Ergersheim, Alsace
The Domaine Brand & Fils has deep roots in the village of Ergersheim, the farm buidings belong to the family since 1750 and until the 2nd half of the 20th century
this was a polyculture farm
with wheat, farm animals and tobacco growing
(a traditionnal crop in this part of
Alsace since its introduction here in 1620). Ergersheim (pictured on left, shot from Philippe's parcels) is a village sitting some 20 km west of Strasbourg in the Bas-Rhin département, along the first slopes of the Vosges hills.
On the picture on the right you can see the entrance of the farm, typically in this Alsatian architecture you have the porch, the house and farm building on the sides and in the back already some fields, vegetable gardens and farm animals. In my opinion Alsace had reached over the centuries the finest village/farm architecture, with winemaking fixtures (presses, cellars) completely integrated in its village life. And you see the same thing on the other side in Germany, along the slopes of the Black Forest like in Gengenbach, Kinzigtal. By the way Alsace was part of Germany from 1871 to 1918 and there's a shared culture on both sides of the Rhine, which you feel when you travel to the foothills of both the Vosges and the Black Forest.
At the time of Philippe's grandfather Lucien, this was a regular farm, complete with draft horse, crops and farm animals. Lucien Brand began in the early 1950s' to concentrate the farm activity on grape growing like it happened all over the country in the middle of the 20th century, the winery was established in 1956 and he rised the vineyard surface gradually
from its initial 53 ares to several hectares (10 hectares today).
Charles Brand (Pictured on left with son Philippe in the farm's courtyard) then took the wheel in the 1990s' and began to convert the vineyard into organic farming [which was not common back then] deciding a few years later in 2000 to get the certification. Philippe himself started to work in the farm in his childhood years, helping his parents now and then but got seriously involved in the farm since 2006, before really getting fully in charge in 2008, after working in wineries in Burgundy, Greece (Peloponnese Island) and Australia (Barossa Valley).
I find very interesting that this wine farm has followed an almost continuous path along the traditional ways of farming, and the bold move of several generations seem to have landed it smoothly on natural winemaking, something too many family wineries are scared of emulating.
After 2006 when Philippe began to take the wheel at the domaine, he led the wine farm to yet another level, gradually beginning to make natural
wines here from 2010
to 2013, meaning certain cuvées
(more every year) were vinified on indigenous yeast, without additives and without any sulfites.
On top of that he turned the organic farming to biodynamic in 2014, and from 2014 to this day 100 % of the cuvées here are vinified without sulfites (and without any additives of course).
I need to say here why I decided to visit this winery in the first place, that's when last october (2018) I had a bottle of red from the domaine, we had it at Timotei's Canon Canon, the great wine bar in the village of Rocherfort-sur-Loire near Angers (this was during my visit at Babass & Jérôme Lambert). but this red was a blend made from grapes purchased in the region of Toulouse (70 % Negrette, maybe from Gaillac but there's no hint on the label) and Lyon (30 % Gamay, i'd guess Côteaux du Lyonnais) and the whole being vinified in Ergersheim in demi-muids, this Vin de France (table wine status) was just soooo good, it put me instantly the domaine on the map. I'f you're a bit into reading the color of a wine, just look at the picture on the left with this milky turbidity, i was overwhelmed, such a freshness and enjoyment...
Asked about why he turned to this uncorrected, unprotected vinification, Philippe says thay when you begin to understand how every aspects interacts, the taste, terroirs and the respect for the grapes that grow on them, he doesn't see the need for an artificial intervention on the taste of the wine. Asked if around him there are people who helped inspire him on this way, he says that from the beginning Patrick Meyer was helpful, adding by the way that this morning he consulted him for worries about his cellar. He names also the older generation in winemaking here like Binner, Pierre Frick he meets them regularly and discuss about various issues.
The vineyard surface is 10 hectares today, all farmed organic and biodynamic, part of the surface is plowed with a draft horse; I asked if this was about the slope being steep, but not, it's just about certain parcels he doesn't wan any tractor on them, all by hand and with the horse,
this is something experimental and he likes that and this has many interesting effects. It's not his horse (he doesn't have any), it's an outside person, a friend who mans the draft horse but Philippe walks the plow himself. Otherwise he uses this narrow tracteur vigneron (pictured in the back of the farm) which is barely wider than one meter (1,1 m) and light enough. The tools in the back are also narrow. It is a Fendt 260.
