Wine Tasting, Vineyards, in France

Bourgogne Wines Tasting

Alix De MontillePavillon Ledoyen, Champs Elysées, Paris
High season of tasting events again. This monday was quite typical of the overcrowding of the genre in Paris : at least three major tastings in a single day, each one being relevant enough to deserve a full day, at least on my understanding of such events : you taste, you speak and listen to the vigneron, and this takes time, even if you try to be reasonably efficient and plan your way from stand to stand. The three tastings that we were aware of that day were : the yearly Grands Crus d'Alsace tasting, the Domaines Familiaux de Tradition (Burgundy) and the Jeunes Talents Bourguignons (on a barge near the Eiffel Tower). B. and I decided to skip the Alsace (a great event but there was no way to match it with the others) and go right away to the Bourgogne wines. The Domaines Familiaux de Tradition is an iconic tasting event where the old family estates take part, it's a very restricted-access tasting and as we were offered to be on the list we wouldn't even think to miss it.
The other Burgundy tasting, the one on the barge, was gathering a few dozens of young Burgundy vignerons and we wanted to spare some time for it too. I head voices here and there about these mondays with too many tastings. Monday is the sommeliers' and restaurateurs' off day, so professional tasting are often on mondays, but there could be some sort of mutual consultation to try not to set imoportant tastings on the same day.

Clos-Roche-Blanche Cellar Tasting

Cellar entrance at Clos Roche BlancheMareuil, Touraine (Loire)
The rain outside left these droplets on my lens, making this picture of the underground gallery look even better with this beautiful spider-web effect. When I set a foot in the entrance of Clos-Roche-Blanche's deep cellar galleries near Mareuil-sur-Cher, I can't but marvel again at this black mold which is for me an indissociable link between the age old cellar walls, the tuff, and the wine. These tunnel-like galleries which go deep into the hill are where Clos-Roche-Blanche's wines are vinified and get their élevage, they're just behind the house and beneath the tin-metal outbuilding that you can guess on this picture on left in the background among the trees [click-on to enlarge]. The vineyards are on the plateau right behind the trees, and the tin-metal barn is where the Sauvignon is pressed. The cellar's rocky walls are inspiring indeed, it's like if the silent inhabitants on their surface were kindly looking upon and helping their cousins wild-yeasts make their job...
I had called in advance to see if Didier Barrouillet, Clos-Roche-Blanche's winemaker and vineyard caretaker could have time for me to taste the 2009 wines. When I arrived there, a young vigneron was just leaving. Simon Tardieu is making wine since 3 years ago with Alain Courtault in Thésée, on 13 hectares of vineyards that they tend together, with a grape-variety range similar to CRB : Sauvignon, Gamay, Cabernet and Côt. Didier says that he knows him since his teenage years and he come here regularly for advice and tips. After chatting a few minutes together, Simon drove away and we walked into the hill to have a few sips of these eagerly-awaited 2009 wines...

Caviste Tasting

Alexandre Bain (right) answering questionsParis, La-Contre-Etiquette wine shop
Many cavistes in Paris routinely organize tastings with vignerons in their wine shop. Tipped by their newsletter you can go taste (for free or for a fee) the wines of some of the best vignerons and listen them speak about their wines and their work, and this, without setting a foot outside Paris. Many of the ones listed on my cavistes page do that, these caviste tastings take place typically on certain days of the week, like saturdays or thursdays for example, sometimes once a month or twice a month, depends, but the winemakers selection is unmistakably great.
This is the case with Christophe Guitard's La-Contre-Etiquette wine shop [pic on left : Christophe and his wife Tania]. Contre étiquette means back label, that's where important info on the wine and on the vigneron's work philosophy are displayed. The wine shop has started to host regular tastings, sometimes with a fee, and this story is about one of them.
I know Chistophe [pic on left with his wife Tania] from the early years of this Wineterroirs, even before this blog came alive, we met at Alain Segelle's CIDD wine school (which closed since) that I didn't attend personally but where I accompanied B. to enjoy special tasting evenings. Since then, Chistophe set up an online wine dealership and a wine shop (see link - the dealership was previously known under the name of Ochato), I waited too long before visiting his venue in the 10th arrondissement but this is the day.
So, Chistophe and his associates now receive on a regular basis outstanding artisan vignerons in their small wine shop on rue Sainte Marthe and each time, the place is packed with passionate wine lovers, many of them 20 to 30 years old by the way (hints that some young French people are eager wine lovers). The first time I dropped there was when he received Sébastien David, a vigneron from Saint Nicolas de Bourgueil in the Loire, and I alas couldnt stay long, being busy with other important duties that evening. I still lament the terrific wines that I missed, there were about 9 or 10 wines to taste that evening if I remember... I still had time to see that more than a simple casual sip-opportunity, these tastings were events where the vigneron explained a lot about his work and the type of wine he wanted to make, and the visitors were very attentive and interactive.

