Chasselas, Burgundy
Visiting Catherine and Philippe Jambon in their wine farm is a delight like their wines, all is real there, their house has no makeup, no fancy tech or electric gate and remains unpretentious with weeds growing here and there. the place is like it has been since it was built, just with the wrinkles of time passing. For whoever would drink
a natural wine for the 1st time of his life, beginning with one of Jambon's cuvées would have the expected triggering effect, after which you can't
really come back to the mainstream stuff : unfiltered and without SO2, they're vivid and alive and oddly can endure time as well, you hardly remain indifferent when you drink that.
We showed up at the farm a few days before the harvest, the quiet before the storm, the weather was nice (like it's been for months in a row this year) and not too hot, perfect for a few glasses in the shade...
Philippe makes wine from his own parcels (with a small overall surface) and he also sells négoce wines, these are the vins des copains, buddies' wines (Les Amis de Jambon), they are wines made in the same no-makeup free style and Jambon just puts his stamp on the label, kind of, after helping give a final touch to the cuvée, like keeping it unfiltered or taking out the CO2, or keeping it, whatever. This makes the buyers happy because beyond Philippe's limited estate production, it gives more choice and bottles with in common this unmistakable depth and emotion.
A few words about the village of Chasselas, it is located in Burgundy actually, close to the Burgundy/Beaujolais divide, it is a gem of a quiet place with vineyards on the slopes, a 12th century church and a castle built starting in the 14th century (in the background behind the horses on the pic on left). Picture on right : parcel of La Grande Bruyère in Fuissé (Burgundy side of the divide).
Philippe received us nicely, we had intially told we'd arrive at 2pm and Catherine texted us to have us earlier and have lunch with them, which we managed to do (by car from Paris). For my 1st story on Philippe in 2007 also in september I remember the weather was rainy and foggy and the trip on
motorbike from Chalon-sur-Saône was tricky. It happened that Pat Desplats of Les Griottes was visiting
there that day, and man, that was something, these two unbridled guys behind the wildest of the natural wines, made me feel very shy and impressed suddenly...
Philippe Jambon farms and makes wine from his own surface which is about 3,5 hectares and on top of that he sells wines for his friends, wines which he kind of overlooks and brands as cuvées with "Aux Amis d'une Tranche". This négoce helps friends who maybe wouldn't have made the last step, you know, the little thing that makes a wine alive and on the edge. There's a public for these wines, he says, even if it's still a small proportion of the wines made globally, but those who make these wines are sometimes sold out because the tiny minority of amateurs are in high demand, so he says in that case he can find neighbors who don't put chemicals in the vineyard and work naturally in the cellar, and from what I understand he makes the connection with the buyers for the cuvées he chooses to help sell. That works pretty well, if you're open on these wines you won't be disappointed by a cuvée of Aux Amis... We were to enjoy a beautiful tasting lunch, thank you so much for that !
The first wine Philippe poured us blind outside in the shade wasn't his or one of "Aux Amis", it happened to be a white from François Bouillot-Salomon (pictured on left -- his wife is Claire salomon) who was visiting that day, he's making wine in Mâlain in the Vallée de l'Ouche east of Dijon. Tasting it blind we were at
odds about what it could be, just that it was pleasantly rich and whole, and vivid at the same time, even if the serving temperature was certainly too high. B. risked guessing a northern Rhône, but this was actually as we leaned
an Aligoté 2015 from François who was sitting at the table,
he says this was the 1st vintage as they took over the vineyards (planted in 2001) that year.
François adds that the tension in the wine has a lot to do with the location in the Vallée de l'Ouche, and the ripeness because 2015 was hot and he picked late. Philippe says he would have had trouble finding if he didn't know, he would have guessed Alsace maybe. He says he tasted the cuvée Love and Pif of Yann Durieux, 2013 maybe, and it's unbelievably good. François says that he planted vines in 2009 in Ampuis in the Rhône where they grew vegetables, having the first harvest in 2011. In 2014 they felt homesick (they're originally from the Côte d'Or in Burgundy) and landed in Mâlain in 2015 where they got a small vineyard surface. Originally he worked for others in their vineyards.
