domaine or for the enlargement of small family domaines, and it's also terrible for the transmission of a domaine to the next generation, the transmission/inheritance tax being so heavy that the children have to sell/dismantle the property that was in the family for ages, the dismantled vineyards landing subsequently in bigger estates that thus keep growing [that's a very French issue, Germany has no such death tax on businesses & farms]. That's why they consider themselves lucky to have found these parcels, and today they'd like to grow a little bit more especially that now the two of them are working full time on the domaine,
but right now there's no other
fermage in view.
For the facility, they found the place the same year than the parcel, neither Pascale or Laurence had any room in their own home to set up a small chai or vat room, and they found this house with extension possibilities. It's just a regular house, a
maison médocaine with typically a lower roof on the north side, it was not equipped with any adjuncted building for the vinification but they built one.
The tiny Iseki crawler
They're very happy with the Iseki XV55H crawler, it's very easy to move with a van or the horse trailer, it needs a ridicoulsly-low amount of gas to operate and it's so light, it doesn't compact the soils at all. Plus it's so narrow (60 centimeters or 23,6 inches) they manoeuver easily in their narrrow rows. Usually it's made for steep slopes and Laurence says it doesn't seem to make sense on their Médoc flatland, but for the aforementioned reasons it's the perfect tool for their small surface. The other option would be to have a straddle tractor but first it's very heavy on the ground and second (she says it with a laugh) they're women and really can't handle the unavoidable repairs that you have to go through with a used tractor, like, in the oil sludge deep, to the elbows and all that mess... They also know friends farmers who buy 3 old broken-down tractors, take them down to pieces and make one that works, and they seem to love it, but that's not their thing [I can't blame them for that, that seems out of reach for myself either...].
Monitoring a pied-de-cuve before the harvest
Their parcels are a bit scatered, they're not in one block (they took what was available anyway) but the good side of it is it limits the risk to loose everything with hail for example, as hail storms strike unevenly across a region. Here normally you don't have frost but this year was exceptional and some of their own parcels suffered 100 % loss, on the Haut-Médoc part they have virtually no fruit and on their parcel on the Margaux it's a bit better, they have about 50 % of the fruit. They're not insured, both because these contracts are expensive and also because insurance rates take into account a public subsidy of 50 % to which they're not entitled because their domaine is too small (which means if they took one they'd pay twice what other growers pay) ...
And given the rarity of frost here few people are insured. In these circumstances of course they can purchase grapes to replace partly the loss but as other growers in the region also lost part of their potential fruit, you have to look at a distance for grapes. The luck for them is that, because they could'nt find more surface, they had already begun to work with growers before this frost accident, renting them a given parcel just for one vintage and making wine from them. By the way if you count these special cuvées they now make every year, their total surface is more like about 2,70 hectares, depending of the year. In 2017 they'll do more such contracted parcels in order to compensate as much as possible the lost volume with the frost. Last year one of these growers was in Blaye and the other in Entre-Deux-Mers, but the latter having lost everything to frost they sourced some grapes from the Duras area (and they always look for organic grapes of course).
The harvest was to begin a few days after this visit took place [early september] and they had begun to make a pied de cuve for the yeast so that the fermentation would unfold swiftly and naturally.
Beautiful draft horses, old male Jumpa & younf mare Fée
Beyond the small crawler tractor and other tools they own, they also borrow larger tractors when needed, and they also use draft horses whiich they keep right along the house in a pasture. The small crawler tractor is useful because they have mostly vineyards with one meter between rows and also because it's easy to carry in a van to move it from one parcel to the other, especially when the window of opportunity is very narrow with the weather and spraying is urgent.
Laurence takes care of the horses (which are from the
Trait Breton breed) and as we walked near them she spotted biting flies and took them down gently, and you could feel that the horses knew they were delivered from unwanted parasites, I love this cooperation between horse and human... One of these horse is really trained for the work while the other (a mare which is only 2 years old) is going to learn soon in order to replace the other when it will "retire" in 2 or 3 years. at the beginning I learn that the training consists of letting the young horse listen to the noise of the tools and plows while the older horse works, noises are a sensitive thing for horses and it has to get accustomed to these particular noises, stay calm, and it will have also to understand the trellising, this long row through which it can't walk. Just by being around when the other plows, it will get conscious of the 3-dimensional structure of the parcel with its parallel rows, something which is obvious for us but needs to be rooted in the horse's mind... Laurence and Pascale began to work with horses a bit in 2012 in order to train the horse, but real, serious work in the vineyard began in 2013. They also know people with horses who plow for organic domaines, and they can help if there's a problem with the horse (a wounded leg or something like that), they can hire their service as an alternative.
