Wine Tasting, Vineyards, in France

Vendanges, Harvest 2019 (one)

Junko Arai with Julien Pineau

I toured a few vineyards this year to see the harvest, 2019 has been a very dry year in several regions, with much of the Loire for example having even less rain (actually no rain at all for several months in the Cher valley) than Provence or the Rhône. But as you'll see the answers are pretty positive, this vintage 2019 will be quite good and same for the volumes. Plus the weather at harvest time was ideal, sunny, not too warm, a breeze to keep the pickers happy, and no need to say I was myself very happy driving around on my motorbike, ideal weather, of course rain will be welcome [it has started as I write this] but this nice weather day after day will be remembered fondly.

Yes, Junko Arai was there to pick her Côt and when I heard the day before she'd be around I was thrilled, knowing she comes rarely from Japan. She downsized her surface from 6 to 2 hectares here, with Chardonnay, Pinot Noir and Côt the wine being wholly exported to Japan. this year the Côt will be taken care of by Julien Pineau and she'll do the job for the Pinot Noir and the Chardonnay, Junko says she loves Burgundy wines but the vineyard prices there make it impossible to do wine there, so she'll kind of work on the 2 varieties here in Touraine, which she planted years ago. And Junko also made wine in Japan this year, but the weather was really hot, even if she chose a cooler area in the Yamagata prefecture (Tohoku), her variety is Delaware there (she did the harvest a few weeks ago).
Pic above : Ben Nerot and Josh Barber on left

Philippe Jambon (Beaujolais)

Philippe and Catherine Jambon at home

Chasselas, Burgundy
Visiting Catherine and Philippe Jambon in their wine farm is a delight like their wines, all is real there, their house has no makeup, no fancy tech or electric gate and remains unpretentious with weeds growing here and there. the place is like it has been since it was built, just with the wrinkles of time passing. For whoever would drink a natural wine for the 1st time of his life, beginning with one of Jambon's cuvées would have the expected triggering effect, after which you can't really come back to the mainstream stuff : unfiltered and without SO2, they're vivid and alive and oddly can endure time as well, you hardly remain indifferent when you drink that.
We showed up at the farm a few days before the harvest, the quiet before the storm, the weather was nice (like it's been for months in a row this year) and not too hot, perfect for a few glasses in the shade...

Philippe makes wine from his own parcels (with a small overall surface) and he also sells négoce wines, these are the vins des copains, buddies' wines (Les Amis de Jambon), they are wines made in the same no-makeup free style and Jambon just puts his stamp on the label, kind of, after helping give a final touch to the cuvée, like keeping it unfiltered or taking out the CO2, or keeping it, whatever. This makes the buyers happy because beyond Philippe's limited estate production, it gives more choice and bottles with in common this unmistakable depth and emotion.

A few words about the village of Chasselas, it is located in Burgundy actually, close to the Burgundy/Beaujolais divide, it is a gem of a quiet place with vineyards on the slopes, a 12th century church and a castle built starting in the 14th century (in the background behind the horses on the pic on left). Picture on right : parcel of La Grande Bruyère in Fuissé (Burgundy side of the divide).

Clos des Vignes du Maynes (Burgundy)

Julien Guillot in the cellar

Cruzille, Burgundy
The Clos des Vignes du Maynes is a family domaine since the early 1950s' when Julien Guillot's grandfather Pierre bought the property (this was in 1952) which had a 2-hectare clos with it. He later discovered that this clos was formerly belonging to the monks [moynes in old French] of Cluny (the Abbey was founded in the year 910) which is located 20 kilometers away (much less as the crow flies), and that in 1552 the name was mistakenly changed from "Vignes du Moynes" to "Vignes du Maynes". Pierre Guillot was not from a winemaking or grower family and his approach from the start was to work organic [the word didn't exist back then, making his work look even more backward for the peers], without pesticides and soon without sulfites as he had noticed that he didn't stand sulfites well. He plowed his parcels with a draft horse and used only the Bordeaux mix for the disease, plus compost with manure. At the very beginning he'd sell the wine to the Cave Coopérative de Lugny but he was fired from the group because he proposed to sell in bottles when the direction was still then on the old scheme of selling in bulk to the négoces in Beaune or Nuits-Saint-Georges. So from 1954 the wines of the domaine (which grew along the years from 6 to 11 hectares) were made from organic grapes, without sulfites, no chaptalization, no lab yeast... Julien says that from time to time they have verticales of nature wines going from 1954 to today, not a very common tasting indeed...

