Pourrières, Var (Provence)
This is maybe in winter that you understand best why painters like Cézanne and Van Gogh flocked to the Sainte Victoire ridge at the edge of the Var and the Bouches-du-Rhône départements in Provence : like much of Provence there's a unique magic in the light, due probably by the strong winds that keep humidity & clouds at bay. Jérôme who is a native from the region lives in this house in the middle of his parcels with his wife and daughters, and the appeasing view of the Sainte Victoire in the far. The region is also very favorable for viticulture.
If you're into AOCs, the village of Pourrières (pictured on right)
belongs to the AOC Côtes de Provence Sainte Victoire, but you'll not
find any mention of this domaine on the Pourrières-AOC page because Jérôme's wine farm (Le Temps des Rêveurs) only makes table wine, and that's OK for us because we care for what's in the bottle, not on the label....
Although the region has all these conditions for making uncorrected wine (and excellent reds) from heathy vines, beginning with this dry weather in summer and autumn allowing to eschew chemicals, it is pretty hard to find artisanal wine farms like we do in many other French regions, the main reason being that conventionally-made rosé keeps selling like crazy here and abroad, and there's little incentive to replace this easy cash cow with the more demanding natural winemaking with which you'll need more work (at least in the vineyard) and attention. In this sense, Provence is close to Champagne : when there's no end to the demand for the high-yields conventional stuff, why bother and look for risks ? It was rewarding to find that Provence also has its awakening to artisan winemaking, thanks to people like Jérôme Maillot for whom the bottom line doesn't come first.
This small paved road is the limit between the Bouches-du-Rhône (on left) and the Var (on right), with the farm (in the middle of these trees) sitting just on the edge of the Var limits.
The view when arriving at the farm is astounding, it sits in the middle of its vineyards, protected from the punishing heat in summer by the shade of large trees and with the majestic range of the Sainte Victoire in the far. Pourrières is probably the village we can guess on the right, and nearby Puyloubier, where the Foreign Legion farms its vineyards and sells its wine (the Légion's compound is rather on the side of Pourrières actually).
Jérôme's parents are from the region, his father used to sell his grapes to the Coopérative
in Pourrières, and this family house was an outbuilding detached from the farm which
was at a distance, that's where the workers would rest and hide from the sun when needed. His parents moved the big city (Aix) decades ago, but his father always kept a few parcels along with his mother, selling the grapes to the coop. Typically he'd work as a cook in the morning in Aix and would drive here in the afternoon to take care (conventionally) of the 4 or 5 hectares of vines. Michel himself liked to help and later wanted to make wine and around his graduation from school in the 1990s he went to Gigondas to take part to a tasting and it opened a new perspective for him.
Jérôme then studied in an agriculture school in Toulouse (Purpan), after which he worked wine-related jobs, with 2 years in Domaine la Présidente (Rhône) where he was cellar assistant, this was a conventional winery but with an interesting sense of family passion for the job. At the time, just out of school, he wasn't yet familiar or sensitive with the other philosophies regarding this field, like organic farming, it came to him step by step. Then he worked for Gabriel Meffre (a producer and négociant) who was about to take over a domaine in the Costières de Nîmes, where he was in charge of everything, the vineyards and the cellar. This was in 2002 and it was his baptism of fire as he had only himself to turn to, in a year that was not easy (2002). It was a good training on the job and as years passed he got the time to look around, moving his own philosophy closer the the organic/natural school where he felt more vibrancy, this was from 2007 to 2010. He also met vignerons like Olivier Jullien (Mas Jullien) who very early quit the AOC to make single-variety cuvées, someon,e who has a humble vision on wine, closer to the real thing. Then he discovered Alain Allier as well (Domaine Mouressipe).