Speaking of the Aligoté, he says they bottled it in several times, the last bottling was for two barrels which took longer to finish the sugar, it's sold out by now. In 2016 all was frozen, in 2017 frozen again (95 %) and they blended all the grapes together in a single cuvée, and in 2018 they made only 2 pièces (barrels). They don't have this vineyard now, it was a rent and the relations with the owner soured from year to year, because they left lots of weeds and he didn't like that.
__ Le Jambon Blanc. This was another mystery wine to taste blind, but Philippe was confident it was his, and certainly a Chardonnay, but he was not sure of the cuvée (his wife put the socks on the bottles). More oxydative, longer élevage for sure. We tasted 3 different cuvées blind in a row, all bottled end of august. delicious for sure. We ask about the topping up in the barrels, he says he does it, adding after a few seconds, when he doesn't forget...
From what I remember there are several vintages in this cuvée, some of the grapes here had skin maceration, some not, there was none on the 2014, one month on the 2017 and one year on the 2016. The color comes partly from the maceration but also from the fact there is no SO2 at all here, he adds that people have whites that are colorless because they're soaked with sulfites. In the past whites were certainly darker, and there's also the fact that in the past the vineyards were complanted, red & white varieties together. François asks if he always blends vintages or also makes single vintages, Philippe says you have always to follow a set of rules, and theirs is not having any [fixed] rules. that's why they bottles under the table wine label (vin de France), they don't want the AOC marketing, there's been a viticulture and a wine culture for 5000 years and the AOC system is barely 100 years old and wants to regulate everything...
__ We then had a 2nd Jambon Blanc (also blind), similar color but I remember one of the two had a more veil-wine character, as if there had been less (if any) topping up (that's why the conversation drifted on the matter). Philippe says the wines are still recovering from the bottling shock. This 2nd Jambon Blanc was a blend of Chardonnay from several vintages where they has losses of grapes, 2009 (hail), 2010 (hail), 2011 (stalled fermentation), 2012 (frost and acidic, unripe vintage),
2013 (acidic, unripe vintage), they made 5 barrels of it (blended together since a few
years, not a real solera), the latter vintages helping the others to finish.
__ Aux Amis du Jambon Blanc, Philippe says this wine had a reduction issue when blended, they had to wait but it recovered.
Speaking of the cuvées Aux Amis du Jambon Blanc & Jambon Blanc, they'll propose it to their customers when they feel the wines are ready, and they're not in hurry. He says sometimes they go to wine fairs but have no wine to sell because they're not ready yet. In that case they can have the friends' wines, the cuvées like Aux Amis de la Tranche, or Aux Amis du Jambon Blanc, and on the fine print you have the original winemaker's name. It has to be viticulture without chemicals__ Philippe says he doesn't speak about "organic", there's two types of agriculture he says, the one with chemicals and the one without chemicals. With these friends, Philippe helps them vinify without anything added including SO2, something they may have been reluctant to try the last step because it is not easy to sell these wines on the market. These wines have a market even if it is a small one because when you begin to drink wines that are really natural there's no coming back.
Pic on left : the 12th century church in Chasselas.
__ Aux Amis d'une Tranche red [mostly 2016 with a bit of 2014 & 2017], another selection by Catherine & Philippe Jambon, Beaujolais with a bit of wine from the Rhône, blended and bottled (sept 2018) in Chasselas. So2 total non detecté, means the
lab analysis couldn't detect the total SO2 in this wine. Juicy fruit, gorgeous chew, classy and length, lots of pleasure, cost 12 €, a great deal indeed. Here Catherine and Philippe did a bit more than for the whites because the blending was made here, but he says it's still not their wine, this is their friends' wine.
Speaking of SO2, he says that sometimes the vigneron doesn't add SO2 but the lab analysis finds some in the wine, this is sometimes because the summer has been really dry with no rain at all, and the sulfur sprayed on the vines in, say, early july (often the last time for a spray) is not washed down and finds its way into the wine.