Speaking of the region, this part of Burgundy known as the Mâconnais has remained very authentic with remote, quiet villages, vast expanses of woods, hills, winding roads, very similar to the Beaujolais actually but with a more classy architecture. Beaune and the Côtes seem overbuilt and crowded in comparison, you'll get a more authentic feel of what the region was like in the past by driving around on the back roads of the Mâconnais.

Jérémie & Blandine Choquet (Loire)

Jérémie choquet at a recent tasting event

Monthou-sur-Bièvre, Loire
Jérémie Choquet and his wife has been starting their winery last year, I met them at Christian Venier's Open Doors (a yearly event I strongly recommend for everything), actually I just met him because she was breatfeeding her baby when I had come to their table to taste the wines. I'm always excited when i taste the wines of a new player in the natural wine scene and it's very encouraging to see that more people are showing up, resulting in more wines made available for our thirsty crowd...
Stéphane had first worked in 2009 for Pierre-Olivier Bonhomme when PO bought back the shares of Thierry Puzelat for the négoce and then he worked for Pascal Pibaleau in Azay-le-Rideau. As Pascal needed someone to prune in winter he had him enlisted in the viticulture school in Chinon , after which he worked for this Domaine Pascal Pibaleau alrernatively in the vineyard and in the cellar.

At the time Jérémie was looking for an agriculture job but not exclusively in viticulture and at that time he jumped on an opportunity to work with his wife as manager of a large hunting property in Sologne with an opportunity to develop agriculture activities. It was a bit different but he had free reins and he worked there from 2010 to 2014, when family dissensions among the owners terminated his job. Jérémie then tried to get a training for tree pruning (which he had aborted 10 years before because of a knee accident) in order to set up a business where he'd have time to devote time for his baby girl, but he had a knee ligament problem again, as if a sign that this career was not recommended. That's when he found employment again at POB, bouncing back unexpectedly to the vigneron's life. He worked there a year or two on and off and around that time he began to find a few parcels to work for himself and try his hand.
pic on left : the magnificent Chateau in the neighboring village of Fougères-sur-Bièvre

Jean-Guillaume Caplain (Loire)

With his cuvées outside his farm

Monthou-sur-Cher (Loire)
I visited a few weeks ago Jean-Guillaume Caplain of domaine Peaux Rouges for his 2nd vintage, he is a new vigneron who is working on a small surface near Monthou-sur-Cher. He's lived quite a few years in Canada in the documentary film industry before coming back to France for this adventure after buying a nice and charming old farm which he's fixing little by little. He has 30 ares of Pinot which he planted in 2011 and he just took over 1,5 hectare of Gamay and Cöt on the plateau. He also buy grapes (for exemple to Manu and Vincent in Ardèche) to make more wine and complement his small surface (making a total estate/purchased surface of 4 hectares). In Ardèche he buys Syrah, Grenache and Merlot (bringing them in boxes with a refrigerated truck to this region of the Loire) which allows him to do quite interesting wines, blending Loire & Ardèche styles. He also bought last year some grapes to Mikaël Bouges near here in the Cher valley. All his wines are labelled as Vin de France (table wine).

The property where he settled is itself an inducement to leave the city life and immerse oneself in the inspiring beauty of derelict farms and country mansions that only wait for a caring dweller to breath life again. The place is gorgeous, it's at the end of a dirt road with a small vineyard on one side, fruit trees, a greenhouse and lots of woods, largely enough for the firewood, all Jean-Guillaume has to do is cut a tree from time to time and have it dry, or find a dead tree.

