Pouillé-sur-Cher (Loire)
Here is yet a new winemaker popping up in this corner of the Cher valley in the loire : Marie Rocher. She has been around natural wine for years but in the publishing sector, her last work in this field being Vins à la Carte, a book gathering Jules Chauvet's tasting notes. I asked her to tell me again how she landed here : She like her father was a regular of Les Vins du Coin, a
tasting fair gathering winemakers of the area every first saturday of december in Blois,
she and her father would have a table there, with their books (many featuring natural wine heros). When her father Jean-Paul Rocher passed away in 2012 she took over the publishing work, having been immersed in natural-wine things with her father for years, she presented the books at Les Vins du Coin, Vinicircus and La Beaujoloise (other gems of wine fairs taking place in the French provinces).
When she says for years, she means it, when she graduated from high school in 1996 she took part to the harvest at Marcel and Marie Lapierre in the Beaujolais, her father being a longtime friend of Marcel and Marie [let's remind that in 1996 this movement was completely under the radar even if Paris]. She recounts that at the time they were considered as illumined or crazy for loving these wines, and even in Paris very few people were eating organic food then. there was one place only to drink these wines in Paris in these years, the bar Rue des Envierges managed by François Morel and Bernard Pontonnier.
When I arrived at La Tesnière for this visit, Ben (pictured on right) was just unloading some posts he had to plant in the parcel along the farm for Julien Pineau. If i remember they were finishing the pruning for the whole surface and were in time for the schedule, with only the worrying risk of frost hanging around like always in april when the buds come out too early.
The word "vin naturel" wasn't really used back then even among them, Marcel Lapierre rather spoke of ""vin non technologique", the term vin naturel surfaces around 2000 or around the late 90s' [speaking of Jules Chauvet, read Le vin en Question which Marie just republished, this is a transcription of a lengthy exchange between Chauvet and Hans Ulrich Kesselring in 1981]. So that's for her early connection with this real-wine world, then later after studying and working on geography and environmental issues, she lived abroad including Southeast Asia & Africa. Once back in Paris she worked in urbanism but didn't
feel connected because of the bureaucracy factor and she began to help
her father while starting a [now discontinued] blog on artisan food producers and she also began to
write books herself. She at the time also invested herself in real bread, surdough bread, spending time with a woman bread baker in the Cher valley and she trained also in the Provence Alps, this all inspired her book Tronches de Pain (the follow-up of a serie she started after the passing of her father, with Tronches de Vin 1 & 2). She found this issue of real bread, bread made without tricks or makeup, as really in line with her passion for artisan products, fresh/organic, local food as well as natural wine. After publishing the book on bread she felt the need to learn more about winemaking, realizing that both are related to natural fermentation.
Later as I was almost leaving, Marie, speaking again about her love for real bread, said that Pierre Overnoy (who also makes incredible breads) is a longtime family friend. When she was writing this book she visited a boulangère (woman baker) who lives near his place in Jura and during her stay she made a couple bread batches with him, this was very exciting, she was fresh from her bread-making training in Provence Alps and they would exchange tips and techniques. What she likes with Pierre is that he's mastering well his fermentations and has a well-oiled technique, plus, shortly before putting the bread in the oven he'd open one of his old vintages, this was a unique experience for her.
That's when (2015-2016) spent time with Pascal Potaire & Moses as well as Hervé Villemade and Mikaël Bouges, this is also related with her love for natural sparkling (les Capriades), a love which is rooted with her 18th birthday party which she had in Bugey with Cerdon du Bugey, a similar low-alcohol, easy-to-drink bubbly. She then studied at the wine school in Amboise, doing the related training time with Bruno Allion in the vineyard. At the time she still thought she might take vineyards but later zeroed in on négoce (purchased grapes) instead.
She tried her hand with a micro cuvée, just to check if she could do something, and she liked the result and she liked the whole thing, the job, the thrill of it, so the following year she started for good with the harvest 2018. Although she'd been connected to these wines and winemaking culture for so many years, that was a big step for her, she's not from a family of vignerons, she's from Paris, and for the logistics she had to leave her appartment in Paris and moved to a troglodytic house near Montrichard, this is really a new life.
For the facility, she was lucky to be offered the opportunity to stay a year here at La Tesnière in the farm belonging to Catherine (formerly Clos Roche Blanche), a place where, beyond the wines of CRB, Noëlla Morantin and later Bruno Saillard vinified their own wines. She's looking for her own facility for the next step. She's working with these vats for her start but will switch to wooden fermenters and vessels as soon as possible.
For this first vintage she'l make 3 cuvées, a red, a white and a pet'nat, the latter being made in two versions, one with a little bit of sulfur and the other one without any.
Here above Marie shows me the bottles on the riddling boards, you can see the sediment at the bottle end after the bottles have been manually turned upside down. Disgorging should come soon for these bottles.
