I toured a few vineyards this year to see the harvest, 2019 has been a very dry year in several regions, with much of the Loire for example having even less rain (actually no rain at all for several months in the Cher valley) than Provence or the Rhône. But as you'll see the answers are pretty positive, this vintage 2019 will be quite good and same for the volumes. Plus the weather at harvest time
was ideal, sunny, not too warm, a breeze to keep the pickers happy, and no need to say
I was myself very happy driving around on my motorbike, ideal weather, of course rain will be welcome [it has started as I write this] but this nice weather day after day will be remembered fondly.
Yes, Junko Arai was there to pick her Côt and when I heard the day before she'd be around I was thrilled, knowing she comes rarely from Japan. She downsized her surface from 6 to 2 hectares here, with Chardonnay, Pinot Noir and Côt the wine being wholly exported to Japan. this year the Côt will be taken care of by Julien Pineau and she'll do the job for the Pinot Noir and the Chardonnay, Junko says she loves Burgundy wines but the vineyard prices there make it impossible to do wine there, so she'll kind of work on the 2 varieties here in Touraine, which she planted years ago. And Junko also made wine in Japan this year, but the weather was really hot, even if she chose a cooler area in the Yamagata prefecture (Tohoku), her variety is Delaware there (she did the harvest a few weeks ago).
Pic above : Ben Nerot and Josh Barber on left
The next day she'll pick the Pinot and the Chardonnay and then she was bound for the Beaujolais where she'll make Beaujolais Nouveau (also all exported to Japan) at Marcel Joubert, where Carine Joubert is now in
charge of the vineyard. Marcel Joubert was a friend of another Marcel, Marcel Lapierre by the way. After that indefatigable Junko flies back to Japan where she'll begin her sake production in the Ibaraki Prefecture (Kanto), because she makes also sake (see the bottle here), and like the wines, on a natural way.
Junko says the world of sake in Japan is a tight, closed universe where women are virtually absent, unlike the natural-wine scene here in France and Europe. At one point with sake (even if you work natural) you have to put some yeast and she uses Sauvignon yeast from here, and the other thing is that she makes sparkling sake. She works from organic rice which she buys in Kyushu from a woman farmer there. Here is her page with informations (in Japanese about her work) about this sake making. And Junko is also active in Politics, of course with in mind the preservation of nature in Japan. She still imports wine to Japan (apart from her own) but she does it for Diony (too many things to do for keeping here own export company), she was recently for example visiting Laureano Serres Montagut in Spain.
Junko told me that there are 100 Japanese owners of the Côt they were picking that day, that is these 100 Japanese wine lovers helped Junko years ago through crowdfunding to finance the planting of this parcel in 2006, and they're getting paid in wine, this is beautiful and cute to see their names on this plaque, flanked by two statues like in a shrine... Of course the wine will be unfiltered and vinified/bottled without SO2.
I also asked Julien Pineau what he thought of the vintage, considering the high temperatures throught summer and the drought, he says it's good with 12,5-13 with a good balance and acidity;
Not very far from there on the former estate vineyards of Clos Roche Blanche, Laurent Saillard was picking his young Sauvignon 17 years) with his pickers (16 people including himself), among whom Arnaud Erhardt (pictured on left) who left Puerto Rico after the Hurricane disaster and spends time in the region. The Sauvignon will be part of Lucky You, along with the Chardonnay he already picked. Laurent says that there's a good volume of grapes this year in spite of the drought and heat, the reds are the ones who suffered the most with grilled berries but the whites are fine, and surprisingly with good load of juice.
In terms of volume for example Laurent says that for this parcel he'll have more fruit than last year, which was if I remember a good year also.
