Arbois, Jura
That was a busy day, we began with a vist at L'Octavin which is now single-handedly managed by Alice Bouvot. The domaine was started in Jura in 2005 with her then partner Charles Dagand. Trained in Bordeaux, then in Dijon Alice traveled around the world (Mexico, Chile, New Zealand, Napa)
and when back in France at 30 she worked as manager in a domaine where she met Charles who was also employed there, and together they decided to start something, discovering natural wine with encounters while
starting the small winery. They would make the wines they loved, wines with emotion, not the square wines she was trained to make in the wine school. And organic, then biodynamic viticulture was obvious at this point. A musician since childhood (she plays cello) she compares making natural wine to playing an improvisation with a friend versus following closely the music sheet, rendering a technically-conform piece but without that extra vibe of emotion.
The domaine's vineyard surface is today around 3,5 hectares and she manages to make some 12 cuvées. The winery facility was until last october dowtown Arbois in a very nice back street with charm just behind the famed Bistrot des Claquets (which sits at the bottom of the redish street house on the picture on right) but it was more and more unconvenient to function as a winery because of the lack of room, plus the town hall was making difficulties for the noise (tractors bringing the grapes and delivery trucks make occasional noises and nuisance), so she now works just outside Arbois in a modern facility sitting in the local industrial park with easy access for delivery and shipping.
The warehouse-like facility is indeed roomy and Alice can move around with ease or use the forklift to work with gravity. Alice Bouvot also has a small négoce production to complement the small estate vineyards, using grapes she buys as far as in the south of France, for example Grenache sourced near Carpentras or Muscat from Canet-en-Rousillon (near Perpignan). She started the négoce in 2014 with her friend Remi Pujol then by herself, growing it along the years. She uses a truck to go pick the grapes, the truck can hold 110 comportes (boxes) holding 22 kg of grapes each. She usually rents a truck or two in Arbois (always the same) and keeps them during one month for the different picking here and in the other regions.
Some vineyard tools are parked outside, like this narrow tracteur vigneron fitted with its vertical blades. The varieties she grows are Trousseau, Chardonnay, Poulsard, Pinot Noir and a bit of Savagnin (300 vines). As said, because Alice's vineyard surface is only 3,5 hectares, she buys additionnal grapes to make 20 000 bottles, the négoce part gives her enough revenue to employ labor and she says it's also exciting to buy grapes in Alsace, Bugey, Perpignan, Béziers, South Beaujolais. Altogether with the estate cuvées and négoce ones, she makes more that 20 cuvées, 14 Estate cuvées plus 17 négoce cuvées, but not all of them are released together, so the releases are spread out...She likes to make daring experiments for some of them, like for example picking Muscat at 10,5 potential, that is far from ripeness norms. She likes to pick herself the négoce grapes as well because she tastes while picking and she needs this information for what she'll have to do for the vinification, it is very important. She say that's why in her mind her négoce wines have the Octavin touch.
__ Clé à Molette [means adjustable wrench in French] 2019. We first taste a turbid white with acidic lemon notes, which goers well with the sweet edge of the wine. Négoce wine made with a little-known variety : Molette, the grapes being in Bugey (east of Lyon) to the domaine Trichon. Bottled this year, but will be on the market next year (2021). Bottled this year but will be on the market next year (2021).
Asked about her picking at low maturity, for example for the Muscat, Alice says she has the guy over there when like in this case it's far from jura, take the sample grapes for analysis, check the sugar. Still about the Muscat, she loved the advice of her son Celestin who is 14 and who occasionally tastes and spits, the other day he said he wasn't sure it was wine, he says it smelled like sureau (Elderflower) which he remembered because they also made a sparkling with Elderberry (she doesn't sell it), and she found his words very sound.
