Valaire, Loir-et-Cher (Loire)
We're here at the heart of an active community of natural wine producers in the Loir-et-Cher département in a corner of the Sologne south of Blois, with within a short distance people like Thierry Puzelat, Pierre-Olivier Bonhomme, Christian Venier, Jeremy Quastana, and Olivier Lemasson who alas left us a few weeks ago,
and others. That's where
Blandine Floch lives and tends her parcels alongside several of these growers. Blandine's first vinification was in 2018 when she vinified the grapes of Jeremie Choquet, she was pregnant at the time, and when I visited Jeremie, she was busy with their 3-year-old daughter. Both separated since and she's now on her own, tending her own parcels and vinifying her fruit. Blandine's early debuts were in 2011 and 2012 when she began to work for the harvest at Olivier Lemasson's Les Vins Contés, it was a new thing for her as she still had a job in the social sector then. She helped Olivier also on the cellar side, she also did some cooking for the pickers, with Jeremy Quastana's mother and his brother Jean. She discovered through these experiences the world of natural wine and she loved it much, so from then on she spent her free time and vacations working in the vineyard of these growers, doing the picking as well, at the end of summer. Through Olivier she met other interesting people like Isabelle Frère who makes wine in the Languedoc Roussillon, she also did some Wwoofing at the Ozil brothers in Ardèche. After these beautiful experiences she decided to get a training and quit her public service job. She, like us all, is still shocked of course of the sudden death of Olivier Lemasson, and she saw him just a few days before as both were taking part to Bamboche, a small natural wine fair that took place in the Languedoc near Sète and Faugères (it was the first edition). She recently found a warehouse to rent for her new facility (pictured on left), and that's where she'll vinify her cuvées this year.
Blandine studied then a few months at Amboise (Loire valley) for a Bac Pro Viti-Oeno and did her training at Clos du Tue-Boeuf with Thierry and Jean-Marie Puzelat. While there she
made further discoveries with Thierry's portfolio of imported wines inclunding
the wines from Georgia, which triggered a trip to Georgia in 2016 with Jeremie Choquet, where they had a great time and experience befriending wonderful people there. During her stay at Clos du Tue-Boeuf she was mostly in the cellar with occasional work in the vineyard. In 2017 she managed to pick with several producers, first at Remi Dufaitre in the Beaujolais, then back with Puzelat at the cellar, then she flew alone to Georgia where she picked for Keti Berishvili (Gogo Wine), then with Kortavebis Marani (Tamuna's Wine), also at Ramaz Nikoladze, with the two French guys who make sparkling wines there, Vincent & Guillaume (Lapati Wines) and at John Wurdeman's Pheasant's Tears as well, an incredible program indeed in just a month.
I'm visiting Blandine in the small farmhouse she rents outside Valaire, the place is beautifully rural and bucolic, the real country life and ideal place to raise her daughter indeed. This was a nice june day to ride the motorbike but winters can be harsh in the Loire, Asked about it she says she heats the house with wood as she has an old Godin stove which works well and with which she can cook her stews. She of course learnt to prepare her firewood and her daughter loved to see her mom chop the wood and store it.
She doesn't make her wines here, she found a warehouse to rent where she'll make her 2021 wines, the place is not glamour (it's a modern building, see the pic on top/left) but it should work just the same, it's located mid-distance between Thierry Puzelat's chai and the one of Christian Venier.
Right now Blandine has only two cuvées, two whites, and her first vintage under her own name was 2019 (she'll have more cuvées next year as she got other parcels with more varieties). She bottles all her production in Vin de France (table wine), she didn't look for an Appellation status right now.
__ Loriot, Vin de France 2020, 100 % Sauvignon, parcel on clay/limestone soils, direct press. The vines were conventionally farmed and are on organic convertion. She doesn't farm this parcel anymore because there were 70 % missing vines (although not that old : 35), meaning a lot of work for very little fruit. The reason she dropped this parcel is because she had the opportunity to get parcels on the plateau of Monthou-sur-Bièvre, with the same terroir and other varieties as well.
The Sauvignon was pressed then went into enamelled-steel tank (she praises these old metal tanks for their thermal inertia) for setlling of the gross lees and fermentation, got after that some stirring and 6 months of élevage, part barrels, part fiber tank. went through its malolactic, like all her wines. The wine is quite turbid (it is unfiltered). In the mouth, it feels very light (it's actually 12,5 % alcohol) and harmonious, generous too. Very nice drinkability with a nice white's chew and exciting aromatics, very luminous. I'd even say the word Umami to qualify this wine, feels whole. And we taste at room temperature (probably 20 C - 68 F), not refrigerated. Retail price 10 € (Pro price 8 €), very good deal. Blandine says that 2020 is a solar vintage with lots of grillure on some bunches.
