Noizay, Vouvray (Loire)
Philippe Chigard is a man with multiple skills, he teaches at the Viticulture School of Amboise where he trains students in the Art of handling a draft horse in the vineyard, he heads a service company doing draft horse plowing for
organic growers like Vincent Carême and Domaine Huet and he makes natural wine himself from a
small surface in the Vouvray area. Philippe Chigard initially studied at the Viticulture School of Beaune (Burgundy) where he learnt the draft horse trade with Abel Bizouard, a horse breeder who helped reintroduce the draft horse in the Burgundy vineyard.
When he settled near Amboise he started the training course for draft horse at the viticulture school with students coming from different regions. Then he began to plow for growers (often on steep and old parcels where using tractors was dangerous) and he was at one point offered to get a small and old parcel (125 years old !) near a cliff, the owner was getting reluctant to keep working on it and Philippe accepted the challenge to start making his own wine. This parcel was indeed a remnant of the old-fashioned vineyards with fruit trees scattered among the rows, he was to name this parcel La Table Rouge because of the large picnic table where he and his friends would sit around after working or picking at harvest. Claude was an emergency doctor in her former life and she learned the wine trade by doing it, she is now as passionate as Philippe in their gardener approach in the tending of the vines.
Pictures on the sides : courtesy of Claude
I visited them again in their beautiful house in Noizay, the village has plenty of gorgeous houses built at the turn of the 19th and 20th century with trolodytic outbuildings in the foothill, the sandstone dug out from the hill was used as construction material and these quarries were afterwards arranged as cellars, winemaking facilities complete with press and cement vats and even troglodytic homes. The cellar and chai here is roomy enough for the 1500-bottle production of Philippe and Claude, they would even have room for more wine I'm sure.
Last year I had tasted in a troglodytic room of the property a delicious wine still in the making, it was made from an hybrid, the grapes came from a small parcel of 5455 whose owner had died recently and the 300 liters of juice were given to the man who took care of the parcel in the place of the ailing owner;
this man who was busy elsewhere gave the juice in turn to Philippe who was interested to see what it could yield as a wine. Hybrids and particularly old parcels of hybrids can indeed make very interesting wines, this is certainly an overlooked issue because of the prejudice against hybrids and the stance on the matter by the Appellation bodies. I had a whole story about the matter a couple years ago, i made it in Paris in a tiny vine conservatory managed by researchers but I accidently deleted the pictures and couldn't publish it alas.
Hybrids in France were put in place after the phylloxera with their resistance to various diseases, they were later forbidden to encourage the return of European varieties grafted on American rootstock. Philippe says that people are beginning to question that because they have interesting aromatic properties in addition to their better health. All over the country quite a few parcels planted with hybrids remain, often parcels that were for private use in the village as authorities banned any replanting, and you have now a movement pushing for allowing again these hybrids, like here in the Languedoc where vignerons tend a conservatory parcel gathering a few of these hybrids. This experimental wine then while not finished (was at 1008) had nice candy aromas, Philippe plans to make a pet'nat with it.
Here is the ancestor of the pneumatic press, it is hard to say when it was built, possibly in the 1950s', this is a Mabille again (like the great basket press in Peter Hahn's chai), manufactured in Amboise very close from Noizay. Very imaginative press
indeed, i saw now and then these presses still in use by artisan vignerons, like for
example at Dard & Ribo (scroll down mid page). It is hard to understand how this maker closed in 1994, I'm sure if not for decades of anti-business policies and punitive inheritance taxes this press maker would have thrived and developped even more imaginative models... Leaf through the 24-page catalog of Mabille products from 1935 (scroll down in the linked page).
Philippe bought the press from Sébastien Fleuret who was making natural wine from a small surface of vineyard, the bladder in this pneumatic press is positioned in the central axis, and the only worry for Philippe is how to replace this bladder (which is made of something looking like rubber) when it will be worn out or damaged. The bladder is inflated with a compressor fixed on the left side of the press, it's manual and very easy to use, plus it allows to press very small volumes if needed, something you can't do with a modern pneumatic press (that's why many vignerons keep a basket press as well). Here he says you can press a volume of grapes as small as 60 liters if you need too. His friends among the vignerons often ask him to let them use this press because for very small batches they can't rely on their regular pneumatic press. Philippe as a precaution begins to look for a replacement bladder but it will be tricky to find one that is cylindric like here and thick enough (the ones used on the modern presses are much thinner). I think he could query a diving cloth manufacturer, they might have a type of fabric close to the one needed here.
