Montlouis-sur-Loire, Loire Valley
I discovered the Domaine de L'Ouche Gaillard (which was before then under my radar) through my spotting and trying one of their reds (Farandole 2010), it was made from organic grapes and looking at the label made me think it might be interesting ; the wine was indeed lovely, hearty, a bit rustic and probably unfiltered, the label
said it contained sulfites but the feel was it must be very low, if any. I thus contacted the vigneron who agreed to receive me in Montlouis. Doing further sesearch before my visits I found out that they made wines without SO2 which added to my interest.
The Domaine de L'Ouche Gaillard has a 15 hectare surface
with both white (Chenin of course) and red varieties on the Montlouis area. Régis Dansault is the son of a farmer in La Ville-aux-Dames (near Montlouis) who was growing several crops (mixed farming including milk cows) like it used to be in the past. Régis started his own farm business in 1984, also growing several crops at the beginning but he was more interested by the wine part, focusing later exclusively on wine production. His father used to make table wine he'd sell in bulk & bottles locally, and they opened a retail shop in 1985 where they'd sell their own wine and the ones of a few neighboring vignerons. this was a time where bulk sales to private buyers was common, especially for red table wine in La Ville-aux-dames. At the time they worked from 4 or 5 hectares of vines (part being rents), 70 ares of Chenin on Montlouis and the rest in red varieties (often hybrids) on the less prestigious terroir of La Ville-aux-Dames. His wish was to work more on the vin d'Appellation (AOC wines) and develop the Montlouis part.
Along the years he bought back parcels that were made available by retiring farmers, reaching today a total surface of about 15 hectares, 5 planted with reds and 10 with white. On this side of Montlouis near La Ville-aux-Dames, farmers weren't much interested by wine and it was easy to get additional parcels which allowed them to grow their original estate surface from 2 hectares to their present 15. With the growing size of his winery they had to move to this modern business zone which, if unglamorous, offers better conditions and access than in a squeezed cellar or farm outbuilding. They nonetheless kept the cellars for the élevage of the wines.
Asked about the vinification, and when did he switch nto natural winemaking, Régis says that at the beginning he was working conventionally, although for whites he already used native yeast for the fermentation (only rarely relying on lab yeast for them), but he concedes that at the time like everyone lese he'd listen to the technicians' advice (the oenologists sent by the Chambre d'Agriculture) and samely in the vineyard, they'd do what they learnt at the agriculture school and what the State-sanctioned agriculture advisors would tell them to do. From then he gradually questioned the pertinence of what they were told to do, for example in the vineyard they started to stop certain sprays like the ones against acari (mites) that they were supposed to do systematically in august, they dropped these treatments and saw that everything was fine nonetheless. They did the same for the botrytis because they didn't have much issue with it, so that was another treatment he dropped. They also reduced the herbicides and when in 1994 his wife (who is German) joined him on the domaine she brought with her the German sensitivity for organic farming and nature (Germans were much more into organic products than the French in the 1990s'), opening the way for a conversion to organic.
Right now the reds are made in this facility and don't stay in oak. Now they tend to bottle the cuvées at two times of the year, there's a spring bottling for the cuvées that are on the flowery, aromatic side, including the reds, many of them being thirst wines. The 2nd bottling will take place later in the year, this is for wines that are more complex and go through a longer élevage.
After pressing the whites with this pneumatic press, there's a light débourbage and it's then moved to the cellar a couple of kilometers away to further ferment (or begin ferment if it hasn't begun) in both tanks and large barrels. The reds are now made without sulfites including for the bottling, the whites have no sulfites at all until bottling, and at bottling, some cuvées get so2 and some nothing. For the dry whites they often have cuvées spit between a batch without and a batch with.
