Tavel, Rhône.
Here is a visit that took place long time ago (in early 2011) at Eric Pfifferling's iconic Domaine de L'Anglore. I didn't publish it at the time because Eric was worried he'd would be overwhelmed with demands and orders he couldn't fulfill, his production being basically already allocated before the wines are even ready. Now that his sons are getting in charge I thought I could publish the story at last, especially that I'm short of
stories these days (I should resume visits and reporting soon, don't worry). So take this story like some sort of travel in time, on a domaine and winemaker that shines well beyond our borders.
Tavel is located in the southern
Rhône, and the region has been producing wine since the antiquity, the wine being shipped along the river to various faraway clients, for example the pope Innocent VI in Avignon had the wines of the Prieuré de Montézargues (near Tavel) exported to Italy. The AOC Tavel is a rosé and alas people think exclusively of rosé when hearing the name, but the region can make wonderful reds and whites as well, and Eric's wines are thus mostly bottled as Vin de France (table wine).
There are domaines and winemakers whose wines strike a chord, you feel so many things at once, you keep them in the back of your brain and are excited whenever given the opportunity to share another bottle. My advice is usually, never let pass thee opportunity when you see a bottle of L'Anglore available in a wine shop, that may not last. There's also one thing interesting with Eric, which he shares with a few outstanding winemakers, it's that his prior skill was very different from any wine-related job, but it needed as well a demanding meticulousness and rigor, and an attention to life, that may have helped him make these wines we all love. Like for example Fred Cossard was in the milk trade before becoming the man we know, Eric Pfifferling was a beekeeper and honey maker, and I'm sure this past experience dealing with patience and respect was much more helpful than would have been training at the wine school.
Eric Pfifferling started as a grower in Tavel in the early 1990s, selling his grapes to the local Coopérative, he came into contact with natural wines through Jean-François Nicq who was at the time working at the outstanding Coopérative d'Estézargues.
He shared bottles with Eric, bottles coming from all over France from a new school of winemakers vinifying naturally from vineyards where no chemicals were sprayed. These types of wines had no name (like natural wine) back then but they tasted strikingly different and Eric loved them, plus, although they'd drink quite a lot of them together, he'd feel no headache or stomach pain afterthen. Through him he discovered people like Bernard Pontonnier(scroll down this story), the rebels in the Beaujolais (around Marcel Lapierre) and others further south (Gramenon, Chateau Sainte Anne), also Puzelat in the Loire, a whole new community with which he felt connected. Nicq was himself vinifying naturally in the coop and Eric watched him work, this was for him a firsthand experience proving this was possible to work this way. He befriended more wine makers in the region, like Marcel Richaud, Gérald Oustric, Gilles Azzoni, Alain Allier (Mouressipe), Thierry Forestier. Eric converted his vineyard organic in 1993, and helped by Jean-François Nicq, he made his first trial nature cuvées in 2000 with a few barrels, which helped him make the last step of quitting the coop in 2001 in order to start vinifying himself his fruit.
picture on left : neon sign on the coopérative
Back in the 1990s when Eric looked to start growing grapes, the vineyards over here were very expensive (300 000 French Francs/hectare or 45 734 € -- in 2011 it was 10 000 €) because
the Côtes-du-Rhône was selling big,
the domaines would vinify conventionally their wines and they would sell easy especially with the export, something that changed in the following years with new markets and producing countries. So he and Jean-François Nicq (who was later to start his own thing, Les Foulards Rouges) looked for vineyards in order to work together for a while, but there was basically nothing available, so Jean-François went to the Roussillon to find a domaine, while Eric kept his family surface and planted one hectare of Mourvèdre and Grenache in 1996 near Nîmes, on a land owned by his father for his beehives, adding another hectare he purchased in 2005, but that was far, some 60km from Tavel. Since then he suceeded to recover family vineyards that were previously rented (fermages) to growers, and he has now 5 hectares on Tavel. Since the 1990s the prices have eased because of dropping wine sales (especially from 2000) and you can find interesting parcels on Lirac or Côtes-du-Rhône.