When Blandine started in 2019 she had a surface of 2,35 hectares (all rents), Sauvignon only if I understand, and now she rents other parcels (with much less missing vines) for a total surface of 2,5 hectares and planted with Sauvignon, Chenin (very happy of having Chenin !), old Gamay and a bit of Chardonnay. And in addition to her own production she's setting up a négoce, meaning she'll vinify grapes she'll buy to trustworthy growers 30 minutes from here, this way she can manage by herself the vineyard work on her small surface and still make enough wine to make a living. Frost damage was pretty bad this spring, some bunches on her surface grew back but yields will certainly suffer this year (she'll have nothing to pick on the Chard for example). With the négoce she'll be able to offer cuvées that are more affordable, and she'll look for Pinot Noir & Pineau d'Aunis (but she hasn't found any yet), but right now she has secured some Gamay for a thirst wine, and Côt as well.
__ Tsituri, a skin contact white, Georgian style, the name refers both to Georgia and to her 2-year-3months-old daughter who is redhead (that's what it means in Georgian). This macerated white is made with the now-rare Fié Gris, a pink-skin Sauvignon (and these are old vines). The sub-variety ignored by the AOC bureaucracy, was mostly forgotten a couple decades ago but Jacky Preys engineered a rebirth of Fié Gris. In spite of the maceration, the pink skin didn't color the wine, it's still a white. This Fié Gris was destemmed, the first year she did it by hand with her friends, but this time she did it at Thierry Puzelat who got recently a very efficient destemmer. Then the grapes macerated a month in 10-hectoliter fiber vats that are wide and low which allows her an easy pigeage every day for a light extraction.
The wine has a magical color and reflections, and these peculiar raisins, dried apricots aromas. 13 % alcohol. In spite of the maceration time (one month), the tannin feel and astringency is moderate, it has to do with the fact the stems were taken out I guess. For the winemaking after the maceration, she pressed the grapes in a basket press borrowed to the Tue Boeuf (Puzelat's facility is 2 minutes away from her new chai, very helful if she needs a tool urgently), both juices (press & free run) are blended then go into a fiber vat for a week where the fermentation unfolds swiftly, then straight into demi-muids & barrels for all winter. She hasn't this parcel of Fié Gris anymore, it was a small, 14-row parcel, but she found some for her négoce, although on a different terroir, it's quite a large block, around 1 hectare.
Will sell for 13 € tax included (Pro price 11 €). Her négoce wines will be around 6,5-7 € Pro.
Asked how she found her clients, Blandine says it's mostly by word of mouth, like exporters keen of finding new producers working naturally, which heard about her through Olivier Lemasson and Thierry Puzelat, there was Le Garde Vins in Paris. She exports now through Franklin Selections (New York), to Japan through Diony, morencently she sells to Australia, Korea. The problem is that as a result she has basically no wine to sell right now.
while we drive to the vineyard, Blandine tells me that near where she lives there's a tiny parcel of very old Gamay that is farmed by Pierre-Olivier Bonhomme, this is the cuvée la Probilière... Driving closer to her parcels in the direction of Valaire, we pass the parcel of
La Pieuse, also from Pierre-Olivier, then parcels from the tue-Boeuf like Buisson Pouilleux, others from Olivier Lemasson, and she says on this plateau de Monthou there's only one remaining conventional grower, the rest being these organic growers we all know.
The first parcel we visit is planted with old vines of Gamay (aged 50) with a few missing (the picture at the top was shot here also), the parcel was farmed conventionally in the recent past and Blandine leaves the weeds intentionally so that the soil has time to recover some life, plus the grass pumps away the remaining chemicals. She was to have this weed mowed in a short time after this visit. for the vineyard work she contracted her ex Jeremie because he has the tools, and it would not make sense for her to buy heavy equipment like a tractor just for these 2,5 hectares. He passed with a blade under the vines but for now she prefers not to plow between the rows because the roots have certainly been fed on the surface like chemically-nurtured vines do and plowing abruptly would harm them. She'll do that gradually in the future, beginning with some scratching.
Speaking of the spraying, she had two Bordeaux mix sprayed here this year at the time of this visit, once by Jeremie and once by Thierry Puzelat (because Jeremie's sprayer broke down).