We drove to a first parcel of Chenin, actually it's even more or less a block of 4 to 5 hectares on the Montlouis plateau. this is the terroir of La Closerie east of Montlouis not far from the water tower on the highest elevation near the village,
the obvious advantage being that these vineyards are less subject to frost than lower vineyards. Here on this block Régis has only white, and only Chenin. Part of this surface is estate land and part rents (fermage). The soil is well adapted for the Chenin with a clay/flintstone [silex] soil or in places on sandstone/clay, particularly fit for still whites. The terroirs on the other side of Montlouis are more early-ripening but lighter and don't yield the same quality. These vines here were planted in 1998. Régis looks at the pruning, saying with a laugh that he hopes the guys did a good job, he adds that this year the pruning was made by studuents of the Amboise Viticulture School, of course chaperoned by an instructor. He still spotted a few imperfections but he doesn't seem too upset, adding that these youngsters must begin somewhere one day...
On this block some were planted in 2000, some in 1989, there are a few different generations but they're more or less 20 or 30 years old.
We drove further to another part of the block, here the soil had just had its décavaillonnage to uproot the weeds under the wires, Régis said that now they had to kind of
make the ground maneuverable for the tractors.
Speaking of the other parcels they got from the area of La Ville-aux-Dames, where they have the red varieties, the farmers there, west of Montlouis, weren't much interested in vineyards, they kept small parcels for family consumption or very local sales. When they had Chenin they didn't even ask for the AOC and when these farmers retired he sometimes bought back a group of scattered parcels, red and white; he couldn't refuse the reds even though he was more interested in the Chenin and so bought the whole batch. These parcels weren't farmed organic and for their own domaine, they began with converting a 1st parcel in 2000; they weren't equipped with the right tools then for organic farming (for soil work and plowing in particular), so they did all the tilling by hand for a couple of years, in order to have the hindsight about how it worked for the grapes, and later they bought the appropriate machinery, converting the whole surface to organic farming in 2007. Today they have a couple of parcels plowed with a draft horse, it's done by Jean-François Lafon, a professionnal who works for others.
For the vineyard work they're part of a CUMA (created in 2001) with other organic growers (the same where Frantz Saumon is part of) and with this collective structure of shared machinery there's also an experienced teractor driver, so it's very convenient for Régis, as his parcels are a bit scattered all over the area. It's very valuable, they pay the driver for his time and he knows well the soil work as most of the growers of the CUMA are on organic farming. By the way it is said that Montlouis has the highest proportion of organic growers in France.
There was a frost risk in the vineyards of Montlouis when I visited and growers had dispatched haystacks (usually old ones that weren't fit anymore for animals) along the parcels that they'd come light up early in the morning if freezing temperatures were confirmed during the night (it didn't confirm that night, I learnt later). Until early may there'll be a risk and such haystacks may make a difference and heat enough the area to prevent frost, the trick being that the hay must not burn too fast because the frost risk usually lasts a few hours in the early morning, so you must keep them damp with water so that it burns with smoke along a couple of hours. In Montlouis a couple years ago they used 7 helicopters to move the air (this works also) but it didn't work because the hardest frost occured before sunrise (which is very rare) at a time of the day when helicopters are not allowed to fly.
We drove then to this cellar where they keep tanks and cellars. speaking of the vinification and when they began to work without using SO2, Régis says that for the whites they worked always with indigenous
yeast, they'd vinify in 600-liter barrels (tonnes is his word) and stainless-steel
tanks later when they had more volume. At the beginning they'd use smaller, Bordeaux-type barrels, they'd have the juice ferment there and afterthen during winter they'd rack and add a bit of sulfur to avoid oxidation, like everybody did, especially that there was the worry with the agreement commission of the AOC that the wine wouldn't get its AOC because of oxidative notes.
But after years they realized, in part from what they learnt from other producers that they could eschew this step, for example they had learnt by word of mouth that Chidaine didn't use any and everything was fine. So at one point they stopped racking and stopped adding SO2, leaving the wine live its life quietly. At thend of the day he says, you realize that as long as the wine stays on its lees there's no worry with oxidation.
They use the stainless-steel tanks here for the Chenin. They also make carbonic macerations but at the modern facility because the plastic tanks over there are easier to work with and put neutral gas on the top. there are a couple of cement vats (big square tanks) in this cellar and he used to work with them but now not anymore (because of lower volumes per cuvée I guess).