I knew the place already but it's always a thrilling pleasure to visit these temples of wine. Here Philippe looks at a wallow's nest that looks busy, the birds
can come and go even when the large wooden door is closed. Philippe has a few fiber
tanks standing in the front part of the cellar tunnel (picture on left), some sitting in what I presume was inially (a century ago) the location of the basket press. But the gem here is this brick oven just on the left when you walk in the cellar (picture on right), You can guess the vaulted ceiling of the oven where the bread would bake in the heat, but there's also this chimney hood above, made with bricks, which is certainly connected to the top of the hill through a duct...
Although such ovens are found in many of these old cellars it's always a wonder to stumble upon one, because they're always different, the builders adapted to the hill's morphology, the available room in the cellar and the budget the owner was willing to put into it.
Then beyond the wooden gate at mid-distance there's the barrel cellar in the depth of the hill. On the right you can reach a parallel cellar. it's cool in there but surprisingly not that humid looking, it's very clean when sometimes the walls and everything is covered with mold.
Deeper under the hill you reach the barrel cellar where Philippe and Claude do the élevage of their small production. He could indeed vinify more wine because it's rather roomy here. This part of the cellar deep under the hill has a stable temperature year around, something like 12 C (53,6 F). For better hygiene he poured a cement slab all along the cellar.
Speaking of the cuvées they have quite a few of them in spite of the very small surface (less than one hectare) : a Pet'Nat Chenin, A dry Chenin, a semi-sweet Chenin 2018, a moelleux, a liquoreux, then a Gamay and a Cabernet Franc (the latter with 25 % Pineau d'Aunis in 2018). They usually never make liquoreux wines but 2018 was exceptionnal, they couldn't but make ones with these conditions, they picked raisined grapes, without noble rot, the Chenin had just dried under the sun like for a vin de paille, yielding an aromatic range and a concentration which are very different from the noble rot wines, more on the style of arranged rums, ananas, exotic fruits. They didn't have to wait that long, they picked on the 2nd pass (the 1st being for the dry Chenin), asking the pickers to take only the raisined grapes, and the 3rd pass was for the moelleux.
This is the bottle cellar, at the end of the tunnel, they had this part of the cellar dug last year by an excavation company, they did it very quickly (5 days including the cavities all around) with a mini excavator equipped with a drilling tool at its end. Philippe asked in addition to carve out all the cavities on the sides for the pallets of bottles. The good thing here is you can dig as deep as you want without needing a building permit, as long as you own the surface above the hill. Normally all the production of one year can fits in these cavities, that is, 5000 to 6000 bottles. The good point with the cavities is you can check visually what sells and what needs more sales action.
We drove to this old parcel of La Table Rouge which is the very start of Philippes's winemaking adventure and I understand the
words Vignerons Jardiniers on
the labels; jardinier means gardener, meaning you tend the vines as if you had only a hand ful in a garden, the surface is small enouth that they literally can tend the vines with a gardener mindset. Plus with the fruit trees in the vineyard, you really feel in a garden. Philippe says that on top of that, they can farm organic, have very old vines and still get fairly generous yields, he says you often hear organic growers complaining that they have low yields but Philippe says with an adapted care on the vines and soils you can get good yields. Of course this demands more work, and while he's doing the lowing with the draft horse, his wife Clause is on the individual care of the vines, pruning and everything like taking out leaves to get the best maturity on the grapes. On his Cabernet he reached 60 hectoliters/hectare in 2017.
Philippe remembers discussing in a wine fair with a vigneron making natural wine in the south of France, he was making 12 000 bottles (compared tp La Table Rouge's 5000) but he was making this volume from 5 hectares which was understandably difficult.
