Saint-Étienne-des-Oullières (Beaujolais)
We're here in the Beaujolais visiting Romain des Grottes, this is another of my backlog stories, it took place at the turn of july and august while riding on motorbike from Paris to Provence using non-toll highways. This year has been difficult in some regards in France with the pandemic and the economic consequences
of the lockdowns but what a weather we had to counterbalance this misery ! Just a wonderful,
sunny year from spring to autumn and I think it's healthy to see the good side of things in a time where it's easy to complain and see doom at the door. Beaujolais is a great region to ride through, with gentle winding roads passing through old villages harmoniously nestled in the hilly landscape.
Romain des Grottes began his Domaine des Grottes in 2001 using 6,5 hectares of vines owned by his family, his first vintage being 2002 where he made 3 cuvées, one long keep with some élevage and 2 primeurs. In 2003 he did about the same, and he sold in bulk what he didn't bottle to a négociant with who his grandfather had already been working. But in 2004 the négoce didn't buy his wines [they had gotten too real and alive for him ?] and he never heard from this buyer again, which somehow helped Romain find himself more customers that could appreciate the wines he was making. Romain and his wife Perrine Stas farm organic and biodynamic (using very little sulfur/copper) on a 6-hectare surface plus a couple hectares for medicinal plants. Romain & Perrine also run Elixir Lab which produces all sort of herbs, plants, tea and other products grown here on the land.
Romain grew his initial surface from 6,5 hectares to 13,5 hectares and downsized to between 6 & 7 hectares with quite a few current replantings made with disease-resistant hybrids (not in production yet) which he considers being the next step to do for organic farming. Now Romain makes about 10 cuvée every year, he
tries new things,
plus he has the micro-cuvées of importers, when they come taste and choose a vessel which they want to vinify and keep all for themselves. For them he made things he wouldn't have dared to try otherwise, like for the Japanese a cuvée with super-long macerations (he's usually fearing getting some volatile in this context) which turned out very good and safe, or also a cofermentation with half Gamay and half Chardonnay, getting at the end a very colored wine because of extraction and suppleness because of the Chard.
Speaking about the Coronavirus pandemic and its consequences on sales, he says that his exporters have different profiles and working methods, some working more with restaurants, some more with cavistes, some doing online sales, and knowing that there are variations in different countries for restaurant procedures, this all helped soften the shock on sales. For France he saw some cavistes who made a killing during lockdown, selling wine that had been staying put in their cellar for years (people couldn't dine out but they bought wine).
It was very hot that day around 3 pm (happily I'd spend the night in Lyon which was a hour away from there) so we only had a look at one parcel, the one along the wine farm. By the way, Romain shares this farm with Jean-Marie Roche, an organic vegetable grower who also manage an AMAP, so there's a shop room in the farm where you
can buy the locally-grown vegetables and fruits, but when the weather allows, they also
sell in the middle of the vineyard near
the 3 greenhouses where they grow their veggies (that's why the name of his business is "un Jardin dans les Vignes"). It is not clear if the scarecrow on the left is used for the vegetables or the grapes...
The Gamay grapes were changing color at the time of this visit, but Romain said it was possible the heat could stall the maturation, adding that they were beginning to get used to it after the hot summers of these last years. I ask if any rain was forecast, he says no and whenever it rains it's often just very limited at this time of the year. He says that it begins to be tricky to manage vineyards, you begin to think maybe we should use drip irrigation like they do in hot countries, why not, like some in the Hérault département where they just put 20 liters per year [per vine I presume], that's enough and not excessive. I was discussing the issue with someone else very recently and devised the idea to authorize such vineyard irrigation using exclusively rainwater (collected from roofs for example) put aside during winter, which would avoid overuse of water tables if this practice was to be generalized.
Asked if he'd do some négoce wines (buying grapes and vinifying them) he says he prefers not, he's attached to the connection to grapes you grow oneself. He may take his sister's grapes this year because she begins to farm a vineyard, but he's not open to négoce at this stage. He'd prefer add more surface if needed, especially that he gets experience after all these years and can do a given work over his whole surface with the tractor in as little as 8 hours, which allows to do it in the right time window, not overstretch an urgent work over several days. And that's why given that ease he gained after years of experience, he could add an hectare and still keep the work manageable.
I showed up a day when Romain had some work done near the farm, with a small backhoe loader moving dirt and digging. The building looks new because it was rebuilt after a fire destroyed it in 2004 (kids playing with matches) but it didn't prevent Romain to work although much was destroyed.