Wine Pairing Story (20)

setting off a home-made affinageDo-it-yourself cheese affinage in the Loire
This story begins by sad news : the farmer to whom I used to buy 5-month-old goat cheese (see story) on the market in Saint-Aignan is gone. She passed away unexpectedly last august, and as I hadn't seen her on two consecutive saturdays in september, I asked to the bartender at Chez Armand (the cafe on the marketplace) and he told me the hard news. Late august, he told me, all the market sellers paid tribute to her. She was a familiar figure on this small weekly market and her cheeses were great. I didn't pay a visit to her farm since then and as I didn't see anyone of her family follow suit on the market, I'm afraid that the heirs just stopped the cheese farm.
When I learned that, I decided that I'd make my aged goat-cheeses myself on the following winter because of both my love for this weird and strong-type cheese and because that was a way to perpetuate her legacy. As I wrote then, the French food administration doesn't like to see these aged cheeses on the markets and other cheese-makers told me that the traditional aging of these cheeses in clay pots set in non-airconditionned, ventilated outbuildings was virtually forbidden. That's one of the reasons you rarely see some in the stalls, the other reason being that goat cheese sells well, so most cheese makers don't bother setting some aside for aging.

Herbicides Diggings

A farmer spraying herbicides in 1969 (cover page)Winter. Cold outside. Good time to stay indoors and dig into material for a potential post, listening to Internet radio, say KEXP Seattle, a long-, longtime favorite with great music and DJs like Kid Hops (Positive Vibrations) and Johnny Horn (Preachin' The Blues)...
Why not speak about herbicides for a change ? Here are a few pictures and extracts from a French agriculture magazine dating from 1969 that I found somewhere; this is a special issue of Le Producteur Agricole Français (march 1969 issue) devoted to herbicides and weedkillers. What we see here on the fields happened just the same in the vineyards, farmers all over the country implemented the chemical revolution and unknowingly began to take huge risks for themselves by spraying from their open tractor. This year (1969) was one of those early years of the rosy utopia for almighty herbicide, and you somehow feel the thrill of enthusiasm (much of it State-sponsored as you will learn later) behind these articles and ads. Finger pointing is of course the easy thing to do but it has to be toned down by reminding that this was another world then and everyone was happy beginning with the farmers whenever a new technical or chemical discovery seemed to solve age-old problems.
This post may help you understand why today the backlash is so strong in France and why biodynamic farming has such a success among the growers.

Paris Wine Bars : Juvéniles

Juvéniles, rue de RichelieuYou don't need to be a wine geek to feel at home at Juveniles. Here is one of the earliest wine bars in Paris, a place where you go and will come back not only for the diverse wine list but also for the joyful company of its Scottish owner. Tim Johnston is indeed a Scot, and it is by the way ironic that the wine bar wave in Paris was initiated by a Brit and a Scot...
I shot this picture on the right a couple years ago, Tim Johnston was receiving Gilles Lapalus, the French winemaker of Sutton Grange Winery and we could all at Juvéniles taste his Australian wines.
Tim Johnston worked at Mark Williamson's (the Brit) Willis' Wine Bar from january 1981, the wine-bar concept as we know it today was new then paradoxally even though there was no shortage of wines and cavistes in Paris. Going to a bar for its clever selection of wines by the glass was something rare as strange as it seems.
Juveniles is by the way located very close from Willis Wine Bar which is around the corner on the rue des Petis Champs. It sits at 47 rue de Richelieu, a very central location near Palais Royal, the Louvre and the Grands Boulevards further north. Don't expect a terrasse, the sidewalk is very narrow in this street and even if it's not a large street it's an important one-way thoroughfare going from the rue Lafayette and the Grands Boulevards to the Louvre and the rue de Rivoli.

Wine News (28)

Quoi D'Neuf, a beautiful Pinot Noir from the LoireThis bottle of Quoi D’Neuf by Hervé Villemade, a primeur from the Loire, was a real pleasure, a thirst wine that you sip without second thoughts and restriction to the last drop : This Pinot Noir with a bit of Gamay is fruity, gouleyant and fresh. This proves that even tasted several months after its release, a Vin Nouveau can deliver. It arrived on the market on the third thursday of november (2009) like the other Nouveau wines and was labelled as Vin de Table, as the Appellation can be given only from december 15. The wine was vinified on a base of Cheverny red, whole-clusters covered with CO2 in a tronconic wooden vat. Usually Hervé Villemade makes the primeur with a majority of Gamay but this vintage was so beautiful and plentiful regarding the Pinot Noir that the blend was 90% Pinot Noir and 10% Gamay. This nearly-SO2-free and unfiltered wine had a price tag of about 6 € at Le Verre Volé (the wine shop at 38 rue Oberkampf in Paris) and Villemade made only 2000 bottles of it, so hurry up for the last bottles.... The label was designed by the Paris-based American artist Mattew Rose, who works with collages like the surréalistes. The man who lives near the wine shop La Cave des Papilles is a regular of the wine shop where he met once Hervé Villemade and had this label project started. This all makes this small-batch cuvee even more desirable. Here is his Flickr Photo stream with some of his Art.