The fancy barrel on left is not one of Eric's, I spotted this thing in town. The refrigerated trailer on the right is where Eric cools his grapes after picking when needed.
We drove a short distance outside Tavel to reach one of Eric Pfifferling's parcels on the first slopes. Very nice vines on a soil covered with stomes. The landscape is very Provencal, it feels like in the Var almost, with a garigue covered with the same bushes and vegetation, rosmarin, cades (Juniperis oxycedrus which has a very
hard wood with a very
strong smell) and pines. Eric says the soil is clay/limestone. Speaking again about why Cotes-du-Rhône wines became somehow harder to sell around 2000, there may be several factors, one of them being some kind of Parkerization of the domaines who tried to make their wines high-alcohol and concentrated, but Eric says that in the span of 25 years there has been a deep change in the planted varieties, with today much more syrah and extraction in the cellar. In the past there was much more Grenache and Cinsault, vinified into lighter wines, the motive of this change being obscure, it's some sort of international trend, using similar yeast, you end up having syrah wine here that tastes the same than the one grown in Béziers (Languedoc). These wines are well made, clean but undrinkable, they're fit for the supermarkets, so that the "consumer" remains in familiar territory.
We left the car at the foot of the hill and walked a few meters to some sort of vantage point with a map table of the region. Eric says from here we can see all of the Tavel appellation area, about 1000 hectares. The sky is not very clear at that moment but it's very beautiful (when it's really clear you can see the Mont Ventoux from here). Eric says you find three terroirs on Tavel, sandy soils, small stones and large pebble stones on red soils (like in Chateauneuf du Pape).
Eric Pfifferling explains that in Tavel AOC you have 60 % Grenache, 20 % Cinsault, Carignan (10 %) plus a string of secondary varieties like clairette, Bourboulenc, Mourvèdre, a bit of Syrah (2 % max). By tradition, Tavel is a maceration wine (that's why it is darker than other rosés), the grapes get stomped and destemmed with a maceration time from 24 to 48 hours, then pressing, with blending of the two juices (press & free run) for fermentation. Now many people begin to put in place rosés de saignée instead of maceration, and Eric himself is doing carbonic maceration with whole-clustered grapes and no pigeage, no stomping whatsoever, and maceration lengths that can last 8 to 10 days on his Tavel rosés. And before working on the grapes, he cools them with the refrigerated trailer unit. If the grapes reach the chai at a temperature of 18 C (64,4 F) it's ok but on some occasions the grapes even in late morning reach 28 or 30 C (82.4 to 86 F) and then he needs to cool them down, leaving them to cool for the night. He tries as much as he can to get rid of this technology (cooling is also a technology) and thinks about ways to eschew this stage, like picking by night fort example, even though it's tricky by hand. This last vintage [2010] he tried to forgo the use of the cooling trailer but he lost much wine because of that, this was a hot year and cooling was needed indeed. He says back in the old days people were certainly loosing wine, or maybe they accepted wines that were faulty as a result of reaching the chai at high temperature. For him, the use of pre-cooling is a means to avoid any additives in the winemaking stage.
Here is the parcel of Pierre Chaude, 100 % Grenache, and many of you still delight of the feel they had the last time they sipped the namesake cuvée, a delight in every regard, so it's so exciting to see in your face the vines and surrounding that made the cuvée possible. This visit took place in january, and Eric says it's very convenient at this season because the soil and stones are much more apparent, no distraction with the foliage and eventual dry weeds. Eric says that the part beyond the two trees
was planted by his grandfather (on his mother side) in 1955, and Eric planted what's in front in 1991.
It's all massal selection and there are a few stay wines of Carignan and Clairette. He also has here some ten rows of Grenache Blanc with which he makes his cuvée Sels D'Argent. The soil here is covered with large flat stones, which may probaly keep the heat the whole night in summer, even late summer. Eric says that 1,5 meter deep you have a compact rock table, and on the lower slopes you have part of the parcel with more earth depth.