Romain did a road trip in California earlier this year while at the same time visiting a few producers and friends, he did this just before the lockdown this early spring and says he also likes the freedom atmosphere, plus he discovered that against
what people might think [about American wineries I guess] there's an incredible respect for
nature among the producers he visited. By the way I was also supposed to make another road trip along backcountry roads this year, from California to Idaho, camping all along and visiting a few winemakers but the plan didn't survive the border closure, this will be for another year.
Also Romain says there's a real freedom to do what you think from what he saw in the U.S., like trying odd blends in kegs, they're very imaginative and daring, without the administrative Sword of Damocles like we have here, they also can make piquette, something those in France who try to revive have to be secretive [Romain says it's now allowed in France but you have to painstakingly explain it to the Douanes, the administrative control body for wineries]. The tax system in the United States is also much less heavy compared to France, he says that we heard a lot about the Trump tax [25 % more on wine because of issues with French/European unresolved disputes] and actually before this additional tax came out, Americans paid less tax on French wines than Belgians did, so we're induced to think that inside Europe the tax landscape is simplified and leveled but that's not the case. Speaking of the prices of imported wines in the U.S. Romain says it's mind blowing, his own wines sell in New York for around the same price they sell in Lyon, the closest major town next to Beaujolais... Now he says he also works with Chris Terrell, an importer that eschews intermediaries and thus helps keep prices down.
Speaking of exports, Romains sells abroad 60 % to 70 % of his wines, he says he puts the breaks to an even larger share but recognizes that it's so comfortable for a vigneron. He's now into his 20th vintage and learns now and then that a customer first stumbled upon his wine in another country, like in a restaurant or bar in Tokyo and it's funny how new relations happen. He says that his wines being quite wild and very different from the taste/gustative norms that are deeply entrenched in old wine-consuming countries like France, it's much easier for these wines to find a public overseas in countries like Denmark, Japan or the United States where what counts more is whether you like the wine, not overmaking the Appellation or variety blend.
In the early years he tried to sell his wines doing the markets in the Paris area (where he had grown up), he was not certified organic until 2006 because he thought it was not necessary and now thinks he lost time. He didn't know the narural wine milieu of producers back then, he got acquainted with Mathieu Lapierre only in 2005-2006 because he played music with him, and he needs to experiment things before accepting them, so this culture didn't settle in overnight.
Romain says it's funny that sopmething that was so marginal years ago has almost become mainstream. He says that through his many encounters with vignerons working natural, he noticed that when they try to explain how they make their wine the way they taste, they tend to focus on certain procedures and processes but that the real reason may be elsewhere, overseen by the winemaker himself, and this not intentionally but because there are details that they take for granted and don't realize how pivotal they are, and Romain saw the same thing when they speak about the way they farm. He says that because he grew up in Paris, he came here with new eyes, without preconceived frame brought by a childhood spent in the trade, and when listening to a grower or winemaker of whom he loves the wine, he'll spot the little details inadvetedly omitted in the explainations that might explain a lot about why these wines stand out (or why these vines can make the grapes behind these wines).
At the beginning when he started in 2002 nobody around let grass grow in the vineyard and the rare organic growers that were in the region would plow year around, replacing herbicide with plowing, that's one of the reasons he didn't ask for conversion right away, he had came here with the aim of having diversity in the vineyard which implies weeds and grass and plowing as little as possible, letting different plants grow between the rows for a better balance. It worked because some issues went away after he farmed this way. In some parcels he took away every other row to have more room to work, also sowing certain complementary crops like rye.
I was really thirsty, it was so hot that day, I had drunk nothing but coffee in a village at mid course and think I came close to sunstroke, so the first thing I drank here was water, then Romain poured me wisely this incredibly beverage :
__ L'Antidote. Imagine you're drinking a 8 % to 10 % alcohol thirst wine, that's the impression, except that there's no alcohol in there and it's still so good. It's made with Gamay juice and herb tea using many different plants for the complexity and giving a touch of acidity with lemon. The consumers love it and he says that's it, now they make more Antidote than reds and sparklings, like 10 000 bottles for L'Antidote alone and 14 000 bottles for reds & sparklings together. Initially they had the idea to sell locally for the children but at the end the prices are beyond what people are ready to pay for a non-alcoholic beverage [5 € pro price without tax, ending at 10 € tax included in shops]. Export took off with Belgium buying a lot of this cuvée for restaurants.
I follow Romain who looks for a bottle to open and we pass along this sort of Spanish amphora with a flat bottom and on the left behind the plastic tank you can guess the Georgian qvevri partly immerged in sand. He works with qvevris since last year and is not yet convinced, he has trouble to recognize his wines there but maybe it's just that they need more time, it often helps turn things around. I suggest he tests the grounds by having importers taste the wine from time to time. Speaking of importers Romain says that his importer for Holland (Jan Van Roekel of Clavelin) is now a regular designer of exclusive cuvées and in 2015 there was a cuvée Romain felt as being kind of excessively acetic, but one day, being short of any other wine for a late evening party he opened up a bottle and against all odds everyone loved it, so he now realizes this puts hasty judgments on wines into perspective, especially after bottling fades away.
