Cheverny, Sologne (Loire)
The Sologne is home to quite a few outstanding vignerons working naturally in both the vineyard and the cellar. This region, which sits roughly in the middle of the extended Loire region, is mostly covered with woods (3/4) and
dotted with thousands of ponds
(3000) because of the clayish layer under the sandy surface, and the Sologne is foremost know as a hunting region because of its wildlife and of course it is home to several outstanding chateaux, among which Chateau de Chambord and right near Philippe Tessier's domaine, the Chateau de Cheverny pictured on left (which is said to have been the inspiration for Tintin's Chateau de Moulinsart). In short, this region is very diverse and atypical for a wine region.
Philippe Tessier established his winery in 1981, taking the wheel from his parents who had set up the domaine in 1961. Prior to 1961, his father and befor him his grandfather were régisseurs (farm managers) in the Chateau de Troussay nearby through a fermage contract (they leased the farm land from the owners).
At the beginning when his parents settled here in 1961 the domaine was a polyculture farm, they raised cattle (milk cows, then later meat cows) as well as other crops like asparagus (Sologne with its sandy soil is asparagus country) and with vineyards. When Philippe took the reins in 1981 he recentered on the vineyard/winemaking part which he deemed more interesting, turning the farm into a winery. His father in his time was selling his wine in bulk to the négociants, later selling also a part in cubitainers (5 or 10-liter plastic tanks) to local private customers. Philippe was the one who started selling wine in bottles.
When I arrived at the domaine Philippe was busy fixing something on his tractor. While parking the motorbike outside along the country road I noticed two horses
along the parcel next to the facility, this was good for a nice picture (on left)
but I learned later that they don't belong to Philippe, he farms the vineyard organically but doesn't use draft horses for the soil and plowing, he relies on several tractors among which this one. The domaine otherwise sits in an area with both woods and parcels, very diverse, not monoculture looking.
The tractor here is about 20 years old, he bought it second hand, it is a Renault Dionis 130, it's a one-meter wide machine which we call tracteur vigneron because it's narrow enough to pass between the rows. With the large surface of organic vineyard to manage you need more workforce and apart from the seasonal workers the domaine employs 5 full-time including Philippe's son Simon who works here since last september.
So Philippe began selling part of the wine in bottles in 1982, first to local buyers then extended the reach to a few agents. The domaine also enlarged its surface along
the years reaching almost 25 hectares today. Philippe began to convert the farming to organic in 1998, on 1/3 of the surface first, the last 3rd in 2000, getting thus the certification for the whole surface in 2003. Philippe also changed his vinification, at the beginning he was doing what he was taught at the wine school, everything square he says with a laugh, but nonetheless even during these conventional years they had always picked the grapes by hand, they never used a machine, and his father even never used lab yeast, but the thing is, the SO2 doses were quite important at the time and they'd occasionally chaptalize back then.
The vatroom was built in several times, part of it (the barrel room) in 1982 and the rest in 1992, the building is insulated, the barrel élevage takes place here, there's no underground cellar because it's a clayish undersoil with humidity.
The change occured between 1998 and 2000, Philippe began to put less and less SO2 in the wine, they stopped putting any of it at harvest, they just add a bit at bottling, some when they blend the different vats and apart from that only if there's
an emergency issue during the vinification. Like this year (2018), with high potential alcohol and lots of sugar to convert, you get the malolactic starting with still lots of sugar the brett go up and they added 1 or 2 grams SO2 to stop the problem. That's for the whites, it's more easy for the reds, never had a problem with them.
They were a few vignerons in the area to make the move toward real wine, people like Micher Gendrier of Domaine des Huards, also Thierry Puzelat, Hervé Villemade, and it helped, especially that the Chambre d'Agriculture (the state-funded French agriculture agency in charge of helping and advising locally the farmers) wasn't at the time very knowledgeable on organic farming, he adds that when they came here for a visit it was more to learn something about organcic farming...;-) It was nice to have at the beginning the other growers doing the same thing and exchange on the issue of the organic handling of mildew for example, that was a tricky challenge.