This was the time he was considering taking over his father's vineyard, his father who had less time to work on them had delegated the job to a farmer (conventional farming). Around 2012 and 2013 he had discovered the natural wines (at La Remise when it took place in Marseille for example), this was quite a shock as it meant he had to forget/erase everything he learnt in the past, but it changed him for good. Jérôme felt it was time for him to step in and follow suit to his father's vigneron activity, except that he'd be organic from the start and vinify naturally. He'd start making wine in 2016 and would bring a bottle to La Remise 2017 to have feedback from other vignerons. They liked it and the following year (march 2018) he could present his wine, using the barrel/table of another vigneron. For the anecdote, Jérôme is now member of the board at La Remise and the day following this visit they were to discuss if there would be a Remise this year (in 2021), it could be under a different, fragmented form... He also took part to a small salon in 2017 before the wine was bottled, it took place at Les Maoùs of Aurélie & Vincent, a young couple in the Lubéron/Vaucluse who make nice natural wines. He got his first customer at this very first tasting.
To sum up how Jérôme started his domaine, he quit his job in may 2014, taking care of the two hectares he planted in massal selection this very year near Puyloubier, and in 2015 he took over all of his father's parcels, having now a total of 6,5 hectares, an hectare of cereals (near the village of Trets) and 50 ares of olive trees. the official conversion to organic started in august 2014. 2015 happened to be the last year for the fermage contract (another grower was until then in charge) and when Jérôme took the surface over, he kept bringing the grapes to the local coopérative, just that instead of selling to the coopérative of Pourrières, he moved his grapes to another coop that allowed him to vinify himself part of his fruit. Most coopératives, from what I understand, ask the growers to sell them all of their grapes, forbidding them in fact to try make wine themselves with part of the fruit, this was the case at the Pourrières coop, and when the 5-year contract of his father reached its end in 2014 the only option for Jérôme if he wanted to both sell grapes to a coop and make wine himself was find another coop, which he did by moving to the Cave de Rousset (a nearby village) where the rules where lighter, allowing him to keep part of his grapes to begin make wine. He's very happy there because they let him take out more surface from the contract if he needs more fruit, for example he took out 1 hectare in 2016, 1,5 more in 2018, recently yet another hectare and relations remain smooth, it's pretty rare, he says, to have coopératives this flexible. And keeping selling to the coop was helpful (even though coops don't pay 3 hectares worth of organic/biodynamic grapes an interesting price), it brought needed cashflow in his business when bottle sales were just beginning. Speaking of this dual sales/vinification for one's own grapes, there are very talented winemakers who like the tranquility of selling grapes and don't try to vinify all their fruit, think of Bruno Allion in his time who could have found easily customers if he had been vinifying all his grapes.
When real production began in 2016 he made 2000 bottles, and he sold it only a year later because that's the élevage time this wine needed, that's where grape sales helped in between. He was also helped by the fact that after he stopped his job in 2014 he kept unemployment rights for 2 years [that's something many new vignerons do and it helps them stay afloat when there are not yet revenues]. the 3 first years were not easy but now he begins to fare better. He vinifies now 3,5 hectares, selling the grapes of the remaining 3 hectares to the coop, and he'll plant another 60 ares to complete his whole surface. Today, what works well also to sell his wines, especially now when wine fairs are nowhere to be found, is driving with his wine to have cavistes taste them, he drives to cities where he doesn't sell yet. The pandemic didn't hinder the cavistes' turnover, and that's a good thing for vignerons. It's also important to him to have cavistes who can speak on behalf of his wines, which are unfiltered and naturally vinified.
The soil here changes depending of the side of the parcel, the part on the side of the Sainte Victoire is a red-clay, solar soil with higher pH but still around 3,4 or 3,5 which is manageable (he says he had 3,7 or 3,8 where he worked in the Costières de Nîmes on certain years and it was complicated to make natural wine with pH this high).
Pictured : safre, or compacted silica or sand. Part of the parcel thick with safre has vines suffering and showing difficulty compared with the rest because of its draining effect. Where the soil is more brown than red, there's less silica, the soil is less draining and the vines fare better.
Jérôme tries to keep the old vines even if he may pull up some of them in the future. The conversion to organic farming went smoothly overall, even though there was the difficult drought in 2016, plus 2017 too. It needs to be said that Provence, although looking like a dry region, gets normally lots of rain in winter/spring on which the trees, bushes and vines more or less survive through the dry summers, but if you get little rain in the cold season like 2016-2017, you even can see some vines starve, this is what he had in 2017. The conversion to organic with the plowing/cutting of surface roots have certainly played a role too, he says. On his surface there's a parcel with irrigation (this Ugni Blanc), it was installed in 2015 with his father's help, and he used it in extreme drought conditions, like last year when he poured (in one time) the equivalent of a 30 mm downpour, but in 2018 he didn't use it.
