Valvignères, Ardèche (Rhône)
I love Ardèche, every time I look into its natural-wine scene it's with wines that are so alive and enjoyable to drink. Just think of all these sought-after-vignerons here, Andrea Calek, Gilles Azzoni, the Ozil brothers, Les Deux Terres, Hirotake Ooka and plenty others, it happens that this time I visited Gérald Oustric who was the pioneer and mentor for the aspiring vignerons of the region, setting up with his
generous help a vibrant natural-wine scene on this western flank of the Rhône valley. Gérald helped many of the 15 new artisan vignerons who started their domaines in the last two decades, and this was done without EU or state subsidies while the local wine authorities and conventional growers work with subsidies of the EU/French system.
Gérald told
about his start : he got from his father Paul a 20-hectare surface of vineyard in 1982 (at the age of 20), but at the time he was selling the grapes to the local Coopérative and 20 hectares was considered too small to make a living, so he bought an additional 10 hectares. This trend to have to augment the surface for Coop growers hasn't stopped, he likes to say that in 1982 when he got these 20 hectares from his father he was the biggest grower in surface in the village (in terms of worked surface, be it owned or rented) and in 1997 when he began to bottle his wines he had 30 hectares and he was average compared to other growers, some working on as much as 100 hectares. The whole planted surface on Valvignières is 600 hectares which is quite a lot by the way. Growers used in the early 1980s to do also cereals and other crops but specialized on vines, and it's only recently that some reintroduce other crops (pushed by EU farm subsidies).
We (B. and I) arrived in the middle of the day at the domaine which sits at the foot of the hills, you pass lavender fields, vineyards, and here you are, the warehouse-style facility is uninspiring but living wines are blind to architecture styles... Gérald had told me to be there for lunch, which he had casually in the shade in the facility with two workers. It was a treat with a salad, local charcuterie (from a butcher shop in Alba-la-Romaine, these caillettes were gorgeous) and his delicious wines to rinse the whole. I began the interview there, trying not to be distracted by all these goodies....
In 1997 Gérald quit the Coopérative system but he had these 30 hectares of vines and didn't want to vinify all of them although at the beginning he did try to, that's why the facility is very large.
He then downsized, selling
parcels here and there. Speaking of the vineyard management his father Paul wasn't fully organic but he worked well his surface, plowing instead of using herbicides for example, and Gérald continued in this direction, converting organic and getting certified officially in 2000.
Because of his farming which had been organic long time before, he didn't want to give parcels (when downsizing) to growers who would bring back chemicals for their Coop sales, so he looked for other growers outside the system, first it was Andrea Calek to whom he sold 5 hectares, then Sylvain Bock to whom he sold also 5 hectares, both vignerons being on Alba-la-Romaine, a village nearby.
I love Gérald's T-shirt with the slogan "Travailler Plus Pour" and the drawing of a hamster in his wheel, that paints correctly the life of many people in Western Europe and particularly France, working and running for who knows what, paying stratospheric taxes and buying things they don't need...
Gérald says something funny, kind of : he says when he was certified organic in 2000 that was years after his farming was actually organic, so in 2000 nothing changed in the vineyard, but his conventional neighbors learning about his organic certification went after him, complaining that he would bring them plenty of diseases because through his organic farming. He answered back that he was already organic and it didn't harm their vineyard but the deep prejudice of conventional growers against anything organic was well entrenched. Right now he vinifies 15 hectares of his 20-hectare vineyard and sells the grapes for the remaining 5 hectares. I ask him if today he might as well vinify these 5 hectares himself but he likes to keep it this way even though he'd have the customers for this additional volume of wine. The funny thing also is that for example last year he had a bit of Oidium in his rows but the conventional growers had more of it in spite of all their chemicals, and also more black rot. And the region remains alas pretty reluctant to move toward organic. Even worse, the local wine authorities want to build reservoirs all around the region with irrigation in mind, although it's still formally forbidden in the vineyard, and all the other French authorities are helping the move, the Prefet and the rest, because they can get 75 % of the cost paid through subsidies. I use to say that the redistribution & subsidies system is killing real farming in France in addition to wasting hard-earned taxpayer's money, and here is another proof...