Philippe shows me one of his underground tanks, they look like the ones in the Muscadet region, large capacity and with the opening on the floor level. He uses them at harvest for example, the juice flowing into them for the débourbage, he has 2 such 50-hectoliter tanks and one 100-hectoliter. They were built also in 1992 when he built this part of the vat room.
Asked if the rising prices of the wines were an issue for his customers, Philippe says that in general the transition was smooth, the buyers stayed loyal in general except for a few, the reason being that the word organic (bio in French) was a bit puzzling for conventional people, Philippe says that he was happy to say he was farming organic and the response was sometimes surpisingly hostile [I think you still often face this type of behaviour in the countryside, farmers and even non-farmer locals think it's something people from the cities or worse, Paris, want to impose them. They don't realize that the chemical ways were indeed forced unto them by the bright minds of the French State and its research institutes which worked in tandem with the chemical industry, selling them these innovations as a revolutionary move]. Now he says it has changed but it's almost on the extreme opposite [it's become so mainstream that even the square commercial-minded winery will find a way to market itself as either fully organic or respectful of the environment].
The tanks above are used for the reds, he uses them for the whole-custered maceration, and the fact that the tanks are wide and not too high prevents the grapes from being crushed under their own weight. These two fermenters make 75 hectoliters each.
Here are the presses [with the 25 hectares I guess you need the capacity], and Philippe jokes that now that he got two presses he has these repeated losses of grapes, that's ironic... The building is roomy if lacking the charm of an old chai, they can move around easily with the grapes and redirection to the tanks.
Then for the last 7 or 8 years they got weather issues, with for example 2 big frost in 2012 (1/3 of harvest lost) and 2013 (2/3 of harvest lost) and also in 2016 & 2017 where they lost 3/4 of the grapes, and lastly 2018 which was on its way to become an exceptionnal year for the quality and volume but he got hit with mildew and lost almost half of the harvest, he's pretty upset by this last accident. The administration in charge of the wineries allows them in these conditions to buy grapes elsewhere to compensate for the lost volume but you can't order above a certain ceiling and they calculate it with making the average of the last 5 harvest in the domaine (which is not fair because they got heavy frost losses in the previous years as well), plus you can't go over 80 % of this calculated average, so it's very limitating and frustrating to buy grapes in these conditions. the other option would have been for him to start a négoce in parallell to his domaine, which would give him the ability to buy grapes and make wine a négoce labelling every year even on productive years.
But his son Simon who is 31 is joining him in the domaine and will probably start a négoce, something he admits he should have done himself. Simon studied sociology first, then he went to work in England, came back to France to get trained as a caviste in Vannes Brittany, at the CCIM, after which he worked in a wine shop in Nantes for 6 years. He then enrolled at the wine school in Amboise, training at François Chidaine, a domaine farmed biodynamicly with a very large surface, which was interesting for him because on the 25 hectares of the family domaine, he'll have also to face the challenge of keeping the rigor or organic farming. And he came back in the domaine for the harvest 2018 and he should take over the domaine in february 2020 when himself retires. He'll be still around of course to help and give advice.
Philippe shows me these new cement tanks he bought recently, they're 4 or 5 years old now, they're made by Nomblot, the maker of these famous cement eggs. He says cement tanks make a comeback, people realize there's an exchange with the outside with the concrete, unlike the stainless steel where the wine is really tightly enclosed. These ones have a capacity respectively of 28 and 15 hectoliters. He likes working with them and may buy more for the reds.
Lots of different vessels in this vat room, I love that : Facing the cement tanks, this is the older generation for the maceration of the reds and fermentation, these enameled-metal tanks were also good tools in their time, you can see the large opening on the top and they're also pretty wide and not too high. They've given a good service and have been well repaid since they were built in 1982...