We see a lot of marcottes in this parcel, she says she never saw as many. She takes advantage of this walk to check the future bunches and spots the first blossoming, she says it's obviously from the day, it just happened. and also she's happy to see a good number of bunches although frost was severe here in early april. She is relieved to see all these bunches, and the first flowers, we're june 14 and counting 100 days we can already estimate the picking start here. I notice that for mid june the foliage volume is quite small on these vineyards, and that is certainly both the frost of early april that pushed back the growth, and the enduringly-cold spring that ensued which slowed the whole thing. Blandine says that Pierre-Olivier Bonhomme has a remote weather station on the plateau and he texted his peers that temp went down to minus 7 C (19,4 F) with repeated such episodes along a whole week. Some growers tried to make some fire with straw for example but without success, it was too long and too cold to contain.
At one point as we were walking along the hedge near her parcel, a young roe deer that was obviously lying in the shade in the hedge 4 meters from us jumped in front of us and fled through Blandine's vineyard. There couldn't be a more symbolic praise of a parcel getting its soil and vines back to normalcy, but I fear they'll be there again next september before the pickers... Blandine says she's used to stumbling on them when she wanders through her surface, especially for the part bordering a bigger wooded area.
While we were walking in the vineyard I spotted yet another of these loges de vigne, these architectural cuties fropm the late 19th century where vineyard workers, day laborers could rest, eat, hide from rain or heat and spend the night at a time workers had no vehicule of their own to get back to the village. This one looks like a miniature stately mansion, complete with its own majestic chimney. I don't think the vineyard in the foreground is any of her parcels.
I always marvel at how easy a grower can recognize his/her varieties : here we're in the Chardonnay part (if I didn't mix up my notes) which are about 50 years old as well. Here Blandine notices that while you can spote the tiny bunches, there is no blossoming yet. And thus usually Chardonnay blossoms first, but this year is different. Because of the frost damage she decided not to debud, because of the risk to take away the potential bunches, there will be very little fruit already, and you must also keep a good balance between the foliage and the fruit. Here again, look at this small foliage mass, we're mid june and it looks like mid may or earlier...
I notice this straddle tractor working in the far in a parcel along the road and Blandine says it's someone surnamed Coco, a Bulgarian who works for Thierry Puzelat's Clos du Tue Boeuf. Little world...
We drive a bit further on the plateau to a parcel of Sauvignon, lots of marcottes here also, sometimes one after the other, in cascade, why not, even the young get the old blood, that way... Blandine checks the vines and there doesn't seem to be any prospective bunches in the way, alas. Of course the frost. For the first year she's having them, that's not luck. plus, in their previous life under conventional management, the vines were pruned in a chaotic way, she'll have to salvage them. He the tractor passed with what is named in French disques émotteurs, discs that cut the roots of the weeds, she finds the practice more gentle than when you plow this kind of ditch under the vine which you level back later in the season.
We reach the Chenin she's happy to have added to her varieties, this is also a plot with lots of cascading marcottes, and with about the same age. In organic conversion, like the rest, the soil enjoys the return of the grass. It seemed to me that the vines were raising higher than the other varieties we saw before, she says yes, and in spite of being late in the foliage growth this year, that's the first parcel where she began to tie the shoots (pass them between the wires) this morning (usually it's more like in may but this year is special). The Sauvignon shoots are still low and so when she'll have finished with the Chenin she'll tie the Gamay.
Still in the Chenin, we spot this cute and harmless spider which we call in French faucheuse if I'm right. Insects feel well already on these leaves.
Checking for bunches, we spot this bunch with no flowers, and yet there was another one on the same vine that was already blossoming, this may yield heterogenous ripening, but blandine says that she was trained in 2016 and 2017 on years with frost issues as well, and she learnt to handle parcels with different ripening because of staggered blossoming : you can actually do the picking in one pass, that's not easy but you take lots of samples, like 100 samples distributed between the green grapes and the ripe ones. For her cuvée Loriot for example she had grapes at 14,5 and others ar 9 only, this was also following afrost in spring, and she chose to pick when the balance was optimal, and it worked quite well.
If you pass through the area, don't of course ever miss stopping at L'Herbe Rouge in Valaire : this auberge in a beautiful setting near an old bridge is a wonderful venue for artisan food and real wines. It has been managed by Cécile Puzelat for years and now Sophie (pictured here) is managing the place (for 3 years already), with the same love for these wines we all love. You're very likely to stumble on the vibrant vignerons you have been enjoying the wines of, this place is almost their cafeteria... Here is the Google maps link for directions, you won't forget this Bistrot de campagne and its wine list.
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