At the time of the visit the work on the domaine was debudding, trimming, they had also to tend the recently-planted vines (planted in 2016, 2017 & 2018). Plus some other things like Yannick (pictured on left on the lunch pic) who is ironworker who is busy welding a roof to protect the lift. They had also some remaining plowing and tilling, they're late a bit, they might cancel the remaining tilling and mow instead.
__ Vin de Soif 2016, blend of Grenache & Carignan.The wine has a little bit of perly touch on the tongue with a super fruity and fresh mouth. Feels so true, love it !
I asked about his first encounter with natural, no-correction winemaking, and Gérald says that
while he was still selling to the Coop in 1985, he met vignerons from the Beaujolais, Marcel Lapierre, P'tit Max [Guy Breton], Jean Foillard, Thevenet and Le Chat [Jean-Claude Chanudet], learning about them through relatives who had been going there to pick. He then visited them in their respective domaines, and met as well Jacques Néauport, an adept of Jules Chauvet who lives in Ardèche and is kind of reclusive and away from the limelight although he's been a key instigator of all this natural-wine movement. By the way, when Gérald first met Christophe Pacalet (who later wrote this linked article on Chauvet), he was just a kid, and Philippe Pacalet was only 16 when he met him...
So, Jacques néauport would vinify the wines of these 5 Beaujolais winemakers and as he had no car and no driver's licence, Gérald would drive him up there, going with him to all these cellars and chai where he witnessed the natural vinification at a time it was unheard of in France [let's remind that there wasn't even a term to name this type of non-intervention vinification]. At the time Gérald had to take care of the 30-hectare domaine with his father but he would take a week off to go to the Beaujolais with Jacques Néauport, doing the lab analysis, and visting the 5 cellars every morning. He learned a lot through these visits.
And something interesting at the time is that while Gérald Oustric was vice-president of the Cave Coopérative at the time [the Coop is named UVICA today], Marcel Lapierre and Jacques Néauport came 3 consecutive down here (that was between 1985 & 1989) at the Coop to try explain the natural vinification and offer tastings. Let's remind that the only coop making natural wine was Estézargues, which began vinify on indigenous yeast in 1997-1998. Gérald says that at the time in the late 1980s, well before the Estézargues breakthrough Marcel Lapierre and Néauport tried to counter the argument that such vinification can't be done also on a Coopérative scale. If the Coop here in Ardèche had been more open minded it would have been the first, before Estézargues to rech the fame status of a coop vinifying naturally. But this failed because apart from Oustric, the other members of the Coop were pretty hostile to the mere idea of such a vinification, and instead of all the good will of Marcel Lapierre who tried along 3 years to have them understand the feasability of it, this all failed. Everything was turned down, from the idea to work the soils differently, to the idea to let the wild yeast do their job without interfering, they were closed to everything Lapierre and Néauport suggested. After he had spent 3 years in vain trying to convince the growers and the Coop's management, Lapierre told Gérald to begin start his own thing instead of staying in such a structure where there was no understanding.
Gérald ended up quitting the Coopérative but after a few more years, taking off 8 hectares in 1997 and the rest in 2002. From the start he had no problem on his natural vinification because although not officially registered as such, he'd been already farming organic for years, which is a pivotal step to be able to have fermentations with wild yeast that unfold smoothly. And along his years working with the Beaujolais vintners he was familiar with the microscope analysis to gauge the yeast population in his grapes & juice, and he felt confident with what he could see. And on top of that Jacques Néauport [who lives somewhere in Ardèche as well] helped him for 10 years. He says that Jacques had an incredible aura already back then, and when he began to vinify in the wharehouse of his father in 1997, as early as in spring 1998 when the wine wasn't even bottled yet, there were Japanese, American buyers all over the place ready to place orders for his wines. Jacques had just contacted a few people saying he was vinifying here and inviting them to taste...
Gérald used to do about 20 wine fairs per year but he stopped going to almost all of them, he now only attends La Dive and the smaller one La Remise.
In Valvignières there are 5 domaines working organic and there is almost no disease there, somthing the other grower can check with their eyes when they walk around, but in spite of this the minds are closed and the conventional don't want to aknowledge the success of their organic peers.