__ Dora Bella 2019, a red Jura made with Poulsard, not on the market (will be next year in 2021) but already bottled. 3rd vintage for this cuvée, 2017 was the first. She made 11 hectoliters of this, or 1800 bottles maybe (much more volume in 2018 : more than 3000 bottles, and 2017 only 400 bottles). Low alcohol, she checked recently it was 11,5 %, the 2017 was at 9 % alcohol only (the 2018 10,5 %). Vinified whole clustered in fiber and stainless-steel tanks with floating lids. Super
exciting and luminous color with cloudy shades. She doesn't like the wine to taste like jam, that's why she picks early. Recently summers have been hot in Jura but because in the past the vignerons had often a hard time to reach suitable sugar levels, and now by atavism
they tend to keep waiting for higher sugars like 13 % or even chaptalize. For her 13 % is way too high already and that's why you end up in the region with jammy Poulsards, heavy Poulsards. So she picks before you need sorting, she considers sorting is a lack of respect for the grapes, you just don't drop grapes on the ground... As Aaron asked for the 2014 with the fruit flies (Suzuki), Alice says they did some sorting back then, but with using two types of boxes, in one the grapes that couldn't be sorted, in the other you'd separate the faulty grapes that you'd put in the former, making a direct press with these mixed/faulty grapes (this was the cuvée Cul Rond 2014, a very nice, fresh white or Blanc de Noir), so everything was actually vinified...
Alice says that in general the grapes have to be picked when the berries are crunchy in the mouth. She goes in the parcels in the vineyard with her kids who taste a few berries as well and they say mom, the grapes are crunchy and she just tell them it's perfect... Alice asks around if any of us has tasted the cuvée Jaker (made presumably with Jacquère)with only 8,5 % alcohol (this cuvée was by the way in Noma's wine list), she says the wine was no green at all, the grapes went through a 2-month maceration whole-clustered. She's like to make a Jaker again, she heard Corentin Houillon has some grapes of it in savoie that he will not vinify... Juliette asks if she hasn't any stalling fermentation issues with that low sugar, Alice says that actually the fermentation is much easier when there's not too much sugar.
__ Brutal vin de France 2019, Pinot Noir 2017 blended in april 2019 with Muscat 2018, the Pinot had a bit of volatile. She doesn't make a lot of blends usually, there has been Grenabar, one year it was a blend of Grenache & Colombard with Remi Pujol, the following year he hadn't any Colombard and they used Carignan. The vinification took place in Arbois, she brought the grape boxes with trucks. She also made a Muscat d'Alexandrie/Muscat Petits Grains blend, this was at the former facility downtown trying in the night to make as little noise as possible and they went to sleep at 5am...
Color
of this Brutal : tile with turbidity. Wow, what a mouth feel, wild and such a pleasure to drink and swallow. This is a négoce cuvée, even is part of the fruit (the Pinot) is hers. The mouth has avery nice tannic feel, very exciting. On the market this august 2020. 11,5 % alcohol, no added sulfites. All the négoce wines are sold at the same price (12 € without tax) except the Jura ones which she sells a bit higher.
Alice Bouvot speaks about the vinification of a few négoce wines, like for example her Riesling and Sylvaner are macerated, between 3 weeks and 2 months whole clustered while her own (estate) wines go through macerations between 2 and 8 months. Commendatore makes always 8 months, she adds that 10 is a lot but 8 is not bad. Dora Bella is usually between 2 and 3 months. She puts the grapes in the tanks and wheter destemmed or whole clustered she then doesn't touch anything, she just puts CO2 at the beginning that's all, then it's just a slow infusion. Aaron says that it's incredible how drinkability is good for a Poulsard even after a long maceration,Manu Houillon also make 6-month macerations with it and the wines remain very fresh. He and Alice compare to Fred Cossard's vinification of a whole-clustered Poulsard with cooled grapes which was not convincing, and Alice says that's the difference, she doesn't like to cool the grapes like they do in the south with carbos à froid, this yields very aromatic wines, but wether made from Poulsard, Grenache, Carignan, it's all the same results. She doesn't cool her macerations, she only uses cooling foils for the whites, to avoid that the temp spikes at 30 C (86 F), but the reds are never cooled even though she indded makes carbos, and this no-cooling thing is why people don't feel the carbonic maceration in her wines. Her thinking is for example if the grapes and bunches are brought in at higher temperatures, that's the vintage part and the wine will reflect it, she doesn't want to intervene. Speaking of harvest hours she says this year if they pick august 15 [visit was mid july] they'll pick only in the morning, like 6:30 to 12:30 that's all, and in the afternoon they process in the chai.