The trailer to move the horse
Laurence is the one in charge of taking care of the horses, she learnt the trade by training with one of these service companies in the region that provides plowing with draft horses to the willing (often organic) domaines. She considers herself to be still learning, that's the way it is with animals, she says, and she'll have the young horse here also learn working with plows and listening to orders, and for that she'll bring it to an experienced handler. Asked about the plows, Laurence says she has one of the early-generation
Equivinum plows. I remind readers that this young company was founded by a brilliant young man named
Oronce de Beler, who moved on and now makes very nice wines in Burgundy in addition to raising old breeds of pigs. She's going to change the plow for a different design but with the frost losses they're slowing the expenses a bit for a while...
They have several meadows for these horses so that they can let the grass grow alternatively and feed them properly, and for the winter they buy hay. Again it's great to find these meadows and trees in the Bordelais, what a luxury. they bought Jumpa, their first horse to
Ramon Garcia, the man who manages a draft-horse service business to provide plowing to domaines of the region, he trained Laurence and she bought the horse to him thereafter. tHe young mare is born here, her mother having come in the meadows a short time here before her birth.
For all things related to draft horses and their comeback in the french countryside & artisanal agriculture, follow
Hippotese, a blog full of informations on the matter.
Barrel cellar at the bottom of the chai
Laurence and Pascale managed to do everything themselves step by step, depending the least possible on banks except for a small loan to renovate the chai part along the house. They could do it with their side jobs, Pascale having remained employed elsewhere until last year, and also with the help of other artisan vignerons here and there in the region. Both of them also come give a hand to these vignerons when they need help, but it's not common in the
Bordelais region, unlike the Loire for example where this mutual self-help is routine especially among artisan/natural vintners. When Laurence & Pascale see what vignerons can do together here and there in other regions they're very envious, here in Bordeaux it's going against the tide because the culture is very indidualistic. Speaking of the biodynamic groups for example [like
this one in Touraine, Loire] there was none in the Médoc until recently (there is only 1 or 2 in the wider Bordelais) but one is at last forming up in
Chateau Ferrière in Margaux, they'll host a group working on biodynamic preparations. It's a new thing, so they don't know yet how far the exchange will go, The Closeries des Moussis will be the smallest participating domaines, the other being big Chateaus and Grands Crus Classés, but there will be also the
Clos du Jaugueyron which is another artisan domaine in Arsac (didn't have time to visit but that was my initial plan to visit both).
Laurence in a parcel on the PLateau de Sénéjac
We drove to their parcels of Sénéjac 4 kilometers away, with a total of one hectare of vines on gravel soil along thick woods, that's the vines they use for the cuvée domaine, the Closeries des Moussis. Looking at all the woodss in the area is strange, it's uncommon in the rest of the Médoc and it's good for the plant diversity aswell as the insects and wild life. I asked why other powerful domaines didn't grab this opportunity to get another block, Laurence says it may be because the rows are very narrow (1 meter between them, not fit gor bir tractors) and also the owners maybe didn't want to rent their parcel to big wineries. Also because of the small size there was no call for tenders (like the
contrôle des structures and
SAFER) for arbitration.
The vineyards were farmed conventionally when they first got them, they converted them to organic and began to farm with biodynamy as well in 2011, making the preparations themselves. usually they don't let the weed grow that high but after the frost they were a bit despaired and have delayed the grass management, they'll come at it soon. On a normal year they do a light plowing (griffage) all along the season in order to keep the soil well ventilated and keep the mildew away (back in late april when the frost hit, the soil was plowed).
They're now certified Demeter since the vintage 2015. tHey tend to pick a bit earlier than around (this year their first harvest day was sunday september 10) because they look for freshness and acidity, they don't look for late maturity and extraction, they look for tension, and for the same type of grapes they tend to pick 4-5 days or a week earlier. I askled about what I heard elsewhere, that biodynamic grapes tend to reach maturity earlier, she says yes, they also noticed that trend after they converted the parcels, and they saw that on Merlot & Cabernet Sauvignon, year after year.
A lone bunch of Cabernet Franc
the frost has hit hard on this plateau with minus 4 or 5 C (23 to 25 F) in late april of this year, the parcel has always been sensitive to frost here on the plateau, by the way the Chateau Sénéjachas a fixed antifreeze tower for that purpose. there are a few bunches here and there but overall there's not much fruit to pick, and they'll do the picking the two of them probably, they will be able to do this one-hectare surface in 2 days (usually they hire 5 or 6 pickers for that). There are the 3 varieties here, merlot, cabernet franc & cabernet sauvignon. Laurence says that they like to work on parcellaire, that is make a cuvée with all the grapes of a given parcel together. Here usually for this parcel they end up with 70 % cabernet sauvignon, 20% mermot and the rest in cabernet franc. There's usually a 15-day gap between the harvest of the merlot and the one of cabernet sauvignon. Oddly, the cabernet franc sometimes aligns its picking maturity with the merlot or the cabernet sauvignon, it's very strange, it depends of the vintage. So they vinify the varieties apart and blend them after the élevage in barrels, which allows them to monotor the evolution of ther respective wines before the final blend.
