Chenin
As I mentioned in my first installment, here, 2012 was a very difficult vintage for late-ripening varieties like Chenin. 2011 was no cakewalk either.
Angeli
As you doubtless know, Marc Angeli has vineyards in Bonnezeaux from which he mostly makes dry wines these days. It was my first visit there in 10 years or more. He is a funny guy, but not quite as funny as he thinks he is. There is a bit of a sense that he thinks he’s the smartest guy in the room. He may not always be correct. Anyhow, he works extremely hard in his vineyards (totally Steinerite), with a somewhat perverse idea to thwart the neighborhood’s propensity for botrytis. As one example, he head-trains his vines rather than putting them on wires, because expanding into 3 dimensions gives better airflow and less susceptibility to rot. He mows, mostly, instead of plowing, and has run some hedges through some vineyards to provide highways and resting spots for bugs and birds. He opines that soil should have the texture of couscous, passing handfuls of the clay of Fouchardes around for us to feel. If you find yourself in that situation, don’t take the bait, that stuff is impossible to get off your hands. He also mentions that it is best to avoid poison in the vines. When he does plow, it is only the Cabernet vines near the house that he does with the horse these days, says he’s getting old and lazy. He ties the vines together at the top to limit vegetative vigor, and prunes very tightly to 6 bunches per vine. He averages 30 hl/ha or so, which he thinks helps maintain his quality in off vintages, and I would have to agree.
He also thinks that there is a snowball of organic viticulture coming—the superiority of the method is becoming obvious, and even in Bordeaux everyone is moving in that direction. It seems a little optimistic to me, but what do I know? And last, we spent a lot of time on the superiority of volcanic sulfur as a source of the small amount of SO2 that he puts in his wines over the “regular” stuff. It turns out to be impossible for any conscientious winemaker to use anything else. You can get to very low levels and the wines are still not oxidizable. (I haven’t heard that one in years, I thought it was a thing of the past). He prefers sulfur from Etna, but he also has backup sources in Japan (the southern part, so no Fukushima) and so on. He triumphantly points out that when you burn this sulfur in a little contraption that he has, and blow the SO2 into the wine, that you only find half as much as you thought you’d added, and that this is the result of a biodynamic miracle. I’m sure that’s one possibility, but having done many such miraculous experiments in my day where the numbers didn’t add up, I’d say that other explanations sometimes intrude if you explore a bit.
We also tasted some wines. The 2011 La Lune (blend of 3 fields, 4-75 y.o. vines, and the soils really do change every 30 meters, we walked quite a ways through them) is quite good, particularly considering the difficulties of the vintage. It is logical that it is a bit on the lighter end of the Lunar spectrum, but it’s clean and rich. The Fouchardes shows much brighter acidity and sterner structure than the Lune, but this is not entirely a bad thing. It is perhaps a bit more rustic, but in any case Marc generally advocates 4 or 5 years for the Fouchardes to allow it to open. He also has a Grolleau Noir that was quite tasty (the grape has dark flesh), but there are only 500 bottles of it so it will not be on the table every night. He pulls a bottle of 2007 for us, the first vintage. It has wonderful perfume, a full body, and is just a tiny bit hard on the finish, but in the context of Marc Angeli reds, this is satin. We tasted some older wines that were not really my thing.
In 2011 he made a “petit rouge” from his Cabernet wines. He wants to make more serious reds and feels that this light extraction gives an unserious easy drinker. He’s right, except for the easy drinking part. I don’t know whether it’s his terroir or the winemaking, but this guy’s reds are some kind of fierce. It may just be unripe tannins, but he’d be better off making rose. Speaking of which, the 2011 Rosé d’Un Jour (you know the joke) is darker and more tannic than previous vintages, but it remains an extremely appealing wine with a strawberry nose and a bit of rs that will all delight the Olgas. For some reason, he filters this three times. I don’t ask, but I suspect he is doing some old-fashioned but unsterile filtration, so he’s probably beat up the wine more than he would with a modern cross-flow device and yet not made it free from refermentation risk. So keep it cold.
Pinon
On a saner note, we visited Pinon, which is always a treat. There is the guy himself, of course, but his place is picturesque as all get-out, dug into the big chalk cliff, and he has a beautiful home nestled there as well. He was hit hard by the frost in April, lost a lot of his production. He took us to one site that was particularly injured, but it was a curious thing—it was more or less at the top of a hill, not what you would expect for frost. He also took us to the plateau above the house, with vines planted in 1944. It’s a sign of real optimism that you would be willing to plant vines in the summer of 1944 in France, isn’t it? I mean, you knew about the Normandy invasion, perhaps, as you worked, but certainly you would have been justified to take a dark view of the world. And indeed, François relates that they lost a lot of the young vines within the year when an American fighter plane that was shot over Montlouis crashed into the vineyard. He said that it happens less often now, but they used to find pieces of the plane all the time when they worked the site.
