(The New York Times, 3-30-12; copyright 2012 The New York Times)
By Eric Pfanner
COURGIS, FRANCE This hamlet in the hills of northern Burgundy hardly looks
like the wellspring of a winemaking revival.
On a damp Monday morning in March, only the distant rattle of a tractor
breaks the silence. A suspicious pair of eyes monitors a visiting cars
progress down the Grande Rue Nicolas Droin; in these parts, even the dogs
can pick out Paris license plates.
But Courgis (population 260) is home to two of the most forward-thinking
producers of Chablis, whose vineyards surround Courgis and several
neighboring villages. Thomas Pico, of Domaine Pattes Loup, and Alice and
Olivier de Moor, of their eponymous winery, are making Chablis of startling
quality, using natural, ecologically friendly methods that many of their
peers long ago abandoned.
Innovation is not always good for wine, especially when vineyard work is
replaced with laboratory science. This is what happened during an earlier
leap forward in Chablis, in the second half of the previous century.
>From 1945, when there were less than 500 hectares of Chablis vines, the
vineyard area expanded tenfold by the end of the century. Growth was fueled
by demand in export markets, where the name of Chablis, like that of its
near neighbor Champagne, became a catch-all term in this case for dry
white wine of any origin.
Trade agreements and legal action have mostly ended these practices, though
it is still possible to stumble across absurdities like California Blush
Chablis. Talk about fake wine.
Yet some of the damage to the image and the terroir of Chablis was
self-inflicted. In order to meet international demand, the growers embraced
the use of herbicides, pesticides and grape-picking machines with a fervor
rarely seen in other French wine regions. Production soared but quality
often suffered.
In my grandparents time everyone harvested by hand, Mr. Pico said. Now
everyone finishes at five and is in front of the television by eight. A way
of life has disappeared.
Not entirely. Chablis is home to another pair of producers, Jean-Marie
Raveneau and Vincent Dauvissat, who have long been critics favorites. Their
wines are old-school icons, but unless you have considerable patience you
might struggle to understand what the fuss is about or even to find them.
More consistently appealing, I think, are the wines of another
long-established Chablis estate, William Fèvre. This is perhaps the greatest
landowner in Chablis, with vines in all seven of the appellations grand-cru
vineyards. Tasting Fèvres Les Clos from a good year is a memorable
experience.
Chablis can do the classics. What it seemed to lack until recently, however,
was a certain type of hip new producer, like those who have reinvigorated
other French wine regions, among them the Loire Valley, the Rhône Valley and
the heartland of Burgundy the Côte de Nuits and the Côte de Beaune, about
an hours drive south of Chablis. In these areas, upstarts or outsiders have
been making wine that sometimes challenges the powers that be and prompts
everyone to question long-held assumptions.
Enter Mr. Pico and the de Moors. Along with a few other up-and-coming
producers based elsewhere in the region, including Patrick Piuze, a
French-Canadian, and several outfits with local roots, including Domaines
Oudin, Domaine Servin and Gilbert Picq, they have brought a fresh spirit to
Chablis.
Mr. Pico is not exactly an outsider; his father, too, is a vigneron. After
studying oenology and working with producers in the Côte de Beaune, he
decided to set up a separate winemaking operation, using some of the
vineyards from the family estate. His first vintage was 2006.
Mr. Pico switched to organic cultivation, then went a step further with the
application of biodynamic principles, under which growers try to create a
healthy ecosystem for the vines helping them to help themselves. He
harvests by hand, which is still an anomaly in Chablis.
I could earn a lot more money if I did mechanical harvesting, if I used
pesticides and herbicides, Mr. Pico said. I could even take a vacation.
But I like my work.
While the benefits of biodynamics are sometimes disputed, those of another
so-called natural winemaking method that Mr. Pico has adopted seem clear: a
reduction in the use of sulfur dioxide, a headache-inducing preservative.
While some sulfur dioxide is found in most wines, including many that are
organic, Mr. Pico says he adds only a fraction of the amount in supermarket
wines, which need heavy doses to remain shelf-stable for many months or
years.
That means his wines might be more fragile than your typical Chablis. They
are definitely less standardized. When tasting a range of his wines, from
several vintages, I noticed considerable variation, from the elegant,
sharply focused 2010s to the almost plush 2009s to the slightly rough-hewn,
almost tannic 2008s.
Mr. Pico may be his own toughest critic, reproaching himself for one wine,
his 2010 Côte de Jouan premier cru, that he called too Beaunois that is,
too much like the whites of the Côte de Beaune, which are generally bigger,
richer and oakier than Chablis. Yet all the wines showed common elements,
including a striking purity and a disarming openness.
The northern location of Chablis means the growing season is long and cool,
allowing a complex range of flavors to develop, while preserving freshness.
An unusual feature of the soil, the presence of fossilized seashells from
what was once a seabed, provides Chablis with its signature salinity. There
is something about Chablis perhaps it is the peaty complexity of the wine,
perhaps the bleakness of the winter landscapes that evokes the smell of
country pubs in Ireland.