István Bencze (Hungary)

István Bencze in a parcel

Hegymagas, Hungary
The wines of István Bencze (of Bencze Birtok) showed up on my radar when B. and I had a glass of his outstanding Cabernet Sauvignon a couple years ago at Drop Shop, the wine bar & caviste in Budapest, an excellent venue dealing with artisan & organic wines of the region and beyond. This was a superb wine, intense and with thin, refined tannins, certainly something hard to do in these latitudes (Special thanks to Bálint who tipped me about this wine). The domaine is farmed on biodynamy, vinifies its wines naturally and can be counted as possibly the only one today in Hungary eschewing both SO2 and filtration, a last step that natural-wine producers are often reluctant to do.

I visited István Bencze a few weeks ago on the volcanic slopes of Hegymagas in view of the lake Balaton and here is his story in a few words. I had settled my tent in a nice little campground in Taliándörögd (Central Transdanubia) a few kilometers away and was driving the back roads like i like to do.

István didn't have originally a wine-related background, he was a software developper, studied computer sciences, getting a university degree in mathematics in Debrecen (eastern Hungary). István started his own IT company then, which thrived and grew, he was working routinely 12 to 14 hours a day then, and he enjoyed it. Back when he was a child he had had a strong connection with the country life because he helped his grandmother do all kind of things in her vegetable garden near Debrecen; there was even 4 or 5 rows of vines to tend and every year they'd pick the grapes with relatives from which they'd make jam, eat the grapes right away and make a bit of wine as well. This was a blue kind of grape, Kékmedoc or Medoc Noir, a Hungarian hybrid and he'd help to prune the vines every spring in years around 1998 (he's 37 now), that's when he kind of learnt the basics of vine tending. Later when he was in his early 20s' he even tried to make wine once, it turned faulty but that's his first youth experience in the matter.

Gérald Oustric, Le Mazel (Ardèche)

Gérald Oustric with father Paul and sister Jocelyne

Valvignères, Ardèche (Rhône)
I love Ardèche, every time I look into its natural-wine scene it's with wines that are so alive and enjoyable to drink. Just think of all these sought-after-vignerons here, Andrea Calek, Gilles Azzoni, the Ozil brothers, Les Deux Terres, Hirotake Ooka and plenty others, it happens that this time I visited Gérald Oustric who was the pioneer and mentor for the aspiring vignerons of the region, setting up with his generous help a vibrant natural-wine scene on this western flank of the Rhône valley. Gérald helped many of the 15 new artisan vignerons who started their domaines in the last two decades, and this was done without EU or state subsidies while the local wine authorities and conventional growers work with subsidies of the EU/French system.

Gérald told about his start : he got from his father Paul a 20-hectare surface of vineyard in 1982 (at the age of 20), but at the time he was selling the grapes to the local Coopérative and 20 hectares was considered too small to make a living, so he bought an additional 10 hectares. This trend to have to augment the surface for Coop growers hasn't stopped, he likes to say that in 1982 when he got these 20 hectares from his father he was the biggest grower in surface in the village (in terms of worked surface, be it owned or rented) and in 1997 when he began to bottle his wines he had 30 hectares and he was average compared to other growers, some working on as much as 100 hectares. The whole planted surface on Valvignières is 600 hectares which is quite a lot by the way. Growers used in the early 1980s to do also cereals and other crops but specialized on vines, and it's only recently that some reintroduce other crops (pushed by EU farm subsidies).

We (B. and I) arrived in the middle of the day at the domaine which sits at the foot of the hills, you pass lavender fields, vineyards, and here you are, the warehouse-style facility is uninspiring but living wines are blind to architecture styles... Gérald had told me to be there for lunch, which he had casually in the shade in the facility with two workers. It was a treat with a salad, local charcuterie (from a butcher shop in Alba-la-Romaine, these caillettes were gorgeous) and his delicious wines to rinse the whole. I began the interview there, trying not to be distracted by all these goodies....

