Taste the shopfitting! Louis Vuitton's Bon Marché, Paris

Acting on a tip-off we went to take a look at the Caves of Bon Marché, Paris. We had never set foot in the historic store (1852, the world's first department store) and were not even aware that they had a wine department. 

cleverly arranged out of what might have been an unpromising space

Reader, it was worth the journey across Paris. Louis Vuitton who has owned the place since 1984 has refurbished it to an unimaginably exquisite standard. It is just gorgeous. Difficult to imagine such opulence and taste is really necessary for the balance sheet but LVMH know what they are doing. 

Indeed, it's approaching the point where you will be able to live your life exclusively in relation to the conglomerates products and facilities of LVMH if you have enough money. You can dress Louis Vuitton of course, live in one of their hotels, go to a number of art galleries including the extraordinary Louis Vuitton Foundation (built by Frank Gehry) in Paris, hear Maxim Vengerov play a Stradivarius by arrangement with them and buy wine at this fantasy 'cave'. LVMH  own many top wine estates and companies. The MH stand for Moet Hennesy. They also own 

Ardbeg
Cheval Blanc
Yquem
Cloudy Bay
Dom Perignon
Glenmorangie
Krug
Mercier
Ruinart
Veuve Cliquot

and many others.

The selection is mainly but not exclusively French and shows a discriminating eye. Prices are surprisingly democratic with plenty of wines under €10.

This Beaujolais Gamay a petits grains was a case in point; we had never come across this before. We subsequently learned that there are many types of Gamay and this one, with little berries is just that: small berries. Emmanuel Fellot claims they are 'Naturellement gourmandes' but the 'on dit' is that this makes no particular difference to the taste. 

Rushing to 'Wine Grapes' and Galet's 'Dictionnaire encyclopédique des cepages' we found no mention of a Gamay a petits grains. On googling the term, we were directed to Bibendum's website where a Serbian wine made from Gamay a petits grains is on offer with the following explanation;

...this émigré Gamay has become Francuska Vinarija's emblematic red. It's made from an ancient cultivar of Gamay called 'manchot à petits grains', which is related to, but not the same as, the cultivars and clones of Gamay that cover most of Beaujolais today. This small berry, thinner skinned version of Gamay is believed to have arrived from France during the Phylloxera era, as French vignerons sought solace in Serbia's sandy and chalky soils that were resisting the nasty aphid's advance. The fruit of manchot à petits grains (à petits grains = of the small berries) yields about half the amount of juice as a regular Gamay, so in more ways than one, it can be considered the Pinot Fin of Gamay. We know of at least one tiny pocket of Gamay à petits grains that still survives in Beaujolais (not far from Vissoux) although there are probably more. 

Manchot is also unknown to Wine Grapes and Galet. Fascinating.

 While on the subject of Beaujolais, these beautiful labels reminded us that Beaujolais Blanc is made from Chardonnay and what is more, it seems local regulations permit the naming of the variety. Beaujolais Blanc is a shadowy appellation. It seems that everything is being done to suppress it altogether. Since 2004, Aligoté has been forbidden. Only 15% - some say 10% of any one vineyard is permitted to be given over to growing Chardonnay for Beaujolais Blanc. Production accounts for only 1% of all Beaujolais. The Oxford Companion to Wine doesn't have an entry on it. We never imagined we would ever come to the aide of Chardonnay but this seems rather unfair, especially since Beaujolais is the least diverse of any of the larger French appellations. As with most people Beaujolais Blanc has only rarely crossed our paths. Can it be that bad?

We like a story behind a label and this one was a good example. We bought this bottle but the wine itself was perhaps not the best in the store.

Perhaps this one would have been better? Here the story is to do with the purity of the wine which is made without any chemical intervention at any stage. The emphasis being on the age of the vines and the number of generations of the same family who have worked them.

While on the subject of labels here's a nice one for the musically literate among Bon Marché's customers.

Another bargain was this very pleasant Gascon white with Ugni blanc 45%, Colombard 35%, Sauvignon 10%, Gros Manseng 10% and an alcohol level of 11.5%. We had previously seen this at Toulouse Airport Duty Free. Perhaps LVMH owns that too?

If you like to buy your wine while floating several inches above the floor, Le Bon Marché is the place to go.

Yet more Vin Naturel from Versant Vins, Marché aux Enfants Rouges, Paris.

No tip to Paris is complete without a visit to Versant Vins at the March aux Enfants Rouges in the Marais (Rue de Bretagne, coin Rue Charlot) in the 3ieme. It's a great spot to eat too but be sure to check the opening times as they are idiosyncratic. Jeanne Galinié presides and you can trust her implicitly. She even makes wine herself so she know what she is talking about.