In the hands of talented growers like Mr. Pico, Chablis lives up to its
reputation as one of the noblest expressions of the chardonnay grape
variety. All the clichés tightrope walker, razors edge, laserlike
intensity that critics employ to describe its tense balance between racy
acidity and earthy substance seem apt.
Unfortunately, Chablis sometimes strikes a different balance, managing to be
both indistinctly boring and shrilly acidic at the same time.
People say acidity is the key to Chablis, Mr. de Moor said. I agree, but
it has to be the right acidity, a ripe acidity.
His wines, while more introverted than those of Mr. Pico, also have the
right acidity, a melts-in-your-mouth kind that makes the wines hugely
appealing and drinkable.
Ripe fruit and low vineyard yields are part of the reason, Mr. de Moor said.
Like Mr. Pico, he eschews industrial methods, espousing the virtues of
biodynamics.
In some ways, his success is more surprising than that of Mr. Pico. While
Mr. de Moor is from the region, there is no history of winemaking in the
family. There are no premiers crus or grands crus in the De Moor vineyard
holdings only ordinary Chablis, along with other, humbler nearby
appellations.
Mr. de Moor is an artist who illustrates the labels on his bottles, and his
approach to winemaking is iconoclastic. At the moment, he is in a dispute
with the appellation authorities over the varietal composition of Chablis,
currently fixed at 100 percent chardonnay.
Mr. de Moor wants to experiment with the addition of other varieties, like
pinot gris. With global warming, chardonnay has sometimes ripened too early
in vintages like 2011 or 2007, for example to develop the signature
Chablis complexity, he said. Im not saying its the right solution,
necessarily, but its worth trying, he said.
Mr. de Moor, who has been making wine for a few years longer than Mr. Pico,
says he doesnt want to be seen as a rebel.
In the beginning, we were going against the stream, against everything that
had been done here, he said. But now we have been accepted. What we are
doing is not sectarianism. Its what consumers want, so that they can buy
wine with greater security and conviction.
Those who have lived through the 70's, 80's and 90's will probably enjoy
this video, "A Brief History of Merlot" from Gundlach-Bundschu:
http://youtu.be/6efO9ReiKQM
The NYTimes is cutting the number of free articles from 20 to 10 next month,
so this may be the last from Asimov et al for a while.
Cheers,
Jim
>From 1982, Glasses More Than Full
By ERIC ASIMOV
ATLANTA
ANTICIPATION was keen as 16 of us took our seats around a long table in the lovely art-filled, 39th-floor apartment of Mark Taylor, a longtime Bordeaux drinker and collector here. The six wineglasses before each of us were already filled, the fragrances rising and mingling. Outside on this chilly March Sunday, a strong wind howled and the building itself hummed and vibrated like a giant tuning fork. I preferred to think it was a sign of high expectations.
What wine lover wouldn.t be thrilled with the extraordinary opportunity to taste 18 bottles from the celebrated 1982 Bordeaux vintage, including all five first growths and other rare and expensive selections? After all, the wines were now 30 years old, fully mature and, theoretically at least, in their prime. Eighteen in one sitting? Any one might be the thrill of the year.
It was an opportunity to taste history. The Bordeaux annals are replete with great vintages. Just in the last half of the 20th century, I might also cite 1990, .89, .85, .70, .66, .61, .59 and .53. Yet 1982 was not just great but historic. One could easily make the case that the modern age of wine began with the 1982 vintage, or at least with the reception of the .82s. The wines themselves represent the end of the old era.
The .82 vintage is most famously associated with the rise of the American critic Robert M. Parker Jr., who was still working as a lawyer while in his spare time producing a newsletter, The Wine Advocate. The story of the vintage is often told as if Mr. Parker stood alone to exalt it against a legion of naysayers, but the fact is that with a few exceptions, most critics at the time acclaimed the wines. The difference was in how Mr. Parker praised them.
Not for Mr. Parker was the cautious hedging and equivocating of the typical wine critic. His praise was clear, certain and unqualified, and he urged his readers to buy all they could in wine futures, the Bordeaux system in which you pay now for wine that will be delivered in a year or two, gambling that prices will go up and availability down. The result was feverish excitement and a frenzied market that reached beyond professionals and connoisseurs to a new group of buyers in it for the curiosity, status and investment possibilities.
Simultaneously, the Bordeaux business itself was changing. Back then, many leading chateaus were still owned by families rather than by the corporations and wealthy individuals who dominate Bordeaux today. The business was far less glorified than it is now, and after several difficult decades and a sharp increase in French inheritance taxes, many families sold off their holdings.
New ownership and the brisk sales of the .82s brought an infusion of cash into Bordeaux, inaugurating an evolution over the next 20 years into the modern Bordeaux of today. The 1982 Bordeaux were rich, ripe, opulent wines, reflecting the year.s long, hot and dry growing season. The popularity of the wines understandably gave producers an incentive to want to make similar wines in the future, which, beyond hoping for a similarly ideal year, required altering their methods.