Wine Pairing Story (19)

Tongue in action while mooingBeef-tongue cooking in the Loire
Less than a year after a wine-pairing story featuring the other end of the cow, the tail, here is one about a very different type of meat : the beef tongue.
The cow's tongue has something in common with the tail in the sense that it almost never stops moving and working, but it's a very different style of meat : while the tail has this lovely sticky feel brought by its cartilaginous parts, the tongue has a soft and fine texture with the sauce playing a central role for the taste of the dish. I decided to make a try and do the cooking of this dish after spoting well-priced (and well sized) beef tongues on the meat aisle of a supermarket in the Loire. I was checking for special sales at this time of the year, like they often sell pork parts for 1 € a kilo. There was indeed cheap pork that day (not at 1 € though) in the refrigerated cabinets, but these huge, fresh tongues took my attention. I had never cook one, B. was busy in another part of the small town and I took on me to make the leap and go straight cook it. I asked a couple of people about how to prepare a beef tongue, I was said the sauce was important for that dish, which made me hesitate, but Laurent Saillard, whom I shortly visited as he was busy pruning Noëlla Morantin's vineyards, gave me good tips about ways to prepare this crucial sauce, leaving room for improvisation, which was fine with me.
The beef tongue that I bought that day weighed 1,514 kilogram and cost 8,93 €.

Bouilleur de Cru (Burgundy)

An artisan distillery in BurgundyMorvan, Burgundy
Traditional distillers or bouilleurs de cru are very difficult to find in France. Even though they work legally, their activity is strictly reglemented and as they don't sell alcohol but only provide the distillation service to those allowed to make alcohol from their fruits, they don't need to have a street shop in plain view. Many of them do that as a side job during the winter time and thus make the distilling in an outbuilding in their farm. In short, outside of their clients, the bouilleurs de cru rarely see visitors.
This story takes place in a lesser-known region of Burgundy, the Morvan. Morvan is a thickly-wooded and sparsely-populated region of central Burgundy. Its winters are known to be very cold, and as it is the only area in Burgundy with altitudes over 700 meters, it has features closer from the central plateau than from the rest of Burgundy, with many rivers and streams originating from the area (see on map, the green patch). Morvan is also an ancient Celtic land, the Celts having settled in these mountains as early as the last centuries B.C. (Morvan actually means "black mountain" in Celtic).
When I visited Joël Soilly's distillery in the Morvan, the region was thick with snow and along my drive from further east I went through beautiful landscapes with hills, forests and winding roads. I barely came across any other vehicule on my short drive as people prefered to avoid these side roads under the icy conditions.
The hero of this story is Joël, the man on the right on the picture above. Joël has a very busy life : in addition to his day job in the French Railways (so to speak, as he is doing the night shifts) and his position as city counselor in the village administration, he is a bouilleur de cru, that is, he distillates alcohol for people around his village.

Fred Cossard (Burgundy)

Fred Cossard in the cask roomSaint Romain, Côte de Beaune (Burgundy)
Fred Cossard is one of the new vintners of Burgundy. His wines have an appeal, they're alive and are an intense pleasure to drink, and I felt this trait immediately when I had my first bottle of Cossard, and it was one of his simplest cuvée, a Bourgogne Grand Ordinaire (the professionals say B.O.G. and it is a blend of Pinot Noir & Gamay), and I followed his wines ever since. This was love at first sight for this wine, and I learned later in full depth that Fred Cossard was making his wines on the most natural way, and without any additives including SO2. What counts most here is this particular feel of life and joy that these wines show, ant it happens that it often comes with the winemaking practices and vineyard managements associated with natural wine... At the end, the important thing is what is in the glass, and you just finish these bottles right away, that's all the difference...
Fred Cossard doesn't come from a family of vignerons, his father was in the milk trade. He found his way to the wine world almost naturally if not directly, after studying first in a milk school then doing other things including working shortly as an independant wine dealer. It helped him know the culture of wine in Burgundy, with the different style of wines and he also met many vignerons in the process. Of what he learned in his young years in the milk trade, some things helped him later, like the need of a strict hygiene which is so important for the natural winemaking using no SO2 at all.