Angers, 1 february 2020
The Greniers Saint Jean tasting is gathering every year more than 200 domaines working organic, biodynamic and vinifying naturally. It among the first to have popped up alongside the more mainstream Salon des Vins de Loire. This wine event is named from the church-like Greniers Saint Jean building where it takes place downtown Angers, a building that was founded in 1188 at about the same time than Notre Dame de Paris (1163). This tasting event known also under the name Renaissance [des Appellations] was started by two men, Nicolas Joly and Mark Angeli in this medieval hospital later turned into a granary. Professional wine people come from all over the world at the turn of januarry and february to attend this tasting and a few others of the same philosophy.
I initially thought I'd probably not come to Angers in spite of the magnet such events have on me : the town is crowded, accommodations are full and expensive and I actually dragged my feet until Aaron (Not Drinking Poison) kindly texted me about his having an extyra bed in the Airbnb he had rented. When i received the text on friday I was just back from a couple of hours ride on my motorbike after a few days in the Loire and I checked the carsharing Blablacar offers for the next morning and here I was heading for an exciting ride...
I arrived there around 1pm, walked along the gate behind which I think I briefly saw Pascaline Lepeltier having a break (should have asked her but I thought I'd see here later inside) and bought a ticket (20 € for general visitors and 10 € for professionnals & media).
Martial Angeli
The first table I spotted after I was given a glass at the door was the one of Mark Angeli and his son Martial (Mark's associate Bruno Ciofi was there too). Mark is a pioneer in Anjou for natural wine, in 2006 he decided to stop taking part to the appellation agreement sessions which he doesn't consider fair. All his wines by the way are labelled as Vin de France. I consider his cuvée La Lune as one of the most exciting and alive Chenin. Martial told me the volumes had been down in 2017 2018 and 2019.
__ La Lune, vin de France 2018, Chenin. Delicious.
__ La Lune 2018 Amphores, No skin contact here but just vinification in these vessels. Very enjoyable texture and mouth touch, proving that amphorae have really add character on wine even without maceration.
__ Les Fouchardes vin de France 2017, bottled september 2019. Powerful nose, same for thye mouth.
__ Les Vieilles Vignes 2017. More vivid, nice balance, majestic wine, love it !
__ Les Gélinettes Vin de France 2018. A red made from Grolleau. They used to make this cuvée with Cabernet Sauvignon in the past. Juicy feel on the nose. Wow, this wine goes down so easy, onctuous wine with nice acidity. Great one !! 14 € pro price. But sold out, I can understand why. Made from 1,1 hectare of Grolleau.
Jean-François Vaillant
The Domaine des Grandes Vignes is family domaine with roots going back several centuries, it is something I'd dream we had more in France, it succeeded to gather several parameters that often don't come together : I's a pretty large domaine (55 hectares), it farms organic and biodynamic (since 2008), vinifies naturally all its wines (15-18 cuvées, which a real feel in the mouth, very important to state) and manages to have a few very enjoyable entry-level cuvées at a very affordable public price. If this could be emulated this could prove natural wine can step out of its tiny niche market and average surface of 5-7 hectares and offer bigger volumes to the general public. With the high demand of this type of wines we need more of these domaines !
__ Pineau de Noir, Chenin 2019. Candy-style mouth, curious and unusual. A bit residual sugar maybe, in the feel at least.
__ La Varenne du Poirier 2017. Chenin (20 year old vines), aromas of raisin.
__ Etce Terra blanc 2015,Chenin in amphora. Oddlmy, I felt the nose smelled cat pee like Sauvignon. Not bad. 27 € public price, 1200 bottles of this.
__ L'Aubinaie 2018, a red made with Cabernet Franc, parcellaire cuvée, like the previous wine. Super good, onctuous. Unfiltered, like all the reds and the dry whites. 12 €.
__ L'Ancrie 2017, Cabernet Franc. Gourmand nose, exciting indeed. Velvety, superb mouth with a milky side, great wine !! 16 €.
__ Les Cocainelles 2017, Cabernet Franc, vines on shist-calcareous terroir. The mouth here is more marked but what a freshness, real liquid food !! 19 €.
At one point as I was tasting (and sipping, you don't spit that) I spotted Nicolas Joly chatting on the alley on the other side and briefly walked to him to ask for a picture. Nicolas Joly is along Mark Angeli a pioneer for biodynamy in the Loire and he shared generoulsy in passioonate approach and knowledge of Rudolf Steiner' cosmogony applied to agriculture. He is also the founder of this tasting event and of the Renaissance-des-Appellations group in 2001 (the group now lists 230 domaines across 13 countries).
The domaine La Folie Lucé is located outside Saumur in the Loire, it is managed by Loïc Terquem who previously worked in IT in Paris (no vigneron family link) and purchased this property in 2009 with 4 hectares of vineyards after deciding to change life and become a vigneron.
__ L'Ecart 2018, dry Chenin, now bottled. Small parcel. Mouth : young wine, sappy feel.
__ Encore 2017, Cabernet Franc. Vines on sandy silt soil The mouth is a bit hard.
__ Autrement 2014, Cabernet Franc, soil limestone. He says the maturities were very late in 2014. Beautiful wine, refined, onctuous. 10,85 € pro price.