At one point I asked if Philippe did a bit of wine in Amphora, he says no, I call him a rebel of some sort because it has become so widespread now... He says he has nothing against amphorae, just that it seems that people seem to discover great wines in amphorae when there were also great wines before people here used amphorae. Still, he makes maceration whites, even if made in fiber-glass tanks and not amphorae.
__ Coteaux Bourguignons 2017, another wine from François & Claire Bouillot-Salomon. 12 %, unfiltered, unfined & not degassed, says on the label can be carafed. This light red is a blend of red and white varieties, Pinot Noir, Gamay, Aligoté, Chardonnay, Pinot Gris, roughly 50 % red/white. A bit green in the mouth, very exciting and vivid red, lovely. Coteaux Bourguignon is not a recen Appellation,
maybe 10 years, before these wines would have been labelled as Passetoutgrain (which means literally in French "pass all the berries", meaning I guess that you can blend all the varieties). In the mouth it has the vividness of these cuvées Corail from the Jura, samely made with whites & reds together, with also here a relarion with the fact that in the past the parcels were complanted with reds & whites together.
Passetoutgrain wasn't a very prestigious Burgundy Appellation but you could make excellent wines with this blend style, it's just that what you find in the shops under this label are usually bland mainstream wines, often from uninteresting négoce. Now with this other, more visually inspiring appellation (Coteaux Bourguignons) there's the hope that you find more exciting blends. François sold this bottle for 12 € (a bargain) but now they have no vines anymore in Mâlain, and they'll soon have nothing in Ampuis either, so they may instead do a bit of négoce, in addition with working in the vineyard for growers [François is very modest, he didn't say it openly but he works at Prieuré-Roch...]. He noticed that in the Côte de Nuits there are growers who don't want to vinify and their grapes are not that expensive.
Another delightful cuvée, superb nose with prune notes, exciting, lavish fruit feel in the mouth and when swallowed, made from 75 % Gamay from the Beaujolais and 25 % Grenache-Syrah sourced from Denis Tardieu in the Rhône. Without any SO2.
Baltailles is certainly a terrific cuvée of Philippe Jambon, look at the cloudy color, it speaks by itself; I remember having had one Baltailles a few years ago, it was unique, fresh, vibrant, told you a story at every sip, the type of bottle to drink at two but not three, too little wine for each... Drinking a 2004 is proof these wines without sulfites age well, here the color is turbid, chalky and evolved, but what a mouth !!! Coffee notes, intense and fresh with dust, dry leaves aromas, with a smoked feel related possibly to the sediment in the wine. The wine shows its age and it was good not to wait to open the bottle but the old lady deserves respect...
B. and I went in Philippe's car to see a few parcels (I sit in the back among vineyard tools as the car is a 2-seater), we began with
Roche Noire, a steep parcel along
woods, with a surface of 25 ares (0,25 hectare). The vines stand on posts (échalas) without trellis, Philippe plows the plot with a winch, there's no other way, too steep and narrow space between vines. last time for the winch was in july, after which they had a long tilling to do by hand because if there was few weeds because of the drought, the brambles thrived on the other hand because they have deep roots and don't feel the water stress and because also they didn't have the competition from the weeds. The vines are not very old, like 20-25 (the parcel was planted with whites before), the soil is hard granite and manganese (which is black).
The Gamay grapes are beautiful, B. tastes them and nodds, I do the same even if grape juice and camera don't go along well, very sweet and ripe. Here is a parcel like his others where year after year he lost almost everything to hail, frost and wild animals; good to see there's fruit in 2019. There's traces of oïdium here and there, especially on the vigorous vines but it's OK on the whole, especially considering they didn't spray much : between one and two times in total this year, it's the first time they spray so little.
On some vines where the bunches stood unprotected by the leaves under the fiery sun during the heat wave there are grilled berries and you can see that in all the regions in 2019 including in the Loire. These grilled grapes are not too much a problem outside the lost volume of juice but they still manage to to have them macerate with the rest. B. asks if the heat had the maturity process stall at some point, Philippe says it could have but this place is cooler than other vineyards because of the woods, of the river down the slope, and he says that the area was actually quite fresh this summer thanks to the breeze from the north.
