Thésée, Touraine (Loire)
This year I missed the harvest and had a glimpse of its preparation and also of its conclusion. From what I heard this is a very generous vintage, in spite of the high temperature at times during the summer, there was rain in august, the vineyard got what it needed to yield nice volumes of overall healthy grapes. This comes after two consecutive years of hardship for the growers (hail and frost notably), each with truncated volumes. The weather through early october had been very enjoyable, even if in the early part of the harvest in september, temperatures were pretty high, forcing picking teams to work very early in the morning and stop at noon.
Here I showed up unannounced at Domaine de la Taupe, Nicole wasn't there but Bertjan was, as well as several trainees or staff, moving juice. There were some new tools added recently in the chai/cellar, a basket press and a foudre. "New" is relative, both are used tools and have behind them already a long life rendering service to winemakers.
Here Bertjan shows me here the current press, an horizontal Vaslin, with then the "new" one, a basket press he got in Ardèche and which belonged previously to Eric Pfifferling, probably minted in Burgundy in the 1960s he says. I also look afterthen at his other "new" purchase, a beautiful Alsace foudre where his recently-pressed Sauvignon (Surin) quietly ferments...
Bertjan offered me to taste a few juices/wines and here I begin with the Surin 23, a Sauvignon still in the midst of its fermentation in an old Alsace-type foudre. Beatiful juice or bernache indeed, even if I'm not expert of guessing the future qualities of a wine in its juice stage... And what a color. asked about the nice volumes this year (something other growers agreed with) Bertjan says yes, for example they made some 50 hectoliters of Sauvignon which is a lot, making comparable yields as in 2019. 2020 was not bad in volumes but not to that level, and 2021 was very low with the frost, losing 502 % and last year in 2022 they lost even more, like 80 %. So this year was well needed after several consecutive arduous vintages.
Following Bertjan to a fiber-plastic tank, I taste as well the chenin 23 which is more advanced than the Surin, it has maybe some 4 grams of residual sugar which makes it easier to gauge. It was picked 3 weeks before. Oddly the Sauvignon (cuvée Surin) which has way more residual sugar was picked even before this one, around 10-11 days earlier. In the mouth indeed it's close to be dry. Bertjan says that the Chenin is also easier to ferment because while the Sauvignon had a potential of 12,5/13 %, the Chenin's potential is 10,5 %, he says it'll be neat, straight like he likes it. The reason because these low % is that they had to pick early because they had bunches half ripe, half green, plus there was some rot threat on this Chenin. This year the rot issue was around, because even though the summer was rather dry and sunny as a whole, august was pretty rainy.
Here is the lovely color of the Pineau d'Aunis/Gamay blend 2023, with 60 to 70 % of Aunis (glass pictured with the stainless-steel vat behind, which contains the whole bunches of the two. Beautiful nose. So good to drink, you feel already the wine, the fermentation is almost completed but it's the free-run juice here, they'll soon press the grapes, releasing more sugar with both juices being then blended to keep fermenting. Very promising from what I swallowed here ! Bertjan says that the sensuing fermentation after the press will bring more structure and substance. This is whole-cluster maceration like he does always, except for the Côt (he adds that even for the whites, when not direct press he keeps the stems). Here this cuvée is made with purchased grapes (he bought from an organic grower in nearby Mareuil-sur-Cher and also in Anjou), last year of course because of catastrophic yields, he relied much on négoce grapes. This year he'll have wines made from 75 % of estate grapes and 25 % from négoce grapes. He says he and his wife are not sure at this point to continue buying grapes elsewhere, the thing is, if they get back to regular volumes with their estate grapes he'll not need extra fruit. Anyway he always tell on the label when it's not their grapes and he thanks the grower as well in the sentence.
Here from this plastic tank I taste the Cab Franc 2023 which will be the cuvée Rien Ne Va Plus, it's still very sweet at this stage, and of course it was picked more recently. This is from what I understand a blend of a parcel of Cab Franc/ Cabernet Sauvignon from Monthou sur Cher (the next village) and a parcel of 100 % Cab Franc in Thésée. Picked september 22 it stayed already 10 days whole-clusterd in the fermenter and will stay there after a total of 3 or 4 weeks. Beautiful free-run juice color, very refined juice, delicate. He'll have 25 hectoliters of it when pressed. The fermenter is quite old but with the openings that were changed recently it is very efficient, plus, it's a self-emptying fermenter, very convenient when working with whole bunches.