__ Pet-nat 209. Not bad, some character.
It's been a while since I last visited Damien Laureau, this young father of 6 who is among the producers who helped put back in the spotlight the small appellation of Savennières. His Domaine Laureau is fully certified organic since 2012. Asked about the last vintages, Damien told me the vines suffered from drought and frost, like in 2017 they lost 95 % of the fruit because of frost, in 2018 the harvest was pretty normal and then in 2019 they lost half the fruit to the spring frost and the heat wave of late july-early august. I know in the Cher valley they didn't suffer much from the drought but that's because they have layers of clay in the soil while Damien says his shist didn't keep much moisture.
__ Les Genêts 2018, Chenin, sample bottle (bottling next march). Nice resonnance along the throat, classy wine. They use volcanic sulfur as sulfites.
__ Bel Ouvrage 2016, Chenin with 18-month élevage. Feels still a bit young at this stage, for me.
__ La Roche aux Moines 2016. I love the texture in the mouth, different terroir here and more new barrels.
__ Les Genêts 2015 from a magnum. (forgot to take notes here)
These tasting with lots of international visitors are also for me the opportunity to meet my readers, some of them coming to me to for a chat (I don't know I they recognize me as I tend to keep a low profile) and I appreciate the feedback. Here is for example Kit Hodgson who works at Gergovie Wines, an import company based in London that also runs a natural wine bar there at 40 Maltby street. Thank you again Kit for these couple of minutes !
Here is another Hodgson I coincidently spotted right after speaking to Kit, this is of Course Kenji Hodgson who with wife Mai runs a small domaine nearby in Anjou. I was about to go taste their wines but Kenji was busy explaining his work to a visitor. I left with the project to come back at his table later.
Here is another professionnal visitor I came across at Greniers, Andy Liu whom I first met at L'Amitié Rit, the cool natural wine bar just outside Paris in Montreuil when they had over there an exciting tasting event. Andy is Chinese imports natural wines there, hoping to one day help set up a tasting event in Beijing where he lives. His company is Populis Wine Import. We spoke a bit about this worrying Wuhan flu in China, he had left China weeks ago and came to France before the thing began to reach epidemic proportions.
The small Côte Roannaise appellation (230 hectares total) which was only created in 1994 is located at the eastern end of the Loire, not so far from Lyon actually. This is an old (if little known) wine region with the first documented proofs of its existence going back to 970 A.D. Most of the surface is planted with a local version of Gamay. There are three domaines that are making interesting wines there (although there may be others under the radar) including this Domaine des Pothiers which is a family farm (doing also meat cows) with deep roots in the trade. Romain Paire who now manages the 17-hectare domaine with his family does biodynamic farming.The young woman on the picture is his wife I think, but I forgot to ask for her first name.
__ Urfé, Pinot Gris 2018, Urfé is a little-known appellation for wines formerly listed as vion de pays d'Urfé. Vines here planted 20 years ago. Vinified in demi muids. Mouth with a supple and elegant side, very interesting, some smoky notes also, the aromas are otherwise discreet.
__ Cuvée Domaine 2019, a red made from Gamay Saint Romain, the local type of Gamay with tight compact little berries, more tannic than the reference Beaujolais Gamay. Quite intense in the throat with a light sweet side. Not bad at all.
__ Cuvée No 6 2019, Gamay Saint Romain. Vat sample. Quite onctuous and suave, not bad. Quite elegant too.
__ La Chapelle 2018, Gamay Saint Romain. Feel of a nicely-mastered vinification here too, not hyper extracted, very classy wine.
__ Diogène 2018, made in 750-liter amphora. First vintage of this type. I like the little plus on the texture in the mouth, very nice. A bit so2 at bottling a little filtering.
I can't but recommend to read historian Fernand Braudel's L'Identité de la France, as beyond a bland name this book is a gold mine of details about the economical life of remote French regions centuries ago. While leafing through it last january I fell upon this gem about this vin roannais and learned that it was commonly used to add color to Anjou whites, among others (man, they were spoofulating wines back then !), this red was ordinary but could be quite good when handled [vinified] correctly. And the best on this page : until 1720 the vins roannais were selling more than the Beaujolais in Paris ! The production still peaked at 260 000 hectoliters in 1809.... Braudel could have made a good job centering his research on wine...
Just a note to say there will be soon tastings centered on the wines of this region (Côte Roannaise, Forez, Auvergne, Saint Pourçain) which begins to really spark my interest, it's named Loire Volcanique. 1st tasting in Ambierle, Loire 9 march 2020, then in Paris 27 april 2020 at Grandcoeur in Paris
The Domaine Sérol is another of these vignerons doing great work in the Côte Roannaise, actually the oldest actor in this appellation to have stood out in a region where most growers were selling to the négoce or coopératives. This is yet another of these large family domaines (35 hectares today) who farm biodynamic and have delicious & affordable entry-level cuvées. The wine farm can be traced back to the 17th century and when Stéphane took the wheel in 1996 he converted the then 12 hectarest organic and biodynamic. His wines soon stand out and were put forward by Troisgros, the best gastronomy restaurant of the region near the town of Roanne. Michel Troisgros and Stéphane Sérol later developped together a vineyard planted in one of the best terroirs of the region.