Some bunches were partly eaten by wild animals, like wild boars, undoubtly these organic fruits on a healthy soil taste so much better.... It's interesting to see that they gently peel the grapes off the bunch and don't just crunch the whole thing with the stems, really gourmet types ! The vines stand alone on their posts and Philippe says they spend quite a lot of time to tie the shoots and branches with wicker links so that they stand straight with the right air flow, they make sure to keep the bunches protected from the sun but the air flow is important also. People used to take care of that in the past but this working mode has been alas largely abandoned now although it certainly helps keep a better acidity in the grapes.
Here at one point while driving on the dirt road Philippe showed us on the other hil where a few of his parcels were, these are the one at center-left beyond the first line of trees, these are successive blocks of 4 rows separated by a grass lane each time, which they use to pass wioth a big tractor. They keep as many trees as they can, they give a bit of shade in the afternoon, the down side is that it helps the birds who take their share of fruit, but that's the way it is, he adds with philosophy... Thanks to the fact that the tractor stays on a grass lane every 4 rows, they don't have compacted soil between the rows. In line with this 1st line of trees you find a triangular stone hut with a black opening in the middle, this is just in front of his parcel Balmont, including the yellow patch further right which has yet to be replanted. For the information the cuvée Baltailles is a blend from Balmont and Batailles which is somewhere else.
This is something odd here, the divide line between Beaujolais and Burgundy, on one side vignerons struggle and on the other side it's the jackpot, with Leynes on the left hand (Beaujolais) and Fuissé (Burgundy) on the right (Chaintré is in our back). But actually the border line has been put along the villages' border limit, the soil isn't that different on both sides. Most of his reds are on the Burgundy side in a granitic island, and you find on the other side a similar limestone island in Saint Véran..
Here are most of the Chardonnay used for the wine we had minutes before, in a parcel at some distance from Roche Noire, this is La Grande Bruyère in the village of Fuissé, we're here on the Burgundy side (Mâconnais) but Philippe bottles them as Vin de France (table wine), good to know because you like me certainly thought you were having a Beaujolais white.
Philippe tastes the grapes, the skins are thick this year and there are seeds, otherwise they seem very nice to me, almost golden, but Philippe says no, they can wait and there may be a lack of juice, even though they had some rain here lately (good news because in the Loire and particularly the Cher valley it's been awfully dry these past few weeks and even months. there's a bit of oidium on certain leaves, he says he could have sprayed more.
Here resulting from some stress the berries are very small and green, maybe adds some acidity but not much juice. And here again some grapes were grilled by the sun during the heat-wave days along the summer. Overall Philippe is happy with the quality of the fruit, he has been through so many years where hail left him nothing, that's a good vintage.
Further after a few minutes on the dirt road we reached yet another iconic parcel, the one behind the cuvée Les Ganivets, Gamay on granite (hard not to remember the delight of this wine). Philippe says the berries are small on this parcel, the vines are small but are 50 years old. Philippe says he may also blend wih another vintage if there's little juice. The altitude here is 400 meters and he plows with a winch also, he noticed that where he plows there's more wood on the vines and more fruit, and oddly there's no erosion in spite of the slope. The surrounding is very natural with woods and bushes.
Driving around we ended up passing along Balmont which we saw from afar. You can see the grass lane on which they drive the tractor to avoid compacting the ground in the adjacent rows, Philippe underscores that they pulled up a row for each of the grass lanes, 2 rows total. The neighbor is farming organic here so it's a 3,5-hectare square with no chemicals.
Before leaving we had another look at the barrel cellar, which I remember was pretty the same when I visited the first time.
Exports : United States (Percy Selections), Japan (Oeno Connection), South Korea (Dagyeong), China (shanghai), Australia & Singapore (Estima), Spain (Cuvée 3000), the U.K. (Gergovie Wines), Canada (Quebec, Martin Juneau), Italy, Belgium-Holland (Just Add Wine).