Cabernet Sauvignon
Apart from the grass (which again they usually don't keep that high, but for which after the frost they decided to go easy on the plowing) there's something they do intently is not to trim the vines, they leave the apex grow and follow its instinct, they just put it around something, make a braid. They consider the apex to be an information source for the vine, a scout that gives the signal when the moment comes that the balance has come between the foliage, the
aoutement and the fruit, and they prefer to let it grow unharmed. And they noticed that when you keep the apex and don't trim, you don't have to remove the spurs (
entre-cœurs) on the vine because basically the vine doesn't feel the need to grow them in the first place. When you trim a vine it will compensate and many of the unwanted spurs are just the backlash of trimming and cutting off the apex. On the other hand because they don't trim, they have to pass 3 times along the season to put the upper shoots around something or make bridges so they can grow securely when the crawler tractor passes for the spraying. Speaking of spray they do also 4
501 preps in the vineyard along the season.
Other view on Sénéjac
Speaking of pruning they usually beging it around mid-january going to the end of march, but now after this frost problem that resulted in such a loss in potential fruit, they're going to alter the agenda because they can't afford to repeat a frost scenario in 2018. THe later you prune the slower the vine starts to grow buds, which is a security against frost damage. Another change they'll implement is they'll prune but not do debudding, or at least they'll do it later, at a time there's no more risk for freezing temperature drops. They're pondering right now about the way to go to minimize this. Maybe they'll also have tests conducted on several rows.
They have another 30-are parcel which i didn't see which is 150 years old, it's a rarity and it's not grafted. tHey make their cuvée Baragane with this parcel.
Tasting a few wines in the chai
They're bottling the wines themselves given the small volume of their production, they use a 12-spout gravilty filler, putting the corks themselves thereafter. they like being autonomous and not relying on service companies, and it's much softer on the wine, they lift the vat and with the gravity it fills the bottles smoothly. We were joined for this tasting by Olivier Beyre who is caviste in Bordeaux at
La Cave de L'Univerre, a wine shop which is very atypical for Bordeaux as it is known to have a very good selection of Burgundy wines (plus a few other heretical regions viewed from Bordeaux)...
Cuvée Gisèle 2016
__ cuvée Gisèle, white Vin de France 2016. Made with 80 % Muscadelle and 20 % Sauvignon, from a rented organic/biodynamic parcel (belonging to
Ludovic Barthe in Daignac). they made 11 hectoliters of this. Retail price 13 €, almost sold out when this visit took place early september (I've been late to publish this), the bottle was opened the previous day. Vinified with a short maceration on skins with 40 kg of
whole-clustered grapes hanging in the vat in some sort of large tea bag for easy removal, this was the first year they were working with Muscadelle. The shape of the inner containel makes the lees naturally go up and down by themselves, triggering a natural exchange with the wine. Was racked in february, bottled in march. Unfiltered and no added SO2. Very interesting white, I love that. Bottled with 1,5 gram residual sugar and there's a bit of gas but no problem at all for me, very enjoyable wine. Good alternative to a rosé in summer. Acidity is 4,2-4,5.
They vinified the wine in the container on the side, it's a stoneware jar with a strange shape, a main upper opening and what looks like 4 chimneys all around, it was made in 1909 in the north of France and they found it in the chai of a vigneron in Charente Maritime north from here. the previous owner had vinified reds in it for about 40 years Laurence doesn't know why the 4 chimneys, she thinks the initial use of this container was not for vinification.
Alas they couldn't buy/rent from this vigneron again because he had frost and also he decided to sell his domaine. When this visit took place they were hopeful to have found another producer in the Duras region for this cuvée, with the same Muscadelle-majority style, if from another region.
Virevolte 2016
__ Virevolte, red Vin de France 2016. Made with Merlot grapes purchased in the Blaye area (rented parcel actually). No added sulfites also. The nose is very nice, smooth and fruity. Bottled opened 3 or 4 days before. Good tension in the mouth with good acidity level, but still very unctuous and velvety. Laurence says they don't do extraction, the vat time is short and they first put the grapes under cold temperature before the vinification, the temperature then climbing progressively.
