Champs-sur-Layon, Anjou (Loire)
We're here in Anjou south of Angers, another hot area for natural wine. Jérome Lambert was a salesman in his former life and he began spending time in the vineyards and make wine when his father fell ill in 2003. When he was a kid in Rablay-sur-Layon (where he's born) he used to go pick some grapes, stomp them and wait a few days to have them ferment. In 2003 he worked at Philippe Cesbron (now the mayor of Rablay) where he leaned how to prune. On this first yeat he toured around the growers of Rablay, asking if he could pick the leftover grapes in order to try himself at making a bit of wine. At the time he didn't grasp the issue of chemicals and didn't know the soil was mistreated in many domaines, so he made his small trial with whatever leftover bunches he could pick. the interesting thing with Jérôme is the fact that he basically began to vinify naturally by himself, without the formal guiding of the other pioneers in this field.
He thus began with making a small barrel and along the years he made more wine, especially as he could get the control of small parcels of vineyard. tHe 2nd year he found for example 20 ares '0,2 hectare) of vines, going up slowly from year to year, but still, for 15 years he made wine from a surface that was below one hectare. Of course he kept a day job on the side, working with Philippe Cesbron for 6 or 7 years and after that for 10 years with Olivier Picherit of La Raimbaudière, which allowed him to make a living for his family (wife and children).
The first year in 2003 when he vinified as an amateur his first barrel of wine he called Richard Leroy (a neighbor in Rablay-sur-Layon) to ask for help in adding sulfited as he couldn't imagine it was possible to vinify without sulfites then. Richard Leroy complied to his desire and a 3 weeks later he called Richard saying that was strange because the wine didn't taste well, to which Richard said it was normal, that was because of the SO2. So for the next 5 or 6 years after thios episode he kept making small volumes in his mother's cellar, but without adding SO2 and without telling anybody around because he tought nobody else would do such a thing (vinify without sulfites). And the wine was super good, he was very happy of the result.
Then afterthen he met someone in Rablay who had him discover the natural wines and aknowledge that he wasn't alone in this. At the time of his debut in 2003 Richard Leroy wasn't into vinification without any added sulfites, he would add a bit on his wine himself, that's why Jérôme didn't learn about the SO2-free vinification then. Jérôme now calls natural wines those that had absolutely no additives during the vinification including at bottling, and his wines are devoid of any other thing than organic grapes. For 5 or 6 years he'd make 200 liter of wine per year, that was really small, a couple of 100-liter barrels with a bit of volume to do the topping.
Here on the picture above you can see the tank of Grolleau, really full to the top, the grapes have been macerating here for 5 r 6 days, all is whole-clustered. By the way it's close to the top precisely because it tends to raise with the fermenting juice. He did only one remontage and may make another soon. This will be part of the cuvée Zu de Fruit, a thirst wine. He has 3 such tanks of macerating Grolleau.
Jérôme never had accidents during these first years where as a beginner he vinified wines without any SO2, the wine was neat, easy drinking, he just was beginning to feel cramped in the small cellar belonging to his mother and he was happy to discover the small group of natural winemakers of the area,
which opened him new horizons, helping him gain more confidence and grow in surface and volume. He began to sell wine in 2008 when he was making 300 or400 liters
per year, but tothis you can add the cellared wine of the previous vintages, so he could offer a variety of cuvées and vintages. As for his buyers he met Ewen Lemoigne of Saturne which is a reference for its wine list even though it had quite a few reviews pointing to a poor service. Thanks to Ewen, Jérôme sold to quite a good list of regular customers with whom he worked directly in the following years. He was very interested in meeting his buyers in person and from that time they began coming to the cellar something which was missing at the beginning of this experience
Here we made a stop at Canon Canon, an excellent wine shop/ wine bar in the small village of Rocherfort-sur-Loire just south of Angers where Timotei (pictured on left) poured us a few wines and Jérome his own. Here at the counter Jérôme pour his Grolleau red, the Vin de France (table wine) cuvée's name is Le Zu de Fruit 2017. There's 2 % of Chenin here which has energized the acidity, it was bottled 5 weeks prior to this visit. Nice easy red with a light bitteness feel. Jérôme says that the wine tasted better in the vat, it's slowly recovering from the bottling trauma, he sees the progress and says another 2 months it will be up to its best. He bottles the wines at the right temperature now like 17 C (62,6 F), no more in winter because the cold is very bad, the wines have a hard time to recover.