The domaine makes about 15 cuvées including skin-maceration whites (which he doesn't make in clay but in stainless steel or old barrels) and sparklings. In 2016 he lost his harvest because of hail and he had to buy grapes elsewhere through négoce. 2017 was a small-volume year and 2018 is fine, helping them rebound, but with the climate issues it becomes more complicated to handle the vineyard, so he considers making the négoce part permanent so that he can continue pay for the staff.
We drove to this parcel of old Riesling above the village of Ergersheim on the Kefferberg terroir, there are a few missing vines because of their age, the vines are trained on double Guyot with 2 canes which you have to tie on the wires, that's what the 3 people and himself were doing that day. You bend the canes and attach them on the relevant wire so that it can stand the weight of the bunches,
and the bending downwards it helps also get acrotony under control. Acrotony
is this natural push of the vine to direct buds toward the sky, and by countering it you help
distribute sap more evenly along the cane.
There's a pre-WW2 bunker in the middle of the parcel, it's an interesting curiosity, there are plenty others all along the slopes on this side of the Vosges, facing the Rhine valley (Germany being on the other side) that's part of the Ligne Maginot, a complex deterrence structure made of hundreds of underground tunnels and bunkers intended at stopping the invading German armies (at the time of the 3rd Reich).This defense line was thought with the previous war in mind, but of course it didn't work, the Germans just circumvented it and won easily. Seems here in France we love looking ahead in the rear mirror with these deterrences fit for the last war, today we samely have a nuclear arsenal and aircraft carriers that can't nothing against vehicular ramming attacks and knives (and beyond their uselessness these toys are not cheap)...
There are stairs going down to this machine-gun position; today we could almost use these bunkers as vineyard shacks or to hide from the rain at pruning season but the inside is often littered by local teenagers and it's pretty dark in there.
Here on Kefferberg the slopes are moderate, exposed south with clay/limestone soil, the wines here have freshness because of the northern latitude and there's good substance generally. They have scattered parcels here and there but in spite of that hail can be a problem, it comes usually from the Vallée de la Bruche nearby and cuts through these slopes, sometimes causing losses in the 50 %.
For the vineyard work Philippe hires seasonal workers (there were two of them that day), usually they're students at
the Viticulture School of Rouffach, and he has also one permanent staff (who was on leave that day). Blandine, his girlfriend was helping him that day exceptionally, but otherwise she works elsewhere (not in the wine sector if I remember).
This parcel is about 70 years old and it fares well, he likes working here, the view is gorgeous and when there's no humidity in the air you can see the cathedral in Strasbourg.
You could see spring is there, the sap begins to flow from the pruned canes, Philippe hopes the temperature will not rise too much because it would push buds out prematurely.
We drove to another parcel closer to the village on the lower slopes, it's right next to this lovely chapel dating from the 12th century. Philippe says that the vineyard work
they're doing now, taking off the old wood, bending and tying
the canes, takes 3 people full for 6 months (for their 10-hectare surface). He can help himself
but it's rather half time because he has to sell the wines, go to wine fairs (Grenier Saint-Jean in Angers, Raw-London (he'll go to Raw-Los Angeles later this year), Wein Salon Natürel/Cologne among others) and so on. They make 50 000 to 70 000 bottles a year and he has to do the commercial part and sell them.
They call this parcel Rimlen because it's near this Chapelle Saint-Michel commonly named Rimlen. The parcel with a moderate slope is planted with Pinot Gris and a bit of Gewürztraminer. Asked about the proportion of growers who plow their soil, Philippe says more and more, there's a reduction in the use on chemicals. on the immediate area there are already 30 % of organic farming (which is a lot compared to the national average) and it keeps increasing year after year. Of course it doesn't mean all of them vinify naturally, but it's a good start and it limits the dissemination of chemicals with the wind.
Here they work the soils by light plowing using a draft horse, and with the biodynamic farming you get this light, soft earth easy to crumble between you fingers, with earthworms and microbial life.
Now when it's rainy the earth gets sticky under the shoes because of its clayish nature, and in the dry season it can be hard like cement. Recently they just passed a claw type of plow to aerate and decompact the surface. The fact that the parcel is farmed organic for 20 years and biodynamicly for 8 years has also improved the soil aeration and texture. Here there's a big difference when compared to the texture and compactness found in conventionally-farmed vineyards. Philippe kneels to grab a clump of earth and crumble it between his fingers, very aerated indeed, like semolina. He says it's perfect because air and water can get through easily, and overall the wines get more depth with this kind of soil. With the plow they naked the surface because he'd like to have grass growing evenly and later lay the grass horizontally as mulch to keep the humidity from evaporating.