The vines have good roots and found their nutrients and water, when you look at the vines and leaves you don't look at a dessicated parcel. And Laurent says he hasn't sprayed since june 14, he's never seen that, not a mildew trace on the vines, the leaves are healthy and green wjhen usually at this time of the year he has many leaves touched by mildew. He made 4 sprays this year when usually it's like 6 or 7 on average with peaks to 12 or 13 on difficult years. The potential of this Sauvignon is 13 % and the acidity is 5,5 with pH at 3,25, it's quite good, he says, it should be balanced. There was this discreet black dog here, following the pickers and resting in the shade.
The chai was busy at Les Capriades when i dropped there in Faverolles-sur-Cher, Pascal Potaire was at the wheel of the forklift to put loads of gamay in the press for a rosé pet-nat. I asked him about the vintage 2019 and the drought and he says that there's less juice than usual but it's not that worrying : they had years in the past with milder type of drought and oddly with lower yields, so overall it's quite good. The juices taste good, there will be just a bit more alcohol than usual, around 1 %, the acidity remained high which will preserve the balance in the wines. He says that in 2003 where the temperature were less hot than in the summer 2019 there had been a steep drop of the acidity in the wines, something that didn't happen in 2019. He says the water stress may be what have preserved the acidity.
There are many reasons the pickers like to work for growers in natural wine, of course spending whole days in vineyards free of chemicals is important as well as the cool vibes, but how can others compete with the thirst-quenching wines that you're given here at the end of the day ? I noticed at one point Pascal was disgorging a few bottles (this was the end of the afternoon) with a staff, these bottles were prepared for the picking team which was on its way from the parcels...
And soon the pickers were there indeed, for a good time drinking this holy booze, not only pet-nat but also cider (Pascal Potaire is increasing his cider production) and Poiré (from pears) of which I had here a glass of their first vintage of it. Most of these pickers were from Spain, originally it's a small group of Spaniards who live in the region, they picked here, liked it and told relatives and friends who now come every year. On the right/front sits Estelle Mulowsky who walks the draft horse used to collect the boxes of grapes between the rows.
Here is the draft horse (a 9-year-old mare) used that day to pick up the grape tanks between the rows. Estelle is managing with friends a service company, Agil Percherons which owns a
dozen percherons, using the draft horses for touring, events and agriculture tasks like here. Percherons are beautiful draft horses, they're so powerful and still so cute, they were widely used in the past for agriculture before the advent of tractors and they're coming back largely thanks to inspired growers and farmers who want to avoid the use of machinery and gas consumption in their organic land. Agil Percherons is based in Saint Agil, where there's this exciting natural wine event every year, Poison d'Avril.
More pictures and content on the Facebook page of Agil Percherons.
Pic on left : Meriting horse resting after a hard day's work (on the other side of the street from the chai of Les Capriades) with lots of hay to eat...
At one point Pascal Potaire climbed atop this submarine-looking tang to get me a glass of freshly pressed (two days before) juice of Chardonnay (this was the 1st press of the vintage), what a delicious treat; don't count on me to visualize the wine it could yield but real grape juice is sooo good... It's quite dark for a white, gets used to oxygen and with all the matter and lees you feel like you're eating the best liquid food as well. Pascal feels there's still freshness even though a bit less than usual but much more than expected. The aromas as expected he says are very generous this year, like the previous year. They should vinify the wine dry and the alcohol will give a rich, sweet feel to the whole. He says the fact that it didn't rain helped probably the wild yeast to remain on the skins, which should help for a smooth fermentation.
Here we are at a parcel belonging to Jean-Christophe Jézéquel (a new vigneron in the area
who sells part of his fruit), Moses Gadouche (Pascal Potaire's associate at Les Capriades - the guy in blue near the tractor) overlooks the picking and takes care of the grapes collected with the draft horse. That day, Estelle Mulowsky of Agil Percherons wasn't the one walking the horse but instead Anne, it's always impressive to see women handling these huge horses, and I remember looking at Philippe Chigard and his trainees that many young women are learning the trade.
The grapes here are Gamay Chaudenay if i remember well (a dark-juice gamay used in the past to darken the reds). Very sweet and delicious to eat as such, and Anne checked that the draft horse didn't grab a bunch or two when standing still between the rows (it often happens, the juicy grapes quench their thirst..., but it was pretty nice horse, only took a few leaves, which was okayed.