Since he's in charge the harvest is done by hand for the grapes he vinifies, before the farmer used a combine for the whole surface, and the vines look much better since the hand picking.
This Ugni Blanc was planted in 1965 and originally this was in goblets, and later in the 1980s his father cut them to change the training mode adding trellising [for combine harvesting I guess], with of course consequences on the sap flow which was disturbed. On these vines Jérôme now has yields of 30-35 hectoliters/hectare.
On this picture on the other side (facing the direction of Trets) you can see the weeds and feveroles (for nitrogen) which he sows, alternating them every other row.
He lets
the grass grow until, say, mid april, and at one point he turns it into mulch to
keep humidity and insect life. Speaking of biodynamy, he makes a spring Prep 500 P for the soil, and in autumn also before the soil gets cold. For a reminder, see how you prepare the horns for a prep 500 (again, with the help of Bruno Allion).
In order to get more diversity in the vineyard, Jérôme is planting trees (peach trees among others, like fig tree, persimmon),There will be a total of 20 trees, I saw a few of them beginning to pop up above the vines, at the beginning you don't realize there is a tree, here on the left you can guess the tree beginning to raise above, and on the right this is a hole he dug for another tree. He used peach pits and he didn't even have to graft the resulting tree because they came from an old variety that makes fruit without grafting. But the odd thing is that if you're in Appellation and you plant fruit trees in the parcel like Jérôme does, you loose your AOC status. This really shows the true colors, the farce this whole bureaucratic appellation system is about (my rant). Jérôme makes vin de France only (non-AOC wines), so he can do that without retribution... Some conventional domaines have turned to planting trees (outside the parcels though) and hedges again recently because they joined the HVE certification, which is said to be some sort of "organic-lite" labelling favored by big structures and coopératives. Those mainstream wineries who follow these guidelines are often also very aware of the subsidies provided by the nanny state and the EU, but I think the move is rarely genuine and authentic, there's this commercial motive to have it show on their marketing props with a narrative like they're saving the planet...
Speaking of his plantings he first plants the rootstock and leaves it root a couple of years before grafting it and he favors the greffe en écusson for being more durable than the omega. The greffe en écusson or greffe à l'oeil is when you cut a T on the bark and inserts the bud. He selects his old wood, leaving a ring on certain vines for 2 or 3 years to spot the best potential grafts and he is now precisely in the process of gathering these grafts. On 10 vines he'll have recovered about 20 grafts, that's the way he replaces missing vines. Sometimes the vine had died but the rootstock had survived and he just regrafted the existing rootstock, getting back a productive vine very quickly. For example last year (24 of may) he grafted rootstocks which he had planted in 2017, 400 of them, and next year he'll have grapes (he even had some last year but they came late). For 4 years the rootstock could dig down its roots without the distraction and hindering factor of the graft, and now that it's full-blown in the soil, the graft will be easier to bear.
You can see the plowing made by the draft horse, as Jérôme works 4 hectares this way, with the help of a guy based in Uzès (150 km West from here) who has a horse (Cosinus Comtois) and works for vignerons. He travelled here with his van and stayed 2 days to plow the 4 hectares. Here is the Instagram account of this guy.
We then drove to downtown Pourrières (pretty close from the church uphill in the village) where Jérôme has his chai and cellar, that's where he keeps his vineyard tools as well. Jérôme had to buy most of his tools because when his father was in
charge, another grower did the farming, and he bought this used tractor Fendt 275V near
the village of Die (where the famed sparkling Clairette de Die is made). This is a narrow tracteur vigneron, runs well, he just had to fix some electrical issue and it's very reliable, which is perfect because he concedes that he's not into mechanics.
He found this tractor on Le Bon Coin or maybe Agri Affaires (like everyone in the trade does), he doesn't remember which of the two. This was the most expensive investment but he's very happy with the deal. The chai isn't that big but the nice thing is this open garden where he and his pickers have their meals in a nice setting (there's a very nice view over the valley), plus he can accomodate (in a spartan way) those who need a place to sleep.