But even when they still used sulfites they had dramatically reduced the doses. What happened is that they converted to organic farming in 2007, got the certification in 2010 and at that time they had heard about wines being made without sulfites. Long time before that they made primeur wines (around 1998), these were Gamay early releases for which they tried to add sulfur like it's supposed to be done on the juice, but the problem is that as they took great care of the whole-clustered grapes at picking (by hand) there'd be no juice in the first place in the bottom of the fermenter to put sulfur on, so during a couple of years they felt compelled to press a few grapes to get enough juice for the sulfur they were supposed to put on it. Afterthen, feeling it was nonsense with such healthy grapes they stopped using sulfur, that's their early beginning with vinifying without SO2. They still added some at bottling because they were told (by the technicians or enologists of the Chambre d'Agriculture) that it was needed even though they hadn't put any during the vinification, they'd be told to add 4 to 5 grams in one go (which was explained as better than add in successive manner).
Then in 2010 (this was the year they were certified organic for the farming) they decided to split the cuvée in two, one getting SO2 at bottling and the other nothing. 3 months later they had the technician/enologist come at the cellar and taste blind the two batches. What they remarked that day (Régis had seen that already because he hadn't waited 3 months to taste comparatively) is that one of the batch had begun to oxidize and oddly (this puzzled the technician) this was the batch with SO2, and the other thing is that almost everybody would prefer the version without sulfur when tasted blind. So from this year on they became aware of this fact, the wine could be better and even behave better in regard to oxidation. They started to implement this sulfites-free production on all reds, spliting in two batches, one with, one without.
Asked about who his buyers were at the time and how these changes translated on that side, Régis says this all changed already with the organic farming as the wine couldn't sell as cheap as before because of the added work and lower yields. Even though they didn't raise that much the prices, solme byuers dropped while other remained and he found new ones, like cavistes and wine bars, some people find the dolmaine through Internet but Régis & Gabriele also contacted potential buyers, they don't attend wine fairs but they have a local agent for the area and Régis sometimes travels a bit himself for longer distances. They don't do much export right now, Régis says that since 2012 they had tricky vintages (frost mainly, year after year) in terms of volumes which doesn't help.
Asked if he filters his reds, he says it depends, those that are bottled early are usually filtered. The other thing he says is that as they're made & bottled without sulfites, if there's no residual sugar he may leave it as such, unfiltered, otherwise he may filter by precaution. There's a risk of deviant aromas if there's a bit of sugar remaing. I told him that for people like me certain defaults are better than depriving the wine of its substance by filtration [i think this should be the next step for Régis, dare the unfiltered...].
Now they still use a sulfur wick when a barrel after racking it if it's to stay empty for a while, but before putting back juice in them they water them lengthly and rinse away the sulfur. And that's because in the early years of their sulfur-free winemaking they ended up finding more sulfites in the lab analysis than what they had put, it was obvious that it had come from the residues in the barrel. Now, when the bring sample to the lab, when they haven't added any sulfites, the lab doesn't find any. There's also one thing about the wine labs, the cheapest sulfites analysis isn't very accurate and can only state "under 20 mg" which prevents them to print on the label "doesn't contain sulfites" (it has to be under 10 mg for that), so for the cuvées 2018 they're about to bottle they asked for a more accurate analysis (which is more expensive) and all the wines were under 10.
The large-capacity barrels here are for the whites also, they look old and black but that's just the mold, they're not that old especially because this cellar was very humid (they now ventilate it to make it drier).
Often the fermentation last some time, in part because the ventilation brings the temperature down, and it depends also of the vigor of the indigenous yeast, plus they don't put fertilizers in the vineyard which contributes to slower fermentation but he and Gabriele are not in hurry, plus slow fermentations are good for their
cuvées demi-sec and moelleux (sweet wines). For these wines either the fermentation stops by itself or if not they cool them st stall the process and then they filter tight (pauvre en germe). For certain of these sweet wines they add so2, for others not, and for the ones that get some, it will be low compared to the norm. And they noticed that even for sweet wines, it's more stable not to add any because when you add SO2, it only stops part of the yeast population, the most robust survive and are thus more likely to start refermenting. It makes me think to the raw-milk cheese, there are so many bacteria competing that none will dominate and the cheese will actually be safer to eat... By the way 2018 will be a very good vintage for sweet wines.