In the barrel room most vessels are regular-size barrels with a few larger demi-muids and at the far end from where I took this picture, a few large-capacity
vessels : Philippe has been using for quite a
few years also several wooden tronconic vats made by Grenier with volumes opf 60, 40 hectoliters for the reds and yet two with a capacity of 15 hectoliters for the white, especially the Romorantin which they age for a year. Then we walk into a separate room where the bottled wine is ket.
Near the sliding door door, several pallets wait for their shipping, complete with plastic wrapping and signs with order/recipient info. I can read some will be delivered to Zev Rovine, another to Japan, Adorer Co. Ltd. (basedin Yokohama) He changed his importer for Adorer recently, before he worked with Diony. In the United States he also sells to Sacred Thirst. Also wine heading to Belgium, another to Taiwan (C'est le Vin). He exports 45 % of the production, also to Quebec (Vini-Vins - Diane Turcotte), Denmark (Rosforth & Rosforth), Australia (Vinous Imports). In France they sell to cavistes in the Paris region, Brittany and in a few places in the Loire valley. By the way, Philippe co-founded a bistrot/wine bar in Blois, les 400 Coups which serves only natural wine, and you'll find his wines there along the ones of many other artisan vignerons.
We taste a few wines in the corner of the building, and I discover they have here many cuvées, especially of Romorantin.
__ Cheverny Blanc 2018, majority of Sauvignon (80 %) and Menu Pineau & Chardonnay. In the AOC Cheberny for the whites you must have minimum 60 % Sauvignon. This cuvée was ready quite quickly, even though it didn't finish all its sugar (3 grams residual sugar, almost dry). For another cuvée from older vines he had to add finishing yeast to finish the fermentation because it had stalled at 10 + grams. They had the same problem with the Romorantin with 15 % wines, the summer was very dry which may have caused the yeast to be weaker than usual. Nitrogen issues also. For the reds they never have such problems.
Nice generous mouth, some power, with 14,5 % alcohol, but feels slightly lower, the Menu Pineau brings a bit of freshness. Priced 10 € for private buyers. This is the cuvée domaine for the white, made out a surface of 4 to 5 hectares.
Then we taste wine from the iconic variety of the region : Romorantin, which is found mostly only in this part of the Loire valley, in the Loir-et-Cher département (Known under the Appellation Cour-Cheverny), and its Wikipedia page says the total surface is 60 hectares, not much indeed. They have no less than 6 hectares of Romorantin in the Domaine Philippe Tessier, can you imagine ? They keep replanting to renew the surface, Philippe aknowledges that few grower have that much surface, his colleague Michel Gendrier has 8 hectares which is really big, François Cazin also has a big surface of it, Christian Tessier also. Most of the other growers have something like 0,5 or 1 hectare of Romorantin.
__ Cour-Cheverny 2017, 100 % Romorantin, aged one year in the large-capacity Grenier foudres. This is the cuvée domaine of Romorantin, the base cuvée, made from younger vines (10-15 years) on clay. In general this cuvée is vinified and aged in vats (not oak) but in 2017 they had so little wine that he filled his barrels first. Very nice wine, Romorantin is really special, atypical, not in the round seduction at first sip, there's something square and austere which is exciting in its own way, that's a white of character, not easy but once you get used you can't forget.
__ Cour-Cheverny les Sables 2008. Older vines, on sandy soil, even if you have clay underneath also. Philippe says the year was not the best, they had very high acidity levels at the beginning, but after a year it had eased. The Romorantin is always vinified and has
its élevage (a year) in oak (15-hectoliter Grenier
tronconic vats). Racked before the harvest and bottled end of year. Very different, more mineral, and still quite vivid aver all these years. There's this sharp edge unique to the Romorantin, lovely classy wine. This white ages really well, here is a 2008 to prove it, even if the higher acidity than usual certainly helped.