We drove back to the wine farm, walked along the beautiful courtyard toward the facility (the dwelling part is rather on the street side, the farm outbuildings on the back); Philippe's father Charles was there and I asked for a picture of father and son. Philippe says they adapted the farm for winemaking and storage because
initially it was built for polyculture with farm animals, they had this barn adapted to become a barrel cellar in 1991. It's not underground and you can see the roof but it's amazingly
cold in there, and
without any air-con. Having the barrels on the street level is very convenient, and with the old-time underground cellars it is a problem especially when you make wine from 10 hectares or more, these cellars having been planned for usually a much smaller surface of vines. The temperature will of course rise i summer but if they keep the doors closed as much as possible it keeps cool inside.
Speaking of the sales, now Philippe begins to ship wine abroad, he exports to about 15 countries, the main destinations being Japan (Sapporo, Ken & Yuki Kobayashi), Canada (Ontario, Quebec), United States (Merchants of Thirst), Scandinavia, Italy. He is going to start to sell in Germany also.
Philippe Brand says they work with wood here, and because the wine is alive it goes well with oak which is a living material. In this season he has soon to look at the lees in the bottom of the foudres and take them out if necessary, he plans also the spring bottlings.
The oval foudres (traditional shape in Alsace like in Austria) in the bottom of the room (right and left, 6 total) date from around 1940 and except for one of them they are still in use. They make from 80 to 100 hectoliters each. The élevage time goes from 8 months to a year, sometimes more, depends of the wine's pace.
I asked how they empty the lees in these big wooden foudres, Philippe shows me the astute opening, he says you can slip in and then stand up inside to clean and brush the walls (the hole looks narrow but you lie on the side before crawling in). The door is really tight when sealed, in the past they used a edible tallow when putting back in place the wooden parts, now it's usually silicon sealants fit for foodstuff. On this twin picture above you can see a closed foudre and an opened one. When empty, he uses a sulfur wick to protect it but there are no sulfur residues as the inside is thoroghly cleaned before it gets its load of new juice.
This foudre or large-capacity barrel is 100 years old, they use it for a solera of Pinot Blanc plus other varieties. Every year they take out wine and put wines the the latest vintage. They top up the foudres and barrels, they don't look for oxidative wines.
Philippe added these new foudres 3 or 4 years ago, they are made by the Tonnellerie Jenny in Barr (25 kilometers south from here) using oak from the Vosges Mountains. He's very happy with these vessels, he watered them at first and now after a few years they begin to be neutral on the wine.
We sat in the courtyard to taste a couple of wines. At Domaine Brand the labels are all calligrams, that is,
sketches or drawings made of words and sentences, and they're
all authored by Guillaume Apollinaire, a French poet from the early 20th century. these calligrams were made around 1913-1914 at the eve of WW1. Philippe and Charles were inspired by a poem by Apollinaire named Nuit Rhénane (means Rhine Night) from his collection of poems Alcools, in this poem Apollinaire characterizes the Alsatian summer with the image of "fairies with green hair" (fées aux cheveux verts) and they liked that. They switched to these labels when the domaine went biodynamic with natural winemaking, so that the customers be informed of the change in the taste of the wines (a way to tell the wines are different) .
.
__ Chimère 2015-17, Riesling, vinified & élevage in old oak (the large Fendt foudre made in 1940).
The wine was tricky at the beginning, Philippe says, with high alcohol and residual sugar that didn't finish, so he gave it 36 months of élevage and in order to finish the fermentation he blended it with some juice of 2017 of the same parcel (stayed one year with the 2017) which allowed the batch to finish the sugar smoothly. Not filtered (nothing is filtered here) and no SO2. Nice energy on the tongue with a generous substance and richness, I love that wine ! Sells for 17 € here tax included.
__ L'Oiseau et le Bouquet 2017, Muscat (whole-clustered), a skin maceration wine, orange wine. Made in stainless stell, Phiklippe doesn't use clay amphora, he says it imprints too much on the wine. 15-day maceration and then pressed, fermentation in wood. Unfiltered. Tile color, lightly turbid. Strong aromas, this is Muscat, with orange peel, lemon peel, citrus. 23 €.
__ Tout Terriblement 2016, Gewürztraminer. For some reason I forgot to make a picture with the glass of wine. Again, no So2, no filtration here. Turbid. Very aromatic, exotic fruits, mango, lychee, super nice. Feels alsmost sweet but that's the fruit, and acidity is low also here, he says. Nice coating feel in the mouth, good ripeness. 13 % alcohol. More powerful compared with the Riesling but different vintage. 16 € here.
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