Jeanne recommended this straight away. It's Aligoté but not as we know it. It's from Cande-sur-Beuvron in the Lot et Cher, not Bourgogne. Ever since we tasted a Californian Aligoté (from Au bon Climat) we have sensed a potential which is not realized in Burgundy. This will surely be something out of the ordinary.

 It's amazing how many wines have names to do with foxes. Not a good idea surely since 'foxy' is something no one wants in the taste. This red from near Nimes has some interesting varieties in the blend including Carignan, Morrastel, Syrah, Counoise & Cinsault. Yes, Morrastel. But don't get excited as we did presuming this was Moristel. Nope, this is Graciano aka. Bovale and Cagnulari in Sardinia. Known as Morrastel in Languedoc, there are just 18 ha. there.

Les Etats d'Anne is basically a Cinsault from old vines with 5% Grenache made by carbonic maceration. We're looking forward to this one too following ever happier experiences with Cinsault made in this lighter style.

Something we're not sure we're looking forward to at all is this 'Indigene' or more precisely 'On dirait que ca t'indigene de marcher dans la boue...' (geddit?). This is a blend of Petit Meslier, Menu Pineau, Bacco (sic) and Gaillard. Gaillard may be Enfariné Noir but Bacco can't be found in Galet or 'Wine Grapes' and yet Jeanne insisted it was  Bacco with double 'c'. Hmmmm. Anyway, Jeanne also insisted that we lay this one down for at least 6 months. She didn't want us to have it at all at first and sold it to us on the solemn undertaking not to drink it for quite some time yet. She said it wasn't ready and wasn't even very pleasant. Interesting.

Jeanne's Poulsard was one of the best we've tasted. You really can trust that girl.

Salon des vins des vignerons independants, Paris 2016

We had never been to this well-established fixture in the French wine calendar before (this was the 38th 'edition'). Actually we had never been to any French wine fair. As we found elsewhere (VinItaly, Vinnatur, RAW, LIWF, Oenorama etc.) each wine fair has its own character. 

 

 

 This one was rather like the largest Cash and Carry you could ever imagine. People were shopping for wine as if at the Christmas sales and quite a few wines were sold out by our visit on the afternoon of the 5th and final day. 

It is not news that France has a wonderfully diverse wine scene. Some even say "Wine is by definition French" although we at Slotovino would dispute that vigorously. Faced with hundreds of producers seemingly from every apellation we narrowed our stops down to those who might deal in the lesser known grape varieties.

M. Tissot himself

Here we met M. Tissot - an iconic producer from the Jura and stopped by a producer of Tursan whose cuvee including the rarity Baroque was quite heavenly.

Chateau de Perchade, Tursan

Chateau de Perchade's lovely Cuvee including the Baroque grape variety.

Did you know that Baroque was saved from extinction by none other than the chef Michel Guerard, owner of 'Les Pres d'Eugenie'?

On these criteria it was going to take us another 5 days to get through the more than 1,000 desks arranged it seemed randomly in 11 long rows.

just one of eleven aisles

We had to apply a much stricter criterion so we decided just for fun to specialize in Alsace Pinot Noir, one of our favourite wine styles and gain something concrete from the fair,

What became evident was that practically everyone among the producers in Alsace makes Pinot Noir in addition to Riesling, Pinots Blanc and Gris (still known as 'Tocai' here and there), Muscat, Gewurztraminer etc. not to mention Cremants (usually Pinot Blanc) and even Eau de Vie. Their Pinot Noirs sometimes looked like an afterthought with a few producers having to search around for a bottle when requested.

In fact we can read in the 3rd edition (2006) of Jancis Robinson's 'Oxford Companion to Wine' that plantings of Pinot Noir were on the increase at 9% of the total vineyard at that time. It was noted then that "Alsace Pinot Noir was always light, fresh quaffing wine, with raspberry fruit flavours, but increasingly it has suffered an identity crisis with many growers experimenting with oak ageing. Good oak matured wines are increasingly the result of warmer vintages."

Bernard Humbrecht's two Alsace Pinot Noirs. The lighter version is in the transparent bottle of course.

We soon noticed that many make Pinot Noir in two versions, often named on the one hand 'Tradition' and on the other, 'Reserve' or 'Cuvee'. 'Tradition' is the lighter wine made without wood. 'Reserve' might be a tad higher in alcohol and sometimes from 'Vieilles Vignes' or a lieue dit. Other  monikers for the oaked, heavier style might include 'Hommage a Gerard', 'Cuvee Prestige', Futs de Chene' and even 'Ancestrale' although we would have thought 'Tradition' was more Ancestrale. These more substantial wines seem to want to be compared to Bourgogne or Spaetburgunder from across the border in the Ahr valley.