They also make a sparkling of Romorantin which they keep one year sur lattes, Phil en Bulles which is made with 80 % Romorantin and some Menu Pineau. We didn't taste, the 2017 was sold out and the 2018 is still sur lattes. They also have been experimenting with 2 amphorae imported from Georgia (pictured on left) a few years ago. They have a capacity of about 7 and 9 hectoliters (they were supposed to be like 10 & 15). they'll see what it yields, the experience brought mixed results until now. He ordered these vessels when he travelled there with Thierry Puzelat and a few other vignerons. they made a grouped order with a few other winemakers like Thierry Germain, Sylvie Augereau, Mark Angeli, Pierre-Olivier Bonhomme and others in the south of France, and they filled a truck.
__ Cour-Cheverny la Porte Dorée 2009, also Romorantin. At the opposite of 2008, this vintage was very sunny, yielding a different expression, and the volumes like in 2008 were pretty good (48 hectoliters/hectare). He remarks that since then he never reproduced these nice yields (2018 could have been one of these years with good yields if there hadn't been this mildew accident).
Here the Romorantin is rounder with a generous richness.
__ Romorantique, Vin de France, an orange wine of Romorantin with 6-month skin maceration in Georgian amphorae, they make these trials since 2014. 18 €. Very aromatic with notes of apricots, dry fruits. And it's so fresh, the mouth is very expressive with these white tannin style. Love it. Don't expect to recognize your favorite Romorantin but it's worth a try. Simon explains that making this wine is a bit complicated with lots of handling, you destem, you pour the grapes in the clay vessels, with a bit of juice like this year to help start ferment and also because in 2018 there was less juice in the grapes than usual and the liquid-solid ratio was not even. Then at the end you have to take the grapes out, you guess it's tricky with this type of amphora. Then they press old style, with hands and feet, because there's not enough voluyme to fill a press.
__ Cour-Cheverny cuvée Roger Tessier 2015, 50 cl bottle. A sweet Romorantin with 50 grams residual sugar. Elevage 13 months in barrel plus a few months in vat. Golden color. Very ripe but lovely bitter notes too, a pleasure to drink. Alcohol 13,5 %.
__ Chemin Noir, Vin de France 2018. This is actually Pineau d'Aunis, and the first vintage of this variety at the domaine. The cuvée is labelled as Vin de France (table wine) because the appellation system doesn't recognize the Pineau d'Aunis for Cheverny reds, he chose the name Chemin Noir (black path in French) as a veiled allusion to the second name of Pineau d'Aunis which is Chenin Noir. These are young vines he planted a 6 or 7 years ago (he never had Pineau d'Aunis before) and this is the first red vintage for them, last year he made a rosé. And the year before that one, they had the problem in the region with these Suzuki drosophila that ruined the fruit before the harvest and the batch turned into vinegar. This is not a big parcel, only 30 ares but he may plant more. The yields were quite good in 2018.
Lovely chew, with a nice tannic touch, very enjoyable, easy drinking.
__ Cheverny Rouge 2018, blend of Gamay & Pinot Noir with 10 % of Côt. No notes, sorry. I guess I was distracted by a Belgian visitor who also tasted with us, I didn't get his name but he teaches at the Wine University of Suze-la-Rousse in the Rhône valley, giving courses in flemish for Belgian and Dutch students.
__ We then tasted from a barrel (a large capacity demi-muid) a batch of Pinot Noir 2018 which they don"t make every year. Today on red Cheverny they can put up top 80 % of Pinot Noir in the blend, but Philippe says he and others push to change that and allow more. Very nice Pinot with good chew, tannins are discreet and acidity is not over the top. He filled 3 such demi-muids with Pinot Noir for a total volume of 15 hectoliters. Will age quietly a bit more and will be bottled in a couple of months. Didn't have any SO2 yet, will get a gram at bottling.
This was not shot there but could have been (you get similar landscape in the vicinity of Cheverny), I made this short video from the window in my hideaway further south, this scene is why we city dwellers value so much going back to immerse ourselves in the middle of nowhere...
How many bottles of wine are produced a year? 100k?
Posted by: jp | March 14, 2022 at 03:46 PM
Frankly, no idea
Posted by: Bert | March 29, 2022 at 05:16 PM