We now walk to the vat room to taste a few other wines. Alice says that when fermentation goes well it's very, very easy to make wine, she doesn't touch anything when it's fermenting but she smells a lot the tanks and feels which tank may get sluggish or are in trouble and it's wise then to put a bucket of juice from
another tank to keep the fermentation moving, a bucket seems nothing for the size of a tank but it's enough to give the right impulse. She shows us a tank in the room with Cinsault, it still had sugar she says, about 5 grams, she pressed the Trousseau in april and put 5 boxes of grapes in this tank; you would think at this stage there are no yeast left but it worked beautifully. The lees work also, when you use the lees of a tank that fermented well, but they don't work as well as grapes. Samely in 2018 she had picked Trousseau (not hers) which were too ripe and the wine was stalling with 10 grams of residual and 3 weeks after using Trousseau grapes from another tank that was to be pressed, the residual sugar was gone. Some people heat the juice, something she refuses to do, and heating a tank in december is dangerous, bacteria love heat and sugar. Every time she is tempted to intervene, she asks herself if it's really useful, can man do something ? In spite of her enology degree she doubts, they're trained at the wine school to intervene but she thinks Nature does better, that's why they work hard on the vineyard side and that she needs to taste the grapes on the spot.
__ Chardonnay from the Jura 2018 (tank sample), direct press. Very clear color, neat. This wine took time to ferment. There was 3 grams of residual sugar and the wine will have to wait more than usual once bottled, in order to recoup some energy. She has only 12 hectoliters from 2018 which aren't yet bottled, the rest will be bottled, and they made 600 hectoliters in 2018, and all without SO2...
__ Pamina 2018, an Arbois from the terroir La Mailloche, Chardonnay (aged 25). Very nice wine, beautiful balance. Had some élevage in barrels, which were topped up without being topped up, sort of : meaning she did it intermittently, she says when you open the bung you bring air inside, plus when you top up you oxidize a bit the wine, especially with non-sulfur wine, and 3 days later you check again and it's not full, so in short she thinks topping up oxidizes more the wine than stay put and she does it very rarely.
She doesn't check the density anymore, she has friends who take the density of each barrel, but she asks why wouldn't a barrel ferment well ? If it needs two years, so be it, that's all. She isn't stressed, she trusts the wine. Here for this Chard, there was only a barrel which had some residual sugar, the 500-liter demi-muid, something like 5 grams. She knows people who intervene a lot and possibly as a result keep having a lot of problems with their wines, she says that when you intervene you make also many mistakes.
They already had this press (Vaslin Veritas 15) in the former facility, it's a 15-hectoliter non-pneumatic press that is doing a good job. This type of press is easy to find in France, and they can be very cheap, like this one at 500 € (needs some fixing though). Alice also bought a Bucher, an older pneumatic model that can be maneuvered manually.
__ Cinsault 2019, there's still sugar but Alice says it'll be very nice when they're done. Not ready yet. From what I understand she buys the grapes in Herault (south of France) to a grower who doesn't make wine (or he just made one cuvée), his vineyard is certified Demeter. Philippe Brand buys grapes thyere too for his négoce.
Speaking of the export, Alice says she give allotments because of the small size of her cuvées. She used to sell a lot in Denmark for 10 years but stopped because it is very difficult to chamge importer in this region. In Japan her importer is Taka Wakatsuki for W Inc Japan. The UK begins to work well too, Sweden and Norway buy well too. In the United States, it's Zev Rovine, who incidently comes from the same village in Pennsylvania than Aaron... She doesn't say where her wines can be found in Paris, although there are quite a good number of venues (beginning with la Cave des Papilles).
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