Of course the rows were far apart from each other compared to Philippes's parcels and ther climate in the south may play a role but still, there was an issue with inadequate
yields and Philippe thinks a closer attention to the vines and the soil may help, on with older parcels. He remembers for example that at the beginning when he took over this 125-year-old parcel with its high grass the yields were only 18 hectoliters/hectare on the 1st vintage, then the 2nd 28 ho/ha and now they peak at 35-37 ho/ha.... He says the vines are in great health
Philippe keeps experimenting and he plants fruit trees every year, in the row itself so that he can pass with the draft horse or in the lane along the picnic table (picture on left). I remember André Durmann in Alsace who was doing the same thing, fruit trees make great standing point for birds, including predators who keep the rodents and pests in check. Philippe plants apricots, apples, plums, peaches. Another of his projects is to reintroduce messicultural plants (plantes messicoles in French), these are weeds that in the past were found in the middle of wheat fields and that disappeared because of the use of herbicides. Here is the list for example of the messicultural plants in the Loire and there's a field in the area where they gathered a hundred of these weeds. They'll sow these weeds between the rows and botanists will follow the experiment to see how they adapt; after sowing these weeds will stay year after year, and they're know to flourish best when the soil is regularly plowed.
Pictures on the side : courtesy of Claude
Philippe and Claude want to improve the biodiversity and he's sure it helps. He's samely working on reintroducing wild tulips, they were all over the vineyards 70 years ago and vanished because of the large use of herbicides, they play a role in the soil life and it should be opossible to bring them back where there's no more herbicides. He hasn't yet reintroduced them on his surface but he saw one pop up recently which he thinks somehow came with the mud on his plows after he went to do some work at Domaine Huet with his horses.
As an illustration I'm reposting here above the video I shot years ago in a family parcel on the outskirts of Bossée, a small village in the region of Loches (southern Loire). This exemplifies how vineyards looked like a century ago in many French regions (this one is really a rare survivor), with many fruit trees planted in their midst. Let's remind that apart from Bordeaux and Burgundy, most estate vineyards in France were small surface and farmers had them along other crops and farm animals, the wine being either just for family use or for selling locally.
Speaking of the frost, Philippe says they're lucky because the 4 parcels making his one-hectare surface never suffered from frost because of their location and altitude. The parcel with the Gamay is a bit mopre exposed and once 3 years ago they had to make some smoke to prevent frost damage. Most of the parcels are up the slope
near a cliff and thus are less prone to frost. On the picture above you can see a particularly convoluted 125-year-old vine, it goes from his hand (it leans on another old vine on left) to the far right where it emerges from the ground.
Speaking of the issue of plowing an old parcel, Philippe says there's no side effects even if at one point in the last decades it was farmed conventionally, that's because from its planting 125 years ago to, say, 50 years ago it has been plowed the old-fashioned way, and the rooting is thus vertical and goes deep. When he reintroduced the plowing, the vines still had a strong root system and whatever surface roots it may have developped during the conventional stretch, this wasn't relevant enough to endanger the vine when he resumed plowing. He says that with such firm rooting it's even difficult for his trainees when they come here to mistakenly pull off one of them by mishandling the walk plow. He adds something about the fruit trees he planted in the rows, he noticed that the vines right under the fruit trees didn't have mildew, so he's going to look closer every year to see if it's a pattern, and if yes, that would be interesting.
Back at the house, Philippe and Claude filled a couple of plates with an exciting assortment of charcuterie and cheese and Philippe opened a few bottles. This domaine mai have less than one hectare of vineyard, there's a good range of cuvées to taste [I love this job !]. With Claude in front of me I ask her about her path before landing here, she says she was living in the Beaujolais region working as a doctor in an hospital when she met Philippe; she wasn't skilled in the wine trade and learned the job with him and the people around him. She moved here in the region when he started teaching in Amboise in 2011, helped him work on his first parcel in 2012 and they later found this beautiful house (not pictured here) with all these troglodytic structures and cellar in the back.
__ Pet'Nat (natural sparkling), Chenin, Vin de France 2017. made with 40-year-old vines. Of course everything here is vinified naturally, and as often with such wines labelled as table wine (Vin de France).
This bubbly is dry, the bubbles are thin and discreet. Philippe says that in 2013 they kept the pet'nat 3 years sur lattes (lying in bottle before disgorgement) which gave more complexity to the wine. They sell the wine to restaurants, also in Paris they have an agent who distribute it to this new generation of restaurants. No export yet although they got enquiries, they still ponder about it because their production is so small, they could almost sell everything in the region. Plus there are quite a few gîtes (rural accomodations) in the vicinity (in troglodytic houses for example like this one close to their house) and the visitors drop by to buy them wine. In Paris you can for example find their wines at Les Enfants du Marché in the vibrant Marché des Enfants Rouges (the oldest covered market in Paris) in the 3rd arrondissement not far from République. They also sell to Le Petit Nicoli, a wine bar in the 11th, also Le Badaboum, samely in the 11th. They also sell wine to Carré Bio, an organic grocery in Versailles.