Eric says that although he's certified organic since 2003, he doesn't tell about it on the labels. Eric tels us about Les Ignorants, a comics relating the mutual initiation between Etienne Davodeau (the cartoonist) and Richard Leroy (the winemaker), and he feels very close with Richard who in spite of his demanding work with biodynamie, doesn't brag about it. He says that on this parcel of Pierre Chaude for example there are wild leeks growing, they came out of nowhere and he can just pick some and cook, eat them right away because the soil here is so healthy and exempt of chemicals, he usually boils them and makes fritters (he had done that the previous friday). He walks a few meters between the rows and finds one (picture on right). It's interesting that wild leeks are growing here, I tell Eric about Didier Barrouillet's work with wild leeks to get rid of Esca in the Loire. On this parcel the yields are not big, usually 25 hectoliters/hectare. As we walk between the rows, we stumble upon a couple of shiny quartz stones, Eric says there's a vein surfacing in the parcel.
We drove to another parcel, here as you can see, no stones surfacing and the soil is more like sand. If I remember, Eric blends several parcels for his Tavel, including this one.
We're back to Eric Pfifferling's facility in a quiet street of Tavel, and he climbs onto a large sealed tronconic vat (a Grenier) to get a sample of Tavel rosé. Here the wine is already blended, from two parcels, Grenache and Cinsault. So the wine had its short carbonic maceration (about 8 days if I remember), then he presses and blends the two juices for the ensuing fermentation. When the sugar is gone, he takes away the fermentaireslees, and the wine continues its élevage on its fine lees. This vat makes 50 % of his blend and from what I understand, he'll blend it with more vessels before bottling. This wine was made from part of the sandy parcel we just saw (planted in the 1950s), plus another parcel which was planted more recently (around 1999) on a southern slope on a more stony, mineral terroir.
Eric tells us why Tavel is only rosé : in 1936 when Chateauneuf du Pape submitted its first specifications and requirements for its planned AOC, the Baron Leroy who overlooked thye nascing AOC was very friendly with the vignerons of Tavel, so he pushed for Chateauneuf du Pape to make reds and whites only, leaving Tavel with the exclusive rosé in the area. Retrospectively, I'm wondering if that was so friendly to limit the Tavel area to rosé, when you taste L'Anglore reds you realize what missed opportunity these AOC limits put on the potential wonders of this village. Of course you're not technically forbidden to make reds but few vignerons have the courage to leave the reassuring cover of the AOC for the depreciative table wine (vin de France) label....
Then Eric pours us with his winethief a sample from a single barrel of something like an experiment he made : It is a blend made with grapes in the parcel under the large oak tree (half of the blend, Grenache), and the other half being Carignan and Clairette we walked through at the end, on the sandy terroir. For now it's the only barrel he made using these two terroirs together. He had some remaining wine and he thought that was the occasion to try this blend, especially that this terroir up there (with the two oak tree) is a super good terroir, and he could use some of this Grenache to make a regular Tavel blend and age it longer (the Pierre Chaude cuvée can't be labelled a Tavel because it doesn't have the compulsory blend required for Tavels). More intensity and structure here, with the Carignan.
We now taste Pierre Chaude 2011 [the last vintage at the time of this visit], one of the iconic, even magic I would say, cuvées of Domaine de L'Anglore. These are normal-size (228 liters) barrels, aged 4 to 5 wines (Eric says he changes the barrels regularly after using them a few years). So what we taste here is something like more than 90 % Grenache, with a few stray Clairette and other varieties to complete. This barrel is made with the older part (the vines planted by his grandfather in 1955), the final blend will included more recent plantings (1991). Delicious wine already, this wine never saw SO2 at any stage. We pour back the rest of our glass into the barrel.