Up to this day where he workes on a total surface of 4 hectares (the start was 0,2 hectare) he keeps selling to Ewen's Saturne and other customers in Paris but most of the wine is now exported, like 70 %. He sells throughout Europe and also in Australia (Campbell Burton) and Japan (Vortex). His vineyard surface had stayed very small until quite recently, and in 2010 it jumped to 2,5 hectares and it's only last year that he made another jump to 4 hectares total. He also moved to this small facility in Champs-sur-Layon which is a plus for him after years of working in cramped conditions.
Jérôme found this chai by chance through a friend who told him about it, he moved in there in july 2017. It's pretty healthy even though some things could be bettered and most important he says, it's his place, unlike previously when he shared a space with someone else. The building is not large but well inside the expected volume of wine for 4 hectares.
He recently reduced his numer of cuvées, he estimates he had too many of them with 7 and he's downsizing to 4, possibly 5 he says with a grin, realizing that the change will not be that big. The thing is, he made small cuvée with small vessels and the issue with small vessels is that the fermentations tend to stall in mid course, which is less systematic with large tanks. Also for exporters it's better to have available bottles if they need more of a cuvée when they like it. He'll have a Gamay red, a Pet'Nat Gamay (rosé), a Grolleau red, a dry Chenin and a Pet'Nat Chenin, plus possibly a layon (sweet Liquoreux) from time to time. It's also easier to look after the tanks when they're bigger, with the inertia they're morestable and less wayward.
I didn't see Jérôme's parcels but stopped at of Sébastien's parcels (Babass), here is a vine of Chenin with lots of Botrytis. Babass brought a refractometer to gauge the potential
sugar content, he measured 20 in a grape
but counting the imbalance of the load with some grapes being lessadvanced, he'd like to have a whole on an average of 17,5. Another one he checked in his tool was about 15, anf the difficulty is to estimatr the prtoportion on the lower level versus the higher and decide accordingly when to pick.
I understand that this vintage with its dry summer and fairly-nice late season was a good year to make a late harvest on botrytis, and remember these guys make sweet wines without any SO2, not really what you come across in most of the wine shops. You'd be surprised of the huge amount of sulfites in Sauternes. This article by Jancis Robinson on this issue of SO2 tells about 400 mg/l found routinely in Sauternes and German Trockenbeerenauslese...
While we were at Canon Canon we had a bottle of La Bête à Bon Dieu by Gildas & Thierry Béclair (from Rochefort-sur-Loire), and Gildas (the middled age man on the left in the video) happened to walk
by as we were sipping
his wine on the terrace, he was returning to his chai where is brother and workers were busy desteming grapes, so we went there on our way to Jétôme's chai, and that was a nice experience.
The Béclairs are doing a nice job on their wines, this is plain traditional winemaking with no intervention and even no sulfites and that's the way they had been workig without having gone though an initiation by the natural winemakers of the region. If you look for a deep-rooted family domaine withtrue wines, they're the people to see in the area. The wine we had was a Vin de France 2015, a nice red with earthy notes.
The chai at Béclair is a majestic room with huge and ancient wooden beams, the building is said to date from the 15th or the 16th century. Gildas took a few minutesaway from the destemming to pour us a few wines in the room. THe Cave Béclair hasn't a website and while I looked around on the web it's ironic that what I found was my own report on both Jérôme and Gildas Béclair in one of my stories about Les Vins Anomymes, the small wine tasting event in Angers.