This chai is not that big inside and Jérôme thinks he has to see how he will do if he eventually vinifies even more of his surface, he'd like to keep working in this place which is pleasant for its setting, he may build an enlargement next to the building. He leaves part of this room empty so that he can move the press and bring in the 150 boxes of grapes at harvest time. For the part of the grapes he's foot-crushing he needs also some room on the ground, that's why he keeps the tanks and fermenters in the back. He does every by himself but gets some help from friends, and last year he took two Wwhoofers, plus he hired someone for 3 months (he'll certainly hire her again in 2021). The production grows steadily, beginning with 2000 bottles in 2016, then in 2017 2500, in 2018 6500, in 2019 9000 and if everything turns right in 2020 he'll make 12 000 bottles, that's why he has to plan ahead for the storage room.
He bought the first tank second-hand but bought the others new, these are all fiber plastic. They look the same but he's happier with the last ones he bought, they're narrower and higher, meaning they're easier for the devatting. They're complete with a floating lid. Finding a fermenter or a tank is pretty easy as there's a second-hand market with plentiful of offers, especially with the retiring vignerons.
He bought this basket press second-hand in the Cevennes, the guy had used just a bit and it was in pristine condition. It works well, for the whites and the reds as well, it is fully manual (not hydraulic). It's a bit too small (around 3 hectoliters),
he needs 3 press loads to fill a fermenter, but it's a quality of press he likes
(not too tight) in terms of roundness and acidity. He will let another year pass and will try to find one that is a bit larger.
Although his father never made wine here, this was still a place he'd work and fix things, and the tools on the wall reflect this time. Looking at the labels and the name of the domaine, Le Temps des Rêveurs, I ask Jérôme how come he chose this name for his domaine (means "the time of dreamers"). He says that's because he was teased as being a dreamer (rightly, sometimes, he adds) and choosing this name allowed him to take an opposite stand and materialize what was indeed a dream, the one to live again from family land in a nice way. Dreams count, he says, it just needs risk taking, like for him it was to leave the comfort and security of his previous employment and jump in the unknown. And for the drawing on the side of his labels he asked a friend in Marseille to do it, there's a dance touch as Jérôme loves tango, which he practiced 10 years by the way.
Jérôme brought in amphorae in 2018 when he tried them for the first time, he did that because in 2018 he took 1,5 hectares out of the contract with the coopérative. He vinified in there some Ugni Blanc and some Syrah. The Ugni Blanc having gone through a direct press, decanted a day and then straight into the amphora. He didn't touch it since filling it up and it tops it up with the demi-john where the lees sedimented. The Syrah in the other amphora is with the berries, and for this one he had to top up much more than for the white for some reason. He leaves the berries for 6 months, then press them, and fill the clay again, adding the missing volume to fill it, keeping it inside until the harvest. These amphorae are made by Tinajas Orozco in the south of Spain. He's happy with the result, people like these two cuvées even if the volumes are small (500 bottles). For him the awakening moment regarding vinification in amphorae was when he tasted the wines of Paul & Christelle of Domaine Des Miquettes in Ardèche, the wines are just magic. He feels there is a long history around the Mediterranean for this type of vessel, with the good temperature inertia it offers, especially when they're buried.
Jérôme walked to a stainless-steel tank and filled two glasses with a white :
__ Carignan Blanc 2020. Originally these vines were Cabernet Sauvignon which his father had planted around 1999, Jérôme overgrafted them 4 years ago with Carignan Blanc (keeping thus the 20-year-old root system), a white variety which was commonly found in Provence in the past (Comor's Les Terres Promises has some). He took the wood from 3 locations, Comor (in La Roquebrussanne), the Conservatoire de la Vigne (in the Aude département) and Bérillon (a specialized nursery). He conducted this overgrafting in the course of 3 years and he has now a good diversity with these 3 massal selections. This is still a small surface in Carignan Blanc, 35 ares with which he'll make 1000 bottles more when the last overgrafting session will be included). It is a late ripening variety, he says it's nice to have that in Provence, he picks it beginning october while the Ugni Blanc is early september.