Gerald says he sprays with old products like sulfur and copper (which he recognizes as harmful and not ideal), and on this issue he had an analysis conducted on
his soil by Herody and also by Claude Bourguignon, digging holes and taking samples, both pushing to dowsize he copper input in the soil. They're two growers (Les Vigneaux and himself) in Valvignières who limit the amount of copper, they're entitled as organic growers to use 6-kg/hectare/year (the conventional can use 4 kg, Gérald fumbles on the fact that because you're farming organic, you are allowed to use more copper than the conventional...) but they have been using only 1 kg/hectare/year for the last 10 years, which proves it is widely possible to do better than the organic requirements. And among the other woh make natural wine around here, none of them goes over 3 kg/hectare/year. The concentional on the other hand go to the full allowance of 4 kg, adding new products that by the way cost a fortune. His organic peer Christophe and himself looked into their respective expenses recently and they never go above 250 € per hectare whatever the year (their average expense in products is more like 150 €/year) while the conventional spend between 1000 and 2000 € per year, only in products, which proves that on the financial aspect of the farming it's not really cheap. And on the tractor use they're not even cheaper : in 2018 Gérald used his tractor 14 times and a conventional grower 10 times which is more or less on the same frequency range.
Here the first vineyard we saw when we went out to walk was this Viognier, planted in 1989 at the time he was still selling his grapes to the Coopérative. These are massal selection bought from Georges Vernay in Condrieu. At the time the Coop wanted to make marketing coups and bring fame in the region. Gérald says that there has always been Viognier in the area but never whole parcels planted with it, there were just a few vines here and there in the red parcels, for example when people said they had a parcel of Carignan, it would be actually 80 % of Carignan and the rest would be a long list of other things including Viognier. It has always been like that, and in the other regions as well by the way.
Here in the region people would only make reds in the past, the first whites in Valvignières were vinified around 1990. Earlier than that, the Burgundy domaine Louis Latour had discovered that the soil of the region was good for Chardonnay and had planted some in the early 1980s, which gave the coopérative the idea to make whites as well.
It's all dry farmed here at Le Mazel and in same-minded wine farms and you might think that it's the norm in France regardless of the viticulture philosophy, but I learn that irrigation while nominally forbidden is tolerated for more than 30 years. This allows the mainstream wineries to easily reach the ceiling of 90 hectoliters/hectare, the record by the way in 2017 near Montélimar was on a 6-hectare surface to reach the average yield of 300 ho/ha (apparently this had no consequences for the grower although it was not kept secret). Gérald says there's no
retribution for these things, and if you take the road between Chateauneuf du Rhône and Montélimar, he says you can see irrigation being done in plain view along the year, but authorities look the other way and any attempt to denounce that would be countered by the local big shots and the Préfet. In Suze-La-Rousse irrigation was done for an even longer time, he remembers that 41 years ago they'd do it with trucks (they weren't yet into drip irrigation at the time), and the local député [congressman] was to be a personnal friend to President Mitterrand and used his protection if needed. Yields are the nerve of the mainstream business and if for example you're selling your grapes to the Coop and have yields of only 60 ho/ha you'll not stay afloat long, that's why the whole wine sector keeps this little secret business of widespread irrigation.
In terms of frost or hail I asked if there was a risk here, Gérald says there was a big frost in 1987, then in 1991, then in 2012 which was the consequence of early sap flow because of a warm november/december. Gérald's father had always been insured against hail because every 3 years or so there would be losses related to hail. Then it seems the problem eased, this could be the indirect result of high voltage lines been built across the area and also logging which laid bare some hills and may have diverted the potential hailstorms, anyway for about 20 years, Gérald didn't see any hail on the vineyard. And now for the last 5 years hail for some reason seems to be back here.
__ Charbonnières, Vin de France 2016, bottled march 2018, unfiltered Chardonnay. Super fresh, wholeness and Umami feel. No wine is filtered at Le Mazel, there's no additives including for SO2 and no correction whatsoever. 14 % but you don't feel it, but I notice that many of the Mazel wines are around 12 % in alcohol which is very low for the region, another good point.