I still have a bottle of Sérol's Les Originelles 2006 (I bought a case of them years ago), a delicious wine I'm anxious to open knowing it's my last...
__ Les Originelles 2019, red made with Gamay Saint Romain, a cuvée "on the fruit". Bottled soon, end of february.
__ Eclat de Granite 2019, Gamay Saint Romain, vat sample. A bit tight in the mouth, not ready. 15 % barrels here.
__ Eclat de Granite 2018, cement vat 100 %. Light filtering with cellulose. Man, that's so good ! 10-11 € public price. That's what I tell about, a delicious and very affordable cuvée.
__ Les Blondins 2018, the cuvée made from the 2-hectare parcel owned by Sérol and Troisgros and planted on sandy soil and granite soil, the sandy terroir being vinfied in cement and the granite in barrels. Stéphane says there's a nice maturity even if a solar terroir. Nice resonnance down the throat, refined. And of course very early I guess to drink this 2018.
__ Perdrizière 2018, 30-year old vines of gamay planted on 1,5-hectare parcel on granite debris rich in manganese. Vinified in 60-hectoliter wooden fermenter, 15-day slow maceration. More structured.
That's when I met David Lillie (here on right posing with another American I forgot the name of), whom I've met years ago here in tastings. David of Chambers Street Wines who has been a long time visitor to these tastings has been a pioneer in this artisan wine thing, since he began visiting the growers and wine regions with Joe Dressner in the late 1980s early 1990s. Chambers Street kind of started the whole market in New York while the rest of the country was sleeping (and France as well). David now also runs Racines NY with associate sommelière Pascaline Lepeltier and the restaurant/bar is now a reference there as well for natural wine lovers. David also bought me quite a few pictures along the years for which I'm thankful.
Damien Bonnet is the young man behind Domaine de Brin, a wine farm I'd had visited long ago if I travelled more often to his region in the south-west of France. Damien farms about 12 hectares in the Gaillac region, a very old wine region in France (some say it might be the oldest) with its own local grape varieties, the revival of which was triggered by Domaine Plageoles. I asked Damien about the weather conditions in 2019, he says it was hot also there but fortunately unlike many regions they had rain in the winter (early 2019) as well as in spring and this helped leep the water table reserves. They got grilled berries with the heat wave but they also had more rain in august, a few rain storms that eased the drought. The losses were limited to their harvest of Duras which was smaller than normal. Good vintage on the whole apart that. Damien told me that he recovered last year a 30-are parcel of old vines of Mauzac (1945) with which he made a maceration wine (orange wine) as an experiment. He will replant next year some Braucol and Duras to renew a bit the whole domaine. He brought 8 cuvée that day but they make yearly more or less 15 cuvées. Public prices go from 8 € to 18 €.
__ Anthocyanes 2018, a red made with Braucol (also known as Ferservadou) and a bit of Syrah. The mouth is delicious with tannins that coat beautifully the palate. Very nice !!
__ Amphore 2018, Braucol & Duras 100 % vinified in amphora. Short maceration with destemmed grapes. He says the vessels are porous and there's an exchange with air. Elevage 6 month in amphora. Not bad but I prefer the previous wine at this stage.
__ Braucol 2018, sandstone amphoras or jars (less porous because enamelled).
The Domaine des Boissières is a 4-hectare wine farm in Marcillac (South-West) that was started 3 years ago by Marc Fraysse who in 2015 recovered a 2-hectare surface from his grandfather that were planted with old varieties (ferservadou and other complated local varieties). Herb tea, biodynamic farming in the vineyard and uninterve,ntionist winemùaking, no zadditives, no fining, no filtration, élevage in old barrels (4 to 6-wine old). Total volume on average : 4000 bottles.
__ La Quille de Rouge 2019, brut de cuve (vat sample), 100 % Ferservadou (destemmed), 10-15day maceration. Exciting nose. Mouth : delicious, silky tannins. Will not be filtered. 12 € public price, great deal !
__ Vieilles Vignes 2018 (vat sample), old vines aged from 60 to 100 years. The half-hectare parcel which has 15 complanted varieties is non mécanisable which in French means no tractor can work there, you need to do everything by hand. 500 bottles total. Wow, the mouth awaked me even after so many wines sipped. Very nice ! Earthy notes.
At one point I spotted Jim Budd among the crowd, you can't miss him with his flashing shirt and long mustaches. Jim is a wine writer (Jim's Loire) and investigative journalist, he is also a longtime resident of the Loire valley and a Decanter contributor. At that point I had only tasted a few domaines in the main building (there was another part in the Musée Jean Lurçat) when I got a text message from Aaron telling me he had found someone who had room in his car to get us to a small tasting in a remote village outside Angers. Here I was heading for another wine adventure...
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