The wine has a nice intensity in the mouth, with some sort of minerality feel and a good tension, love it ! It is rare to find Carignan Blanc vinified & bottled separately, Comor makes one, the Domaine Ledogar as well, and there may be a couple others. He'll blend the different vats including the 120 liters he made the previous vintage, will keep this tension and get a bit more richness with the lees part. Will be labelled as Vin de France like the rest.
__ Carignan Noir 2020, for the cuvée Pépins. Picked in boxes, then foot-stomped here on the ground with 4 or 5 people including their two daughters (see video on the Facebook page), and afterwards he fills a tank with alternate layers of whole-clustered
grapes and crushed/stomped grapes, what we call in French a mille-feuille in
reference to the layer cake. For this wine there's only 4 or 5 days of maceration, with the aim to get a lighter wine, on the fruit, compared to his other cuvée of Carignan, which will be more to eat with. I like the nose here, there's fruity notes, earthy notes also. It's cold when we taste and we need to warm up our glass in our hands. I find something like iodine in here too, very enjoyable. Here he put 1 gram/hectoliter SO2 at racking, and he'll possibly add another gram or 0,5 at bottling. But he never had a cuvée above 30 mg SO2, they're usually between 15 and 25 mg. He's careful with the mousy flaws and prefers to use SO2 in that regard. In 2018 he had a few issues and in 2019 none, it depends of the year but he's careful. The lees don't help in that regard for the mousiness and racking is necessary at one point. The cuvée we taste here will be bottled end of march. He bottles his cuvées with a mobile service, he was lucky to have found the guy when he was starting his bottling business and he's now a regular customer, otherwise, given the small size of his domaine he would have had trouble convincing a mobile bottler to spend time for him.
__ Syrah 2020, poured from this red fiber-glass tank, terroir of red clay, vineyard in the vicinity of Puyloubier (closer to, this is part of two parcels which Jérôme planted himself (in 2013). Massal selections taken from Berillon, some come from Ardèche, some from Hermitage, with English graft (not Omega). Last year he picked early (september 1st) because he had frost issues over there and because of the hydric stress, and what he saw is that with organic farming he feels that budding comes earlier, bringing more frost risk, especially that he chose to conduct these vines with a short sap flow, meaning he keeps the vines close to the ground, unlike what you can see around the house or elsewhere in Provence, and with the grass on top of that you get more frost risks. The countermeasure is to prune later. Because these grapes were picked earlier than normal he expects the wine to lack a bit of length, but there's a nice fruity profile. Will be bottled end of march, blended with Grenache, for the cuvée Passages (12 ho of Grenache with 8 of Syrah). He doesn't filter the wines, that's why he likes to sell to cavistes who can explain to the consumer that a bit of sediment in a bottle is fine. Having worked for négoces before having his own domaine, he realizes how wine is stripped of all its substance by refusal of any risk. In one of his former jobs he had an enologist imposed to him and he had to go through the whole thing, cold settling, big doses of SO2, fining, filtration... Here he vinifies the closest to what he picks, with a minimum interference, at odds with modern enology.
Jérôme gave me a couple of bottles to taste later, I opened them with B.
Pépins
(means [grape] seeds in French), Vin de France 2019, Carignan (old vines of Carignan Noir). A real thist wine, with 11,5 % alcohol only. Nice substance, wrapped in a light sweetness. Easy to drink, the type you ask for more pours. The following day, the wine had a redoubled suaveness, goes down the throat like silk, lovely texture ! Always nice to test a wine after a day, here it was really a reward.
__ À Nos Étoiles 2019, Carignan Noir, also old vines (same backlabels, except for the 13 % alcohol).
Fruity wine with a tannic structure allowing to be enjoyed with a hearty dish. We certainly drink the bottle a bit early given its potential to improve with time. B. feels Burlat cherry notes, black olives as well, and warm earth. Good point. We continued the bottle two days later : Fullness feel in the mouth, with length, silky tannins and this nice freshness on top, pleasure all along ! Provence reds really rock and we need more producers who care...
Prices (tax included) go from 12 € (Pépins), the Carignan Blanc should be at 15 €, like À Nos Étoiles & Passages, and lastly the Amphora wines should be at 25 €.
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