Gérald exports 70 % of hiw wine, with Japan (Vortex) first in terms of volume, then Scandinavia being also a major buyer (Denmark, Sweden, Norway). He is not familiar with the respective importers for Scandinavia, his sister Jocelyn know these details (his sister is partner in the winery while his wife isn't). He also sells to China and South Korea. His wines can be found in the UK (Wayward wines), in the U.S. (T. Edward), Canada (Quebec, Oenopole) and I guess a string of other countries but we didn't go through the list. He sells also in Paris of course
On normal year he begins to pick around august 20 (this year it should be more like august 10). With the warmer summers it's like 90 days after the flower and 30 days after veraison (instead of the 100 and 40 days respectively that were taught in the wine school). And the latest he finishes to pick is september 10. He doesn't look for overmaturity. Here in the region they have such high yields that they often have very low potential alcohol, the record happened in the Coopérative where
someone had a potential alcohol of only 4,2 % which isn't even legal (they had certainly
to chaptalize). In such instances they pick early without waiting maturity because the excessive yields make tight, bulging clusters with high risk of rot, and by the way they have to use anti-rot chemicals. In the Coop culture the vines are planted with a 20-year limit in mind, after which they pull them up and replant. And they have the subsidies to replant, with these subsidies much more important if you pull up and replant the following year on the same field, which is a mindless incentive.
His wines ferment on average at least 6 months, some needing as much as 3 years. The reds are made with carbonic maceration, he presses when reaching between 1000 and 1005 in the free run juice (which starts in the region at 1100 in general). then after pressing he blends the 4 different press stages and finds himself with a juice back at 1060 that will keep on fermenting. On this first day after pressing he usually see a 20-point, sometimes 30-point drop because the yeast population is thriving and active. For the fermentation he uses lots of stainless tanks as well as a few cement ones, he likes both, they're temperature controlled and he keeps the juice at 15 C (59 F) down from 18 or 19 C (64-66 F) when the whole-clustered grapes were still macerating, thus the yeast cool down their activity which will stretch on a longer time.
__ Cuvée Planet, Vin de France 2013, Cabernet Sauvignon. Nice nose, super nice chew, alive, so good...
__ Cuvée Larmande, Vin de France 2015,
made from Syrah.
Meaty nose. Super fresh wine, you'd mistake it for Trousseau, it's aerial with a cherry side. Soil with clay/limestone with more or less stones. A delicious thirst wine. Color rather light with milky shades. 2nd glass : nose is even more terrific !
Gérald says that in the past he'd routinely cool down the grapes' temperature to 5 C (41 F) but now it does it only to 11 C (51,8 F), letting the fermentation go up to 20 C maximum (68 F). If it goes over he speeds the pressing. Then in the vats he keeps the juice/wine at 15 (59 F). I hope I read my notes correctly, some sentences I couldn't even re-read myself...
That's a nice and old vertical press ! And the story is that he bought it in 1996 from Yvon Métras in the Beaujolais, Yvon being a good friend of his father Paul. It's even Yvon Métras' first press, the one he began to work with. What a piece of History, and it landed here in Valvignières...
He still uses it even if he
also has a pneumatic press bor both reds and whites. This old hydraulic press is for reds only, a big 3rd with it and the rest with the pneumatic. Yvon Métras likes these big presses but he found others in the Beaujolais, it was pretty easy to find them back then. Incidently he wanted to buy him back the press because he found it was better than the ones he bought... In order to bring it here they had to disassemble and reassemble it. The pedestal is in wood (unlike renovated ones where they plated a metal sheet) like in the old days, and before the harvest, he soaks it in water for a few days (it takes a week) to make it tight again, or the juice would leak through.
Gérald doesn't press "fresh" grapes with this basket press, but only macerated grapes and he can put 4 tons of grapes. Nobody knows its age exactly but it is thought it is 130 years old, it needs some pretty heavy maneuvering but he's helped by the staff in the chai. And they work with gravity, the juice flows through this hole (pictured on right) in the floor to fill the barrels in the cellar underneath.