__ Cuvée Domaine white, dry Chenin 2017. Vin de France. Made with the vines that are 125 years old. The label has just a different drawing for each variety. Very nice Chenin, very pure feel. 5 to 6 grams of residual sugar here, you don't guess it. Philippe says the wine went out on top at a blind tasting of Vouvrays which he and friends organized last year, everyone was surprised. Asked about the vinification, he says of course everything is picked by hand with sorting on the vine, then pressed directly, aftherthen débourbage and the following day put into barrels, the juice/wine is left untouched, with certain barrels (among the 3 or 4 for this parcel) being sometimes slower than others. In 2018 for example he had a dry one, one with 18 grams of residual sugar and the other 25 grams, so he made a small cuvée of mouelleux from the batch. At the end for the dry there's a light earth filtration and bottled with 2 grams/hectoliter SO2. But having discussed it with colleagues he's thinking about putting the SO2 instead in the juice under the press and then nothing later including at bottling, with the aim of cleaning the milieu at the beginning, the good side being that the fermentation consumes SO2 and so an early addition will have vanished at the end of the vinification, you don't even find traces in a lab test. He's wondering about doing that for the next vintage.
__ Dry Chenin 2018, bottled the previous day, 10 grams of residual sugar. Light filtration, the bottling like usual is done by a service company, Brault, which is favored by the natural winemakers of the region. They have a bit of the wine turn in the bottling machine for up to an hour before beginning bottling, to be sure no odd taste slips in (very few bottlers do that). Philippe says he owes a lot to his friend Tanguy Perrault (who is also making wine from a small surface in the area) for making this wine correctly : He hadn't been checking the grapes for a few days, he was certain that he had several days, maybe 10 before reaching the expected maturity, and Tanguy called him one day saying he had been checking grapes in the vineyard and that the ripeness was advancing at a faster speed than expected, with the acidity dropping as a consequence. So he went to his own parcel right away and saw that indeed it was more than time to pick, which he did hurriedly the following day. Otherwise he would have never been able to make a dry Chenin this year.
Light feel of sweetness but not much forward, so he considers the wine dry. Very neat mouth. Very good acidity which makes it feel dryer than the 2017.
__ Cabernet Franc 2017, made from a 16-are surface. They always made a red with it, no rosé pet'nat for example. Philippe says this parcel needs a lot of work because the area is at the geographical limit for a correct ripeness on the Cabernet Franc.
So they take a great care in thinning ou the leaves on the vine when needed, starting slowly at first then acceleratiing the de-leafing later in the season, and that way only, they can reach an optimal ripeness. And again here they get nice yields (see pic by Claude on right). Fruity, nice substance, feels unfiltered but Philippe said it was indeed filtered, albeit with a light one. Might be a few Pineau d'Aunis in the parcel, there's a light pepper side here...Philippe says he filters (i use to object) because he doesn't like the risk of opening a bottle 3 years later and finding the wine has drifts toward faulty aromas.
__ Cabernet Franc 2018, bottled recently. Very appealing nose. In the mouth, nice tannic chew, which goes well with what looks like a light sweetness. What a freshness too, and this tastes like unfiltered although it is.
__ Liquoreux 2018, bottled recently (in 50-cl bottles), their first ever, as said, they coudn't not make one with such favorable conditions, picking raisined grapes without any tot, even noble. 11 grams of sugar here, unbelievable, so refined and fresh. The grapes come from the Table Rouge parcel, second pass, not that late, it was october 9. Superb wine.
Professional prices (without tax) for their wines (except for this liquoreux which will be more expensive) are about 9 €.
Here a nice picture shot a few month ago in the vineyard : Their dog Nouche is a gem of a dog, always with them outside when they work, be it Philippe with his draft horses or Claude tending the vineyard. So discreet and silent. Minds his own business, runs around tracking some smells in the bushes or else, and then back among humans watching them... His eyes look so tender and wise !
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