Wine News (74)

A superb Côt

I tasted a superb Côt made by Jeremy Quastana at the Portes Ouvertes of Christian Venier. You remember Jeremy, he has a small surface in Sologne and also worked on the side at Les 400 Coups, the natural-wine bistrot in Blois. Now he stopped working there because he found an old house he's renovating with friends. Jeremy didn't have a formal tasting stand but he had brought the wine to pour it to friends (that's what I love in these unformal tasting events, same-minded vignerons (who are also friends) come along and share a few bottles.

__Côt Lectif Vin de France 2018 (this was from a magnum) is a super light Côt with a gorgeous color (almost Aunis), quite turbid, unfiltered, no sulfites. Makes only 11 % in alcohol, and you just drink it so easily, pure pleasure, sip after sip, such a juicy wine ! Bottled end of march 2019, made from a short maceration (one week) without extraction, that's why this lovely color. Old vines, almost 50 years old. And if I remember the price (in 75 cl) is only 10 €, a great deal, super drinkability, frankly that's the type of wine you can finish the bottle by yourself ! I think the 75 cl are sold out but check out, and anyway don't miss these next year as well.

Philippe Chidaine, Vendomois (Loire)

Philippe Chidaine in his tasting room

Ternay, Coteaux du Vendômois (Loire)
Philippe Chidaine [no family relation with François] has been making wine from his family property overlooking the Loir valley [the Loir is a secondary river flowing into the Loire] since the 1990s, we're here in the middle of Pineau d'Aunis country, the northernmost vineyard region in France. Working for his day job in Paris as business consultant, he commutes regularly to the family property with his wife and children, following the steps of his father and grandfather who had kept tending the small surface of vineyard when the neighbors were gradually pulling theirs out. I visited him with Aaron and Jade, Aaron having discovered his wine some time ago, thank you Aaron !

The Chateau de Bois Frelon [the lieu-dit name means literally "woods hornet" in French] is a beautiful piece of architecture, it dates from the 15th century for the oldest part and stands atop the slopes overlooking the Loir valley surrounded by woods (satellite view). The area in the past had a much larger vineyard surface than today, they have old family documents and archives related to the property listing a vineyard here back in the 16th century. At the time any chateau or sizeable community would need wine and thus vineyards, as wine transportation was a problem, and on the property you had a lot of people to provide wine to, not only the owners but also the petty personnel and farm workers. The property sits 2 kilometers from the nearest village Ternay, and a chapel was built on the grounds near the chateau at one point because the grandmother a couple centuries ago couldn't walk anymore to the village for mass. And of course wine was important for mass too then.

Claude Courtois & family (Loire)

Claude Courtois checking his barrels

Soings-en-Sologne, Loire
I had the opportunity to visit Claude Courtois again recently after Aaron who was planning to come in the area floated the idea to contact him for a visit, and this was a great idea. I am always a bit afraid to annoy the vignerons especially when they've reached an almost cult status like the Courtois, I somehow imagine they're constantly under siege by sommeliers, wine buyers and fans alike and have certainly tons of work in the vineyard, but the Courtois were all so happy to have us and their welcome was so genuine that I realize my shyness was unfounded.

The weather that day was really very windy, with the French weather service airing an Alerte Orange in much of the country, meaning we all should have stayed indoors hiding under the table (Mayor Hidalgo in Paris had certainly closed all the city parks by precaution). I took the road fropm Paris on my motorbike, ready for the potential rains that didn't come until I reached the Sologne, and man, the light was so beautiful with all this wind, it was irreal, it would have been a pity to stay indoors.... Aaron on his side took a train for Blois where he rented a car and we arrived at the domaine almost at the same time. My first visit at Claude Courtois was in 2005 (man, i've been doing this for quite a long time...) but the wine farm has the same feel of simplicity and modesty, still this real place in the middle of the woods of Sologne. And Claudine made this visit so gentle and welcoming with this nice lunch for us all....