Both versions of the pet'nat (which is 100 % Gamay direct-pressed, grapes sourced in Francueil further west along the Cher river) were of course vinified without SO2 but she has one tiny part of the batch made by an élaborateur who will use sulfites at
bottling,
the reason she decided to do that is because that may yield an interesting
wine also, possibly more
focused in terms of aromas, something closer to a regular Champagne, it will get just 1 mg per liter at disgorging, which is still very low. She made the choice after having one test bottled made, the result seemed interesting to her, plus thinking about it afterwards, she remembered that Lapierre also made this sort of thing, bottling a cuvée in two batches, one with so2 and the other without.
This Pet'Nat (the version without added sulfites) will be her first release, and she had just received the labels the previous day. She chose the name "les Valseuses" in reference to dance, bubbles dancing and bubbles which make you dance . And also she had also in mind the 1974 movie [Les Valseuses was known abroad under the name Going Places] as a reference for a certain freedom and free state of mind.
There'll be something like 2900 bottles without sulfites and maybe 900 with a bit of it, but beyond the sulfites amount which will be negigible, the expression of the sparkling should be different and appeal to different people.
I taste Marie's Pet'Nat, a bubbly with a nice fruit, very enjoyable, gourmand with a light sweetness feel in the mouth. She says that's exactly
what she aimed, but I
know it's always tricky with a natural sparkling, you never know if it'll stop bone dry or will retain some sugar. Here actually it is dry technically but the roundness and fruit carry this sweetness feel, which is perfectly welcome (I often prefer pet'nats that are a bit sweet, there's something very harmonious with it).
Marie adds also something about her cuvées names, they'll be as much as possible in the feminine-plural form because she's a woman and promotes the relations with others (for the plural part), that's what she is... And for the drawing part she works with Laurence Chéné with whom she worked repeatedly for her publishing activity. Plus she called her friend/artist Michel Tolmer who said the name was a perfect fit.
Marie says that she's happy to have studied organic winemaking at the wine school at Amboise because it allows her to have had the two sides of the trade. Her teacher Anne-Cécile Jadaud who is herself a vigneronne (and her husband teaches vineyard management) was a good teacher and she isn't pushing the use
of SO2 if there's no need to.
Marie had here in
this cellar her barrel of red, it was blended & bottled (a few days before this visit took place), it's a 100 % Gamay with an élevage mostly in neutral tanks and a small volume in oak. She prolongs the élevage in bottles before releasing the cuvée in a few weeks and we'll not taste it this time. This Gamay comes from Faverolles-sur-Cher, from two parcels ages 30-40. It's all hand picked, she relies on a local team for the harvest. She takes part herself of course, she says that by the way when she worked at Marcel Lapierre she was promoted as chief sorter on her 2nd harvest with Marcel : the grapes were of course picked selectively on the vines but she was in charge of double-checking the sorting at the end of the row so that only good grapes came in. Her training there is very useful of course.
Vinification : mostly destemmed, put to ferment 3 weeks, then pressed and élevage. This cuvée of red will make 2900 bottles from a 50-are parcel. You'll find the wine in several places in Paris as well as in the region. She has no export plan yet but would like to work with Japan where her mother was years ago a journalist for a major TV network. The United States also where she has her good friend Alice Feiring (the linked story wax my first contact with Marie, by the way).
There's also a very nice side for starting making wine here at the extended farm of La Tesnière, that's where two other experienced winemakers live, Laurent Saillard (with partner Maylis) and Didier Barouillet. Didier in particular is very helpful, he retired a few years ago when CRB closed its doors and he remains active with his analytical lab, checking juice & wine samples for the winemakers of the area. He also gives her advice of course, with his long experience. He wasn't there when I visited, being invited in New York by Racines NY for a Celebration of Clos Roche Blanche with a wine pairing excercise directed by Pascaline Lepeltier. Marie says it's a blessing for her to begin here next door to his own place, this is so helpful for her first vintage. She doesn't see often her Maïtre de stage Bruno Allion these days as he's travelling around (he retired also) but she considers him as her 2nd maître after Marcel Lapierre. Bruno has this wisdom and relaxness, he never worries and she says in her first vintage she's still far from this state of mind (she says her enology training at the wine school instilled some fear in her regarding the faults that could happen during the vinification).
This is the last wine waiting to be bottled, a Sauvignon, Marie filled my glass from a tank. She got the grapes from Anouk and Paul, these are for former vines of Bruno Allion. The wine is turbid, it is still at work with fermenting sugar and with the rising temperature should finish in the coming weeks. The nose is not typically Sauvignon, in the mouth it's less sweet than expected, she says sugar went down recently. She'll bring a sample to the lab the following day (Didier being away these days) to know how close it is from dry. She picked the grapes at a good maturity, a good potential (about 13), she decided to pick after checking the pH. She says she was not familiar with Sauvignon before working with Bruno Allion and it's a good thing that she had the opportunity to vinify from a former parcel of his (and she spent time tending these vines when she had her training time as stagiaire with Bruno).
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