In a sense, 1982 validated what Bordeaux enologists like Éile Peynaud had long been preaching. For years, he had recommended to Bordeaux producers that they should not harvest grapes early to prevent rot but allow the grapes to ripen fully. He urged winemakers to select only their best grapes for their wines, a difficult notion for many to accept at a time when quantity was often more important than quality. In fact, yields in .82 were high. They would have to come down if growers wanted to achieve better wines more consistently, even in less-than-perfect years.
Rather than put all their grapes into one wine, Dr. Peynaud urged wineries to create less expensive labels for grapes that were less than the best. In 1982 few chateaus had second labels. Now it.s standard procedure. In myriad other ways over the next 20 years, Bordeaux chateaus transformed their viticulture and production methods, adding technology, gaining control over nature, reducing the element of seasonal chance. Global warming made it easier for growers, or at least less difficult, to pursue the lush style of .82.
In the first decade alone of the 21st century, Mr. Parker himself has already proclaimed three vintages of the century. A global market developed and prices have skyrocketed. Great Bordeaux today is no longer merely a wine but a luxury good, priced well beyond the means of most consumers. For better or worse, it.s an unintended consequence of a transformation that began with the .82 vintage.
The one question that did arise about the .82 vintage was whether the wines would age well. Mr. Parker never doubted, but others suggested the wines from this hot vintage lacked the structure for the long haul. Well, here we were, 30 years later in Mr. Taylor.s apartment, about to find out. Among the wine lovers at the table were several professionals, including Charles Curtis, head of wine sales in Asia for Christie.s; Eric LeVine, founder of CellarTracker, an online cellar management tool; and Yves Durand, a sommelier, author and Atlanta wine personality. Almost all the wines came from Mr. Taylor.s cellar, where they had been since release.
Mr. Durand had arranged the wines in a series of three flights. While we were told the six wines that made up each flight, they were served blind. The first included five from the Méc and Pessac-Lénan: La Mission Haut-Brion, Pichon Lalande, Gruaud-Larose, Beychevelle and Lynch-Bages, and one outlier, Figeac from St.-Éilion, perhaps the most Mécian of St.-Éilions because of the high percentage of cabernet sauvignon in the blend.
The wines were lovely, though in such circumstances one can.t help being critical. My favorites included the Beychevelle, a complete, complex and harmonious wine that was both contemplative and surprisingly rich, and the Pichon Lalande, still youthful and impossibly delicate for such a full-bodied wine. The Figeac was not hard to identify: it had a spiciness to the aromas and flavors that clearly set it apart. La Mission was disappointing. Though fresh, it did seem to lack structure.
The second flight included the five first growths . Lafite-Rothschild, Mouton Rothschild, Latour, Margaux and Haut-Brion . along with Cheval Blanc, their St.-Éilion equivalent. This flight was simply brilliant. One might quibble with the wines comparing one to another, but each was no less than splendid. We resisted the urge to rank these wines . .How do you rank greatness?. somebody asked. But we did have a consensus favorite, the Margaux, a beautiful ruby color with complex fruit, mineral and tobacco flavors. The Haut-Brion seemed bigger and more opulent, with exotic fruit flavors and a strong tobacco-like aroma.
The Lafite seemed fuller and richer than the Mouton, which seemed to have more finesse. Strange, I would have thought it would be the other way around. The Latour stood out for its purity and powerful tannins, while the Cheval Blanc, with time in the glass, developed a cedary quality that is often its telltale giveaway. All in all, a remarkable set of wines.
The third flight, with the unenviable task of following those sublime wines, included two St.-Juliens: Ducru-Beaucaillou and Léille-Las-Cases; plus Cos d.Estournel from St.-Estèe and three Poméls . Lafleur, Le Gay and L.Éangile. This flight was more erratic. The Léille was corked and a second bottle was a tad musty. My favorites included the youthful, harmonious Cos d.Estournel and the complex, rich yet earthy L.Éangile. The Ducru was pretty, but I was disappointed with the Lafleur, which was sweet and jammy. Of the 16 .82 Bordeaux, it was the one bottle that I would have had difficulty finishing. Of course, that.s one man.s opinion. Mr. Durand loved the Lafleur.
It.s not easy to sum up such an extraordinary set of wines. I was privileged to have had the opportunity to drink them, especially as so few wine lovers will have a similar opportunity to taste more recent great vintages.
Nowadays, so many of these wines are bought as trophies or investments. It will be the rare buyer who, like Mr. Taylor, can afford to pull the corks and drink them. The .82 vintage leaves a beautiful legacy, but that fact is bittersweet.
--
------------------------------
* Dr. James Ellingson, jellings(a)me.umn.edu *
* mobile : 651/645-0753 *
* Great Lakes Brewing News, 1569 Laurel Ave., St. Paul, MN 55104 *
* james(a)brewingnews.com James.Ellingson(a)StThomas.edu *