Asked if Moelleux is easy to sell, Régis says that of course it's a bit more difficult than dry Chenin but when people taste them they're convinced (and I guess the SO2-free ones even better). Also they don't make sweet wines every year, they need good potential and weather conditions in the late season
On the left you can see a new demi-muid which they bought recently, it's also a large capacity 600-liter tonne, the wine in there will be oaky of course but it will blended with other vessels. The new barrel is made by Vallaurine in the Rhône, I hadn't heard about this cooperage before. They've put a dry Chenin in there that will be strong enough to balance the oak.
Still puzzled by the fact that Régis is reluctant to leave many of his cuvées unfiltered, I ask him about what his fathers did on the issue. He says that he didn't filter and the wine was often rather turbid (nobody selling locally would filter at that time). When Régis started in the wine farm, fresh from the wine school he told him that he should filter, at least the Montlouis, the Chenin, so his father kindly agreed and asked a colleague to bring his plate filter system at the cellar for a bottling. The wine did come out clear but the problem is that aromaticly it had gotten a cardboard taste because of the cellulose-plate filter that hadn't been washed long enough in water beforehand... I might say that this was a sign of wise foresightedness of his father's ways to have eschewed filtering until then...
Back at the facility, I tasted a few winers with Gabriele, Régis having to bring a few more haystacks with the tractor. I asked about the number of cuvées but there are so many it's hard to say, especially that many cuvées are split with & without SO2. For the ones that didn't have any adding of sulfites they put a tiny label stating in French "Sans Sulfites Ajoutés" which means without added sulfites (pic below).
Gariele who also studied in the wine school at Amboise around 1997-1998 remembers that the teachers there at the time were skeptical about the vinification without sulfites, looking puzzled when she and other students asked questions about the issue. Tt happens that she met two of them recently and they had turned around since then, being now largely open and interested in the vinification without SO2...
__ Jubiliss Montlouis-sur-Loire 2017, a méthode Champenoise sparkling made with Chenin. Mouth is very honey type with discreet bubbles. She says that for a few years they use the sugar of the grapes for the 2nd fermentation : They make a first wine that will ferment to the end, become dry. They pick separately
some grapes that have the potential to make a sweet wine,
then bottle the wine before it finishes its sugar and that's what they'll add for the 2nd fermentation, sometimes helped by a pied de cuve to reboot.
So actually like a pet'nat it's all the result of grape sugar fermentation, there's no added sugar from somewhere else [more and more people question Champagne wines on that issue, when Champagne was "invented" it was obviously with grape juice refermenting in the bottle, then to reproduce that, outside sugar was added]. The wineries in Champagne don't like to work like that with reintroducing sweet grape juice because it's more tricky to calculate the pressure, you may miss the target. The base wine of Jubiliss is filtered though but there has been no SO2 whatsoever. Very interesting and refined. Sells for 13 or 14 € tax included. Very nice bubbly indeed, a very good alternative to Champagne.
__ La Closerie, Montlouis-sur-Loire 2017, Chenin. First, the added-sulfites version (the labels are similar but the drawing has square brushstokes on the with-so2 while these are round on the without). Aromatic expression on the nose, same for the mouth. Neat,
clean mouth with generous side but no heaviness. 13 % alcohol. Gabriele says this will not go with seafood, but with fish as long as there's a sauce, also cuisine with butter. SO2 here is about 20 mg.
__ Epikuria III Montlouis-sur-Loire 2017, without added SO2 (this is the same terroir of La Closerie but this wine didn't get any sulfites). Nice frank expression in the mouth, with I believe a mineral side that comes out. Pretty harmonious, feels that you can drink it easy. 12 % alcohol. Picked a bit earlier maybe. Gabriele recounts how here they discovered through that keeping the wine on its lees was the best antidote against oxidation, that's when they made the Epikuria II so that customers wouldn't be surprised of a change in the wine. She laughs that changing another time the name with III wasn't justified there wasn't a different winemaking, except for a shorter élevage in 2017 because they needed to sell wine (frost in 2016).