Back at the chai of Les Capriades, Jean-Christophe Jézéquel who still sells much of his grapes to Pascal Potaire offers me to taste his Pinot Noir (which one day he may vinify himself). This Pinot was picked the previous day in the afternoon, he says this juice is usually lighter but this year with the advanced ripeness there's more color, even though it's a direct press. JC checks the potential, it is almost 13 % (1094 or 1093). JC got this parcel 3 years ago, it was planted in 1991. Delicious juice. I ask him if it doesn't make him regret not to vinify himself, but he says for now he can't vinify more volume in his cellar for now, plus, selling grapes help him stabilize his starting business.
I dropped at the chai of Noëlla Morantin in Thésée on the other side of the cher river, and by chance Noëlla was there, this was her 2nd harvest day, the pneumatic press was working on Sauvignon, with a total press time of 4 hours. Noella says this is a nice year with good yields (unexpectedly) with nice bunches and juice inside the berries, there has just been some grilled grapes with the sun but otherwise it's a very good year. At this point it's the best yield she ever had, everything is healthy and intact, which would not have been the case if there had been conditions for a mildew situation, then they'd have lost a lot of fruit. the juice here is thus Sauvignon, will be part of the LBL 2019.
The following day I visited Noëlla on her Sauvignon, the one planted in 1943, there is less fruit on this parcel because of its age but it's normal. A bit of grillure (grilled grapes) but only 5 % maybe, this is indeed a gorgeous vintage. There was this lovely, lovely black-and-white dog running around, named Pépin (means seed in French), it was so shy with a demanding eye trying to know what you were doing, it belongs to Marianne, one of the pickers. The bunches were very nice with even some pourriture noble (noble rot) in some of them, taste so good.
I drove to Montlouis where Lise & Bertrand Jousset were busy picking a parcel of 15 rows of gamay at the Chateau de Pintray. Lise says there isn't much juice in the grapes and it's better not to wait to pick them because along the next few days with the high temperature and the drought they'll keep getting drier and the alcohol will spike. With this gamay they'll make a pet-nat rosé through a direct press, Exilé Rosé. this is négoce wine, made with purchased grapes. Her feel is that this year
there'll be less volume, they had some frost this year, loosing 50 %. Some parcels
recovered quite well and grew back buds, some not. She even saw a parcel estimated at 95 % loss on which later a few bunches grew back. On the other hand, certain parcels that had less frost damage suffered more later from the drought with lots of grilled grapes, in particular on the second heat-wave occurence.
They made very few sprays on the vineyards this year because there was no need, onle 3, and she adds that they shouldn't have made the last one in june, but the job is done collectively through a CUMA and the other growers were overcareful on this issue. Last year (2018) they had a good harvest with yields at 40 hectoliters/hectare on the whole, which is a lot for them (never made that much). And they didn't loose grapes even though there was a high mildew pressure with a wet spring & early summer, they used a minimum of copper collectively with the CUMA, spraying often (14 times) but with homeopatic amounts each time (less than 4 kg-metal/hectare). Lise says they have a group for the biodynamy, owning biodynamic tools in common with other growers and doing the preparations together at Benoit Merias.
Here also wild animals (roe deers, I'm told) took their share of the fruit, it's surprising because we're here at quite a distance from the woods (which are on the other side of the parcel) near a wall, but i guess they walk around the block and eat what comes their way...
This year with the drought they worked very little on the soil, passing 3 or 4 times maybe.
After this parcel they'll pick another small parcel of Gamay (20 ares) but that's for Alexis Hudon, a young Canadian from Quebec. He went to the Joussets for the harvest 2015 and then studied at the viticulture school in Amboise. Right now he's making négoce wine (buying grapes here & in the Loir-et-Cher), his chai being in Bourges (his wife is from a family making wine in the Sancerrois).
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