Back in the chai Jérôme tours me around, he has also two tanks (plastic & stainless-steel) of white 2017 that is not finished, there are yet 2 grams and we'll not taste this because it's not ready. This wine will also be bottled unfiltered and without any added sulfites. He says he could bottle it as such but he prefers to do it when the wine is really completed and when he likes the way it tastes, so he'll let it there whatever it takes for the wait. Jérôme can now concentrate on his wines as he quit from his day job 6 months ago. He has also to take care of his farm animals, I'm sorry not to have seen them but he raises pigs, sheep and chicken and uses the meat for his family need and for him it's as important as the wine part even though it's not a businesss. He of course prepares his own rillettes, ham, pâtés and blood sausage, it's part of his life and he also grows vegetables, he's pretty self sufficient, which few modern farmers are when you look close.
Here is another Chenin, Mélodie en Sous-Sol, Soufrer N'est Pas Jouer 2015, this wine is super nice, well balanced, vivid and aerial. It makes 13,5 % alcohol but it is very mineral, this comes from the shistic soil. No oak in his wines, Jérôme considers oak as being an intrant, an additive or external parameter that interfereswith the wine's qualities. From what I understand the vines are about 45 and he got the parcel 10 years ago. His wines sell for about 13 € without tax but he still likes to share it with his buddies, some of them are not able to pay this kind of money so he barters a few bottles with them.
Typically the process for the whites is, the grapes are pressed, the juice ferments in tanks on the wild yeast with or without racking, depends, and bottling after 2 years. If he now and then keeps the wine without bottling it that's because his philosophy is top bottle a wine that is really ready, he'll not make shortcuts..
I witnessed a discussion between Sébastien (Babass) and Jérôme regarding tannins in the juice and extraction, Jérôme is pretty sure of what he does even if he
works more with instinct than logic, and watching artisan winemakers argue on these issues is a great opportunity to learn more on the mysteries of this trade.
The tank above is a Chenin 2018 Jérôme apparently cherishes and for which he has high expectations. We taste it, it's a fermenting juice that tastes like bernache, it has striking anise aromas, almost like Pastis, and frankly when you look at the fermenting juice at this stage, there's indeed something akin to Pastis or anisette... Jérôme says he got more volume of grapes in 2018, something that twice the 2017 and 2016 when there had been frost and they also had to take down damaged grapes. In 2018 he could use for the first time a big capacity tank making 500 hectoliters, which is very good for the inertia and the fluidity of fermentation.
I asked Jérôme aboit how much spraying he had to do in 2018 with the mildew crisis, he couldn't tell ma how many times he sprayed but could tell about the total amount of Bordeaux mix, he used a bag of 15 kg of it for his
whole surface (4 hectares in a year) and copper makes about 20 % of the Bordeaux mix and he sprayed
also 15 kg of sulfur. tHe amount of copper metal is 1,2 kg which is rather low especially considering the seriousness of this mildew alert (you can up to 4 kg on organic farming). The problem also was that because of the rain you couldn't pass with the tractor and risked being stuck in the mud.
After that we tasted the juice of Grolleau from the maceration tank, this is still very juice, not really beginning to feel anything that juice at this stage (still always delicious, if it wasn't that precious I'd drink a liter right away). That's the issue here, when to stop the maceration and press.
Then Jérôme opened a bottle of Le Fil Rouge, Gamay 2017, a cuvée which was made before as a blend of Grolleau & Cabernet Franc. Very nice color with a striking and vibrant transparency. Vinified whole-clustered with pigeage, the maceration lasting between 4 and 8 days depending of the years. Jérôme says he's not making carbonic maceration although he's using whole-clustered grapes, which opens another weird discussion, the nice thing with Jérôme is yopu often have a surprise around the corner... Super good wine with a tannic frame and an enjoyable chew and texture. Fruit with light sweetness feel, plain delicious.
Here we're having a real Chenin liquoreux, a layon 2010 of which he has only 6 bottles left now, very rare, made and bottled without any SO2 in spite of its residual sugar. Gorgeous color. No filtration again and 240 grams of residual sugar. Makes 8 or 9 % in alcohol.
Super nice sweet wine with aromas of candied apricot and quice, delicious. Jérômùe says he made a short maceration for this wine with a bit of stomping. He says he had also a terrific 2005 but he has no bottle left. From what I understand Jérôme doesn't sell his sweet Chenin but you might still ask, on more recent vintages he might sell a couple of bottles, that's really so exciting to drink such a beautiful Layon that has no SO2.
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