__ Menestrel Montlouis-sur-Loire 2017, a demi-sec without SO2. This is their first SO2-free demi-sec (they had already made moelleux before but not demi-secs without SO2).12-14 grams of residual sugar. Color : lightly pink, that's the oxidation, but also the botrytis. Nice balance, no real outward sweetness. Interesting wine. Again it's rare to have sweet wines without SO2, this is really worth trying this. Feels like light in alcohol, although it says 13 % on the label. Gabriele says it's fine with exotic, Asian food. 14,5 €.
__ Troubadour, Montlouis-sur-Loire Moelleux 2015. Neutral-glass bottle so that the light tile color can be enjoyed. Also without SO2, was filtred but still lightly turbid, Gabriele says that at one point it worked a bit then stopped. No CO2 on the tongue anyway, and good sign for me, means the filtration wasn't too tight. Discreet nose. Light alcohol, 11,5 %. Very delicate and aromatic with orange peel notes, so easy to drink and sip. She says that from experience, you can keep the bottle open for a week and it stands well the air (if you don't finish the bottle right away).
__ Heliodor, Montlouis-sur-Loire 2017, with SO2 (about 50 mg for this one, compared to the norm of 210 or 250 mg). About 80 grams residual sugar probably. Nice color too. 11 % alcohol. Very refined, fresh. They don't make a liquoreux every year, in 2017 the end of the season was nice so they decided to make one. The region can be humid and there's the risk to get the wrong type of mold on the grapes. Nice as apéritif or also foie gras.
Here is an interesting ITV technical document (in French) dealing with SO2 and sweet wines in France : on page 13 you learn that SO2 can be added up to 260 mg/liter for sweet wines having more than 5 grams of residual sugar and in the blue table you can read that it goes up to 400 mg/l for a few AOCs like Sauternes, Jurançons, Quart-de-Chaume...
__ Farandole, Val de Loire 2018. 6-day carbonic maceration. From the label (square brushstokes) i understand it had a bit of SO2 (not at bottling but during the vinification because it looked like it had a bit of volatile but it turned out it was a false alarm with an imprecise test by the lab, very small SO2 added anyway) and i realize the 2010 I had also had a bit of SO2 by the way. Régis who joined us says that it may not taste like the 2010 I had some time ago. I agree, lighter with a grenadine type of aromas in the mouth. Super feel on the nose.
But the substance feels thinner
that what I remembered, could be the filtration or something.
__ Volubilis 2018 (from a bottle without label), Gamay without SO2. Also carbo. Very fruity.
A bit of tannin feel in the mouth, my stomach loves it noisily ! The color is also relatively light. Régis says it was filtered, they had to because there was a bit of residual sugar if little.
__ Pierre de Lune 2017, Cabernet Franc, also without added sulfites. Exciting nose, with a peppery side like Aunis. Nice tannin expression with a slight bitterness at the end. May have been filtered (for me that's the New Frontier they have to conquer...).
__ Pierre de Lune, Cabernet Franc 2014. A bit more reduction. Cherry notes, clafoutis. Got no sulfites either. Super gentle, silky wine, love it.
__ Bruyère Marin, Côt 2018, one-week carbo with whole clusters picked 20 october and stayed on lees until march without racking (same for Cab Franc), without SO2 all along. Light filtration, they say, just bottled. Super nose. Taste quite well for a wine that has just been bottled.
We were about to finish this tasting when Régis said something interesting about the technicians [of the Chambre d'Agriculture, the de facto enologists who have been advising the family wineries for decades], he says that 5 or 6 years ago when he'd tell them about making whites without sulfites they would smirk, but now it has changed, the same people realize that ity could yield interesting wines and that there was more and more wineries doing it. He said that the analysis labs also changed the way they advise on a given test report : in the past it would have been routinely a sentence like "must add as-many grams of SO2" while they later switched to "you could add as-many grams of SO2" and he says that now he thinks they don't even put such adding advices...
Good... things are slowly but surely turning around...
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