" For whoever would drink natural wine for the 1st time of his life, beginning with one of Jambon's cuvées would have the expected triggering effect, after which you can't come back to the mainstream stuff"
This is the kind of nonsense that has turned me off from natural wine. Jambon's wines might or might not be very good, but I doubt that I will have a chance to try them. However, I've had plenty of "natural wines," some good, some not so good. And probably the worst were those of one of the demi-Gods of "natural" wine -- Frank Cornillsen of Etna, Sicily. I recently had 2 bottles of his top-tier wine from different years, which my niece had brought here. They were both undrinkable, for different reasons. All 4 of us agreed, and we all poured our wines out and disposed of the rest of the 2 bottles. My niece's $100 went down the drain; literally.
Posted by: Bob Rossi | September 25, 2019 at 03:29 PM
Man, you may have had bad luck, or the wine travelled too far (although wines without SO2 are said to stand well transportation), hard to say, many of us would have liked to taste these particular wines that you had, just for an opinion, it's true that each of us has a different scale system in appreciating a wine, and it's also true that a wine (particularly one that hasn't been "frozen dead" by filtration & sulfites) can go its own way and turn weird.
Posted by: Bert | September 25, 2019 at 04:38 PM
As far as the Cornellisen wines are concerned, if it had just been me, I would have said maybe it was just my taste. But there were 4 of us, all of whom love wine and have been drinking it for decades. As for "natural wine" turning weird, that's a poor defense. If a wine "turns weird" a year or 2 after release, there's something wrong with the wine and the winemaker. As to Jambon's wines, I know I said that I doubt I will have a chance to try them, but I've since looked at a map, and realized that the last 2 years I've visited wineries nearby, including 1 about 10 minutes away. And that one makes outstanding wines, and may the finest producer in the Maconnais. If I go there again next year, maybe I'll visit Jambon.
Posted by: Bob Rossi | September 26, 2019 at 02:54 PM
The number of tasters is not very relevant if they've all been formated on mainstream commercial wines, it's hard to tell without tasting the wines... Turning weird after two years of release is avoidable usually through careful/long élevage but that's not unknown for these fragile wines, that's the difference between a living wine and a square product that is dead (alas much of the world wine production falls in this category), the latter may "taste good" for certain wine lovers but many of us wouldn't see any excitement and interest.
Posted by: Bert | September 27, 2019 at 11:53 AM
I personally find irrelevant to launch in the air wine comparisons without any mention of the parcours of the bottle from Sicilia to your place. In addition as mention by an earlier tread, taste is a personal experience that is built over time. Took me over 20 years but I agree wines are flying the world at an accelerated pace...for the best and the worst FYI, I brought recently a 2004 white wine from Frank who won applause at a 3°°° restaurant but I agree it came from my cellar, in direct line from Sicilia. Ad maiorem my friend.
Posted by: Marc & Anne | September 27, 2019 at 11:47 PM
I found this article from searching for information on Philippe Jambon's wines. To me, good wine is about living and experiencing life. When I read Bert saying "it was unique, fresh, vibrant, told you a story at every sip", that is exactly how we felt. We had a memorable impression of a bottle of Jambon many years ago in a small bistro in Paris. We had not seen one since, until we were out supporting our local wine shops during this terrible Covid-19 pandemic. We were shopping Alex Bernardo's Vineyard Gate where my wife saw Jambon's wine... but "sold out". Since we met Alex at the door to his shop to pickup other wines, my wife mentioned what a great experience we had with a bottle of Jambon years ago, and to our surprise, Alex said he had one last bottle! Like a romantic destiny, it became a highlight of our anniversary picnic last week, telling its story and becoming part of our story with each sip.
Posted by: Steven | July 17, 2020 at 06:13 PM
Yes, Steven I feel the same way indeed, certain wines give magic moments, this counts more than the tasting notes indded !
Thanks for sharing !
Bert
Posted by: Bert | July 21, 2020 at 09:59 PM