__ Here is another wildly enjoyable cuvée : Truc de Buve 2018, a vin de France making 11 % in alcohol (10,8 % exactly, Romain says). The label reads "Sans Sulfites Ajoutés" (no added sulfites). The name is kind of an anagram made from Brut de Cuve, another iconic cuvée here at Domaine des Grottes. Brut de Cuve means something like "unpolished sample from the vat", brut having nothing to do with a sparkling here but with the rough nature of the sample, in the sense that nothing is added, filtered nor corrected. Truc means thing and Buve is cousin word for drink, sort of, so the name sounds well that way also. Romain says everyone is delirious since he first made Brut de Cuve, his aim there was to make a wine that would feel really like it is when you drink a sample straight from the tank including with its residual CO2. He says that in his early years there's something that brought him big disappointments, it was that he tasted a wine he loved in the tank but when in the bottle the magic had vanished or the wine was way less pleasant. He worked a lot on keeping the wine quality into the bottle and this cuvée is the first result, which he applied to his other cuvées I presume. Why this other, sister cuvée of Brut de Cuve ? THat's because in 2018 they had at last more volume than usual (after years making barely 15 hectoliters/hectare), so he made 2 tanks, same wine and vinification but he named the 2nd tank with the anagram because there's a slight difference in spite of only one day difference in picking and in pressing (both were bottled the same day). He made 3500 bottles of this cuvée that year. Between 2/3 and 3/4 is exported.
The wine is terrific, such a juicy, fruity feel and so alive with freshness. There's a light sweet taste but it's presumably glycerol because the wine is dry. Price without tax is 8 €.
Here is a cuvée you might have a hard time finding in your wine shop, as it is an importer cuvée made exclusively for Jan Van Roekel in Holland.
__ Sumibu, Eau Rouge [red water ?!?], Vin de france, Vinifié
par Jan Van Roekel, Mis
en Bouteille par Romain des Grottes, 10,5 %, as you can read on the label. The name of the cuvée is related to a rap group in Amsterdam named SMIB, which pronounced by a Japanese sounds like Sumibu... Some of these bottles made their way to the United States and Denmark though, so not everyone is kept in the dark.
The color of the wine is quite magic, with a peony nose, super enjoyable nose. Romain says it's what id called a tisane in French, half whole-clustered grapes, half juice fresh from the press, with a maceration of the two together (the idea being that the grapes are submerged by the juice), he says that's the process that gives the most rewarding result on small volumes. 100 % Gamay but i thought there was also some white in there (Romain has some Chardonnay) because of the vivacity. Nice acidity indeed, very easy drinking delicious. He made some 700 bottles of this. Romain says he's very happy because at the beginning they weren't equipped to make small batches like that and along the years they got the small basket press (less than one hectoliter) and learned the routine, using buckets by hand to make these small volumes. He says that even if vinified by Jan he recognizes his own touch in this wine. The first tisane wine Romain made was in 2016. Pro price is 8,3 € Sold out now.
You may have guessed from the name of the cuvée that it is yet another experiment, trhis small cuvée is something between the Piquette and the Petnat, just
thinking about it makes you salivate... He's doing this recipe since 2016, partly pressed Gamay and water, actually he used direct press, like the first press of Antidote, that's why there's sugar left in the grapes. These grapes are thus "recycled" grapes from L'Antidote, Dry Paradise, August and Un Petit Coin de Paradis.
The nose is so nice with acidulous aromas. There's also 0,5 % of organic lemon juice here and that makes the difference. The mouth is like, very little alcohol or not any at all, and if tasting blind along L'Antidote, I'd have thought the later had more alcohol than the former... Romain says that this Piketnat is best enjoyed not necessarily under the shade in a summer afternoon but in the middle of a meal when you need to rinse your mouth, that's where he appreciates it the best, as light as water.
The sales for this cuvée stated slowly, the United States being the market where it was shipped the most. He also ships this piquette in kegs, a type of vessel which is very convenient, protects the beverage and is reusable.
At the time of this visit, harvest hadn't begun, Romain was saying it would begin august 15 for a first pass, the 2nd picking being around august 25. In 2003 he stated to pick august 11 which was even earlier. In 2015 he started august 17. The worry at this time is the lack of rain, he just hopes there'll be a bit before harvest.
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