And then Bertjan offers me to taste his Gamay 2022 (cuvée Ace of Spades 2022) which is still in tank and, he says, gave him plenty of sleepless nights : The fermentation was sluggish for months. A month before this harvest (the one of 2023) he breought a sample to the lab for analysis and the result said volatile was 1,25 gram/ liter which is quite high, and on top of that sugar was still 10 grams/liter which was dangerous. To correct this problem he racked some lees from a fermenting tank of Cab Franc, put it with the Gamay and a week later the indolent Gamay had awaken and gotten dry, even though volatile, remained unchanged. This wine is just gorgeous ! such a substance, a voluptuous moth touch and just the same when swallowed, don't miss that one ! Certainly a great bottle to age as well. Vinification details : 3.5 weeks with whole-clustered bunches and as said very slow (if unvoluntarily) fermentation. This is a new cuvée as the grapes were purchased last year following these disastrous volumes for his own estate grapes in 2022. He'll bottle it like this, unfiltered and no addes sulfites. He says that until now he never used sulfites for his wines, never. Great job indeed ! I keep sipping the remaining wine in my glass, so delicious !
I didn't have to go far to get at Les Jardins de Théséis as the chai/cellar is just feet away on the other side of the courtyard (the whole place belonged to Bruno Allion before he retired and sold the the two couples). They were busy pressing the last batch of Sauvignon which they had just unloaded, having picked it in the morning (I arrived just in time to shoot Pierre-André driving the tractor away, with Anouk taking care with an a female staff of the loading of the press). The season was nice, they got some rot but easy to sort in the vineyard and to explain the nice volumes they always got rain at the right time this summer, and add the fact that there has been no frost or hail damage this year this translates in these good volumes. Pierre-André also says that they noticed that on the branches extra bunches or secondary buds popped out successfully, possibly as a vine reaction to two consecutive years with low yields. Normally these secondary buds come out when there's frost damage, it's like the vines were really impatient to have fruit out this time.
After the press is let alone doing its quiet work, the tractor parked and the tools washed, Anouk and Pierre-André invited the picking team that remained to help sit down around the table to enjoy these last moments sipping some wine... Pierre-André says that this harvest was tretched along quite a few weeks, they had begun september 4 and they finished a month later almost day for day (october 3). The quality was there, that's the important thing he says, good volumes too. Certain parcels needed some sorting because of rot but overall good quality grapes. Last year they lost grapes to hail and the year before to frost, so good volumes with quality is good news. The early part of the harvest was under hot weather and they picked early in the day from 7am to 1pm. The good thing is that the picking was easy, with volume of Sauvignon filling up quickly, like by 10 am they had their 50 boxes, enouth for a full press. Another couple of hours in the morning was enough for another 50 boxes or another press and then they'd keep quiet during the hottest hours of the day.
In the same village of Thésée, maybe not even 100 meters away there's the chai and cellars of Noëlla Morantin, the harvest was finished as well but there was only Noëlla and a staff, both busy doing some pumping and cleaning tools and tanks. The harvest started september 5 and finished the 28th of the same month. There were some idle days between the reds and the whites, and at the end, the Cabernet Franc. She also is very happy because it's a very nice vintage as far as she sees it, the vineyard was generous and gave quality grapes.
I then rode across the cher river to the village of Pouillé on the other side at Les Maisons Brûlées (unannounced again) and Corinne was busy cleaning vats while Paul was between overlooking a trainee doing some pumping in the cellar and steam-cleaning barrels with Alban outside in the open. Corinne says that here also this was a good year, but she says that in Anjou they had more rot, possibly because they had more rain than here (Anjou is closer to the Atlantic). Vouvray which is closer from here also from what she heard didn't have a very good year. Corinne says that here for them it's possibly the best vintage they had in the 10 past years.
Here you can see the Champagne-type press that had its last load this very morning, there's an international vibe as Vina, a young woman from Bangalore (Karnataka, India) is there to help. I've read they have vineuyards over there near Bangalore, I've been in Karnataka long time ago but I guess they were not growsing vines at the time and anyway I just went to Hampi (a magic place), in another part of the state. The wine being pumped here is the cuvée Herdeleau, they have a very nice volume of it, 21 hectoliters in this underground tank plus 16, plus some other container, probably somewhere near 40 hectoliters, with at the end 2/3 going through an élevage in oak and the rest in other tanks.
I took this picture of Christophe Foucher of La Lunotte before the harvest in early september, he was cleaning a few barrels in order to be ready. I srtopped there again at the end of the harvest and he was just fixing his horizontal press (a Vaslin) which encountered a problem while pressing a small load of grapes, the electric motor had overheated and he was going to take it apart and hopefully fix it. Very good volumes of grapes as well here, which he picked by a small team of pickers like usual. He was even wondering where he'd put all that wine as his couple of cellars are pretty small.
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