This is registered as a table wine, they didn't ask for the AOC because it's too atypical for a Bordeaux, with a short
cuvaison, no extraction, no tannins, so they chose right away the Vin-de-France option. They tried by the way to get the AOC Bordeaux for the white (Gisèle) and they were refused it right away for their first try with a white. The 6 appointed tasters at the tasting panel of the commission (
Quali-Bordeaux) found 6 major faults, they appealed the sentence and at the 2nd tasting same thing. Among the faults there was oxidation when there was none actually, but Muscadelle has aromas that can be mistaken with oxidation for inadvertent tasters. They found also gas of course, gas being a feature most conventional tasters aren't used to with the other, SO2-soaked wines...
Regarding tyhe vinification (and bottling) without SO2 they have now 3 full years of experience, with 2014, 2015 & 2016. For the white they just had this experience with Gisèle 2016 but they also make a pet-nat since 2013 (there'll be none this year because of the frost) and it's been without added so2 from the start in 2013.
Haut Médoc 2015
__ Closerie des Moussis, Haut-Médoc 2015. This is the cuvée domaine, sort of, with Cabernet Sauvignon 70 %, 20 % Merlot and 10 % Cabernet Franc. Vinified with a 12-month élevage in 400-liter barrels (no new oak). Retail price 17 €.
__ Closerie des Moussis, Haut-Médoc 2014. Different from the 2015, more austere. They destem total or part of the grapes, at the beginning they did it manually with a wooden grid, now they have a destemmer which they store elsewhere.
Two very different wooden vats
At this point I asked how Pascale used to vinfy the wines at the domaine belonging to the wine school, she says she had free reins from the administrators and with a production between 2000 and 2500 hectoliters (around 300 000 bottles annually) she'd use only 5 kilograms of yeast, that's all. To be compared wirth what is done in a similar-size estate in Bordeaux, where they'd have added 100 kilograms of yeast, plus oenological tannins and other additives. Of course now here they don't add any yeast at all, but at the wine school she felt obliged to add at least a bit.
On the picture above you can see a cubic vat that Pascale designed and had custom made for here. this was in 2009 and for technical reasons she felt the need to use a square wooden vat, because with the other wooden vats like the one on the left, when they reach the end of their lifetime, it's over, you can throw it away or accept to go through very expensive repairs. Here with this design you just have to change the oak sides and you can start again with a new vat with little intervention. So with her design in mind she contacted a metalwork business and had it made along her specifications, using wood she sourced from a cooperage (5 panels, the bottom being full stainless-steel). The other advantage is it takes less room and you could put one on top of the other. The 11-hectoliter capacity also is very useful for their parcellaire vinifications, not too small, not too big (makes about 5 regular-size barrels), they vinify and do the élevage in it. THe oak panels are 40-mm thick and they could later just reverse them to use the non-exposed side and start anew.
Baragane 2015
__ Baragane Haut-Médoc 2015, bottle opened more than a week ago (they make only 600 bottles a year, they don't open one that often). Made with the 150-year-old 40-are parcel which is pre-phylloxera or ungrafted, these parcels are very rare in France today. There are 12 varieties on this parcel, planted together (
complantation) which they pick together, there's not too much difference in the maturity except the Cabernet that tend to be late compared to the rest, and the yield here is 9 hectoliter/hectare overall. The parcel is also a rent, with rows 1,5 meter between each other. Elevage for a year in barrels aged 7 or 8 years. Delicious wine. They destemmed the grapes in 2015, but in 2016 they did differently, keeping some whole-clustered grapes. Sells for 32 €. They also have a cuvée of Margaux which we didn't taste, it's priced 30 €. In Bordeaux you can find their wines at
Soif, a
bistrot à vins, also at
Le Flacon, a caviste/wine bar, at
Vin et PLus on the prestigious Place des Grands Hommes, then at
Aux 4 Coins du Vin, at
Vinimarché outside Bordeaux in Pessac (they bought their wines from the very first year). tHe first professional buyer was by Jean-Pascal Navailles who worked then at
L'Avant Garde, a caviste in Margaux (he later worked for Vinimarché). Also
La Cave à Part in Talence with a portfolio not focused on Bordeaux wines but more on the Mediterranean.
In Paris you can find the wines in quite a number of venues, laurence didn't have them in mind right away, I'll add the list later.
Pascale & laurence export to Japan (
Mr Ito for Oeno-Connexion), the United States (Jeffrey Alpert Selections on east coast - Didier Pariente west coast), the United Kingdom (
Vine Trail), Australia, Switzerland (
le Passeur de Vin).
Closeries des Moussis
Laurence Alias & Pascale Choime
23 Allée du Blanchard
Arsac 33460
phone 00 33 6 70 61 31 39
l.alias [at] closeriesdesmoussis.fr
closeriesdesmoussis.fr
Closeries' Facebook page
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