Then Eric takes a sample of older Tavel from one of the large-capacity barrels (500 liters, called a tonne usually). The malolactic are done on all these wines, including the first one we tasted. The Tavel rosé is his biggest cuvée in terms of volume. This year [in 2011] they'll make something like 80 hectoliters of Tavel, with part of the volume, maybe 20 hectoliters will be set aside to have a longer élevage in order to be released in 2013 and this 2010 is an early try at aging his Tavel. He wants to push the limits toward a rosé de garde, an older vintage rosé, which he considers Tavel is fit for, like the Bandol rosés
for example (I remember this Tempier 1970 poured by François Peyraud). He begins now to have a few consecutive years of aged Tavel rosés which allow to appreciate the aging of this wine. And year after year, he augments the size of the set-aside Tavel which he intends to age longer. The idea is to have two rosés, one ready for the following year (including possibly a direct-press one) and another (a few others) with long-élevage wines and different expression.
Very beautiful, I feel something saline, Eric feels more like citrus notes. The color of the wine is clearer than the current vintage, Eric says that oxidation coupled with sedimenting lees help clear the color. He says he has the opportunity to open old bottles from his grandfather dating from the 1960s and this is the style of color depth, with a color that is more tile colored. eric says that he works with restaurants who appreciate this type of older-vintage rosé, there's a growing demand for this type of wine, and he's happy himself because that's something he was yearning for. For the anecdote, the casks he uses for this wine, he got them from Fred Cossard who had used them for two vintages, and when Eric got them, the previous cuvée in there was Fred's Bedeau 2007..... Not bad indeed for a ghost imprint of a used barrel... Eric says that for the type of wines he makes here, Burgundy offers the best base to source the used barrels from.
picture on left : looks like a cuvée bound for Japan
Then Eric offered us to taste a cuvée named Chemin de la Brune, a direct-press rosé, a cuvée made from parcels located outside the Tavel area, that's why it'll be bottled as vin de France. Bottling quite early, in the following march or april. Blend of Grenache, Cinsault and Aramon. The grapes grow on sandy/silty soil along the Rhône river some 10 kilometers north of Tavel. Vinification in barrels. In spite of no maceration here (it's a direct press) the color is still quite marked. Vivid wine, lovely. Picked auust 20 [2010], he chose to pick early in order to keep a good level of natural acidity. Pré-fermentaire maceration in boxes in the refrigerated trailer. He plans this cuvée as an early release, in the year, keeping the Tavel for a longer élevage, even the one with the shortest élevage being released the following year only. He wants to do that with the reds too, an early release one, and the other ones with longer cellar time. Many people think Tavel is only for summer, but it fits with other seasons when aged longer.
This rosé should be blended soon, he has to check the moon time windows for that. 12,5 % alc.
Terre d'Ombre is a 6-week carbonic maceration of Grenache (100 %) from a terroir thick with blue marls (marnes bleues) that crumbles in your hand when you grasp them. The parcel is 60 kilometers away, on a lower slope with the garigue above. Usually that's what he makes as a primeur and brings to Marc Sibard in the Caves Augé, but this year he felt the wine needed more time and wasn't ready in november. He says he didn't go to the last Primeur day in Paris, there several reasons, the vintage was difficult and he needed to relax a bit here, he says in this job if you're not careful you devote a lot of time for public relations in different events of this nature or in fairs, and he yearns for a simple life, keeping going hiking in the wild with his wife, opening a bottle with visiting friends, simple things like that. He works of course a lot in a natural environment, but a vineyard is still somehow an organized type of nature, that's while he compensates by doing long walks in the wilderness in the area, for both the mineral side, the rocks and the spontaneous vegetation you find in the hills and garigue of the region. Asked if he hunts, he says no, even though he has nothing against hunting per se, he also appreciates the fact that hunters lower the wildboar pressure on the vineyards.
The wine is gourmand, easy drinking in spite of 14 % alcohol. Also a cuvée bottled early, in spring.
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