14%

14.5%

Still on the light side (although we did come across a few 14% and even a 14.5% example, these wines seem to us to lose their identity and could have come from many places outside Alsace whereas the 'Tradition' wines by and large are something unique.

We tasted 34 Alsace Pinot Noirs, a footling number if you are a professional wine writer but quite enough for us. Towards the end we had to narrow our choice to wines under 13% just to get out of the fair in good time.

Charming Oriel people

Vin bio

For our taste the biological wines at 12% or 12.5% were our favourites. They seemed to preserve the character which we like best.

Of these we chose a bottle from 'Domaine de l'Oriel'. The people were as charming as any of the producers we met (and they were all charming to a degree). The wine was bio, the alcohol was 12.5% and we loved the wine for its individual personality within the recognizable 'Tradition' tradition. We could have chosen several other bottles just as easily but there could be only one given transport constraints.

A great fair. Vaut bien le voyage.

Just fancy that!

Henri Galinié (left) at 'Rencontres des Cepages Modestes,' St. Come d'Olt, 2015

Jeanne Galinié, patronne 'Vins Versants' in the Marché des Enfants Rouges,' Paris.

Two of our wine heroes mentioned individually in this blog and in different contexts are actually related! Lovely people and tireless activists for everything that is good and interesting in wine.

Henri pulls a cork at the 2015 'Rencontres'

Jeanne makes wine every year under her own label, sometimes Pineau d'Aunis, sometimes Gamay...

Henri, organizer and lecturer 'Rencontres des Cepages Modestes'

Jeanne at 'Vins Versants,' Marché aux Enfants Rouges, Paris. Home of Vin Naturel

Our first Japanese Red

With thanks to F1 Ted (our man in the pits) Kravitz yet again.

The label says Merlot (52%), Petit Verdot (23%), Cabernet Sauvignon (20%), Cabernet franc (5%) grapes grown in Tomiko Hills Winery from garden grape 100% (Japan wine). Interesting.

Our 2016 (part 2)

Triomphe before

and after.

We have put

Wide-top fermenter

whole-bunches of Sangiovese in this wide-top fermenter as an experiment in carbonic maceration. It failed miserably. The grapes didn't ferment at all. They just became ever more stale. We called Ancre Hill winery in Wales who had made the highly successful Triomphe by carbonic maceration and the helpful person on the other end of the line told us we needed to have an ambient temperature of 27 degrees or thereabouts otherwise fermentation was impossible. We ditched the results without regret but learned a lesson.

The micro-vinification of Sangiovese, now a deep red colour. The muddy Trebbiano can be seen behind to the right.

 

The Sangiovese grapes was put through our 'fouloir-egrappoire' macerated for 3 days, pressed filtered  and placed in 5 litre jars for three or four weeks. We never saw a single bubble of fermentation but fermentation there was. We have now bottled these wines - without much hope. The one at the back is Trebbiano which is quite sweet and promising. There was not quite enough for the 5 litre jar so we topped it up with Sangiovese. Well, Chianti used to be made with Sangiovese topped up with Trebbiano. This may be a first (Talk about passetousgrains!). We've bottled that too (5 bottles only).

The 2 Speidel fermenters with the orange lids were filed with whole-bunch Triomphe under carbon dioxide

2 Speidel 60 litre fermenters full of whole bunch Triomphe grapes under CO2 for carbonic maceration and placed in a centrally heated room for 3 weeks. The grapes collapsed into half the original volume still under CO2 we think.

What free run juice there was after our Triomphe carbonic maceration dribbles into our wide-top fermenter.

The contents of the 2 fermenters smelled and tasted strange. We'll give it a go nonetheless without much more confidence than what happened to the unsuccessful carbonically macerated Sangiovese.

 'On ne sait jamais avec ces choses' though. This useful quote is from the gnarled old Maitre des Chaix at Chateau Lascombes who announced that they could declare a vintage of the 1963 harvest. A year when a majority of Bordelais didn't.

one 22 litre fermenter with free-run and pressed Triomphe juice, later transferred to our French Oak barrel (aged 1 year). It tastes very much like last year's; mean and lacking in fruit. Hopefully there will be still enough oak flavour to make the wine palatable to an extent.

compare the light colour of freshly broken Sangiovese grapes with that of the teinturier Triomphe

freshly-rodden Triomphe

It will be interesting to see if any of the results is an improvement on some of the vile wine we have made in the past.