You may have notice the Grenier tronconic vat in one of the pictures above, Gérald bought it several years ago along with two others, he liked these vats a lot but in the end he will backpedal and stop all the oak. He used to have a lot of barrels as well, with until 2013 about 180 of them plus the 3 foudres, but the foudres are already sold and since 2013 he gets rid of several barrels every year
(the ones that reach their end of life) and he doesn't replace them. He probably has about 20 left now. B. asks if it's a question of style change, he says no, he didn't use them to bring oak flavors, it's just that they are a lot of work and investment (with the replacements) and didn't bring that much to the wine.
The chai and cellar facility is very large and roomy, and along the years Gérald could help same-minded starting winemakers who hadn't yet their own place. He would provide them with a place to vinify and stock their wines (this is allowed by the wine administration on certain conditions), he still does it today for Anders Frederik Steen, a Denmark-born sommelier who makes natural wine in the Rhône (but in 2020 he'll vinify at his own chai).
Outside we spot a few large-capacity cement fermenters (pic on left) along the building, Gérald says that along with Andrea Calek and Domaine Les Deux Terres he bought all the cellar tanks of a domaine that was closing, each taking his part of cement tanks to use them as water reserves, they connected them with the roof and gutters to stock rainwater. Gérald uses it to do the spaying mix, he also used it at the time for his vegetable garden (he stopped by lack of time).
In the village there's a Fendt dealership so most growers have Fendt tractors. This one is of the Farmer type of tractors, this is a narrow tracteur vigneron (1,4 meter wide). This is the one he uses for the spraying, the important thing he says is to keep the spraying close to each other when there's a threat, like 10 days apart (can go down to 6-7 days apart), using lower doses like 10 % of the normal, going up to 30 % on higher threats.
He doesn't do biodynamics except for certain things from time to time. He uses herb teas like for example valerian with arnica in case of hailstorm. His friend Christophe at Les Vigneaux is on the other hand certified for Biodynamie, but Gérald himself doesn't want to go fully into it.
This vineyard is his oldest, Grenache planted in 1954, total surface around 80 ares. Trimming here has already been done, suckering (épamprage) also, then at
the time of the visit they
had to soon make a green harvest (vendange en vert).
He normally hates that, it's been 15 years that he didn't make one but this year the vines produced an enormous load of fruit and this is obviously too much to keep. He never saw that before, even when working high yields in the Coop. On the other hand when looking closer he says there's been coulure at flowering, meaning many berries aborted, so he'll see, but on the whole he thinks there's still way too much fruit.
As we walk further we pass several other varieties, Viognier again, Syrah, young vines planted last year as well, Grenache Blanc and Cinsault.
He didn't have Grenache Blanc before, that's why he planted some, and here is the Cinsault he also planted last year. His idea with it is to counter the raising prices of natural wines, which is the consequence of low yields. Even if his own prices are reasonable his friends in the area often can't afford them and so as Cinsault is a variety with which he can have yields between 60 and 80 hectoliters he might make cheaper wine [but nonetheless naturally vinified] which he'd sell in bag-in-box. He's prioritize direct sales in the domaine for this cuvée instead of professionnal buyers.
We met Jocelyne, Gérald's sister who is a partner in the domaine and does all the administration work. Gérald is kind of allergic to the red tape part of the job, also she helps for the shipping related issues, working in the vineyards very rarely, for example is they're late and have to rush. For the harvest she takes care of the lunch [quite a strategic thing I may say, you work so much better with these great repas de vendangeurs...]. For the administrative part it's becoming more complicated (especially for a mid-size farm like theirs) and she understands Gérald's reluctance to get into it. They bottled their wines as table wine (Vin de France) precisely because of the administrative red tape you need to go through to get an appellation. This started a year they were really very busy, in 2009 with the new IGP system, the process became so complicated that they gave up [another proof the French administration doesn't really grasp the things they're asking to farmers and business owners, they lay regulations from their cozy offices and the hamsters in their wheels just have to run faster, that's not their problem...]. When they began to label some cuvées as table wine in 2017 it had needed some work to have the customers understand that this didn't mean low quality wine. Now she says many same-minded winemakers ended up bottling most if not all their cuvées as Vin de France (table wine) after going through several administyrative hurdles while asking for the Appellation agreement, and in the end they feel it's fine like that, it has become actually a niche of quality wine today.
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