Anyhow, the clay of this site has big hunks of silex noir in it, and the grapes go into that bottling. The aluminum also offers a contribution.
I mentioned previously how difficult 2012 was for him. He said they had to be extremely attentive to the selection, in the vineyard and in the cellar, and his wines were clean to my palate. Not rich, but clean. A couple of cuvees for the fizz were grapefruity and bright, with zippy acidity. One was only 10.5, though reasonably ripe. A second was riper, with less grapefruit. He mentions 2004 as the last vintage to be mostly fizz. Interestingly, he reports he has never once had an MLF. He muses that if you let the wines sit in cask through the summer you might, but he doesn’t. He finds these wines good, but lacking in the structure that he wants in still wines, he can’t see himself with a bottle on the table for a meal, so into fizz they will go. He also has a small cuvee of sec in 2012, none to come to the US. It is lean, a bit dilute, OK.
A bottle of 2010 Brut is very, very good. The wine is NV, but there is a small code that says “L10” to tip you off. Month bottled, year, and lot number. As we look at a map and contemplate his vineyards in the context of Vouvray, Francois says, “See? Our vineyards are the heart of the AOC, not out there on the periphery.” Hahahaha. For those slow on the uptake, the “periphery” includes the famous vineyards on the premiere cote over the Loire. My note on the 2010 non-dose is “hubba hubba.” The wine is smoky, tasty, really good. The 2011 fizz at this point is a bit reduced, but should come around and will be non-dose. The Brut is
As I mentioned in my first installment, here, 2012 was a very difficult vintage for late-ripening varieties like Chenin. 2011 was no cakewalk either.
Angeli
As you doubtless know, Marc Angeli has vineyards in Bonnezeaux from which he mostly makes dry wines these days. It was my first visit there in 10 years or more. He is a funny guy, but not quite as funny as he thinks he is. There is a bit of a sense that he thinks he’s the smartest guy in the room. He may not always be correct. Anyhow, he works extremely hard in his vineyards (totally Steinerite), with a somewhat perverse idea to thwart the neighborhood’s propensity for botrytis. As one example, he head-trains his vines rather than putting them on wires, because expanding into 3 dimensions gives better airflow and less susceptibility to rot. He mows, mostly, instead of plowing, and has run some hedges through some vineyards to provide highways and resting spots for bugs and birds. He opines that soil should have the texture of couscous, passing handfuls of the clay of Fouchardes around for us to feel. If you find yourself in that situation, don’t take the bait, that stuff is impossible to get off your hands. He also mentions that it is best to avoid poison in the vines. When he does plow, it is only the Cabernet vines near the house that he does with the horse these days, says he’s getting old and lazy. He ties the vines together at the top to limit vegetative vigor, and prunes very tightly to 6 bunches per vine. He averages 30 hl/ha or so, which he thinks helps maintain his quality in off vintages, and I would have to agree.
He also thinks that there is a snowball of organic viticulture coming—the superiority of the method is becoming obvious, and even in Bordeaux everyone is moving in that direction. It seems a little optimistic to me, but what do I know? And last, we spent a lot of time on the superiority of volcanic sulfur as a source of the small amount of SO2 that he puts in his wines over the “regular” stuff. It turns out to be impossible for any conscientious winemaker to use anything else. You can get to very low levels and the wines are still not oxidizable. (I haven’t heard that one in years, I thought it was a thing of the past). He prefers sulfur from Etna, but he also has backup sources in Japan (the southern part, so no Fukushima) and so on. He triumphantly points out that when you burn this sulfur in a little contraption that he has, and blow the SO2 into the wine, that you only find half as much as you thought you’d added, and that this is the result of a biodynamic miracle. I’m sure that’s one possibility, but having done many such miraculous experiments in my day where the numbers didn’t add up, I’d say that other explanations sometimes intrude if you explore a bit.
We also tasted some wines. The 2011 La Lune (blend of 3 fields, 4-75 y.o. vines, and the soils really do change every 30 meters, we walked quite a ways through them) is quite good, particularly considering the difficulties of the vintage. It is logical that it is a bit on the lighter end of the Lunar spectrum, but it’s clean and rich. The Fouchardes shows much brighter acidity and sterner structure than the Lune, but this is not entirely a bad thing. It is perhaps a bit more rustic, but in any case Marc generally advocates 4 or 5 years for the Fouchardes to allow it to open. He also has a Grolleau Noir that was quite tasty (the grape has dark flesh), but there are only 500 bottles of it so it will not be on the table every night. He pulls a bottle of 2007 for us, the first vintage. It has wonderful perfume, a full body, and is just a tiny bit hard on the finish, but in the context of Marc Angeli reds, this is satin. We tasted some older wines that were not really my thing.
In 2011 he made a “petit rouge” from his Cabernet wines. He wants to make more serious reds and feels that this light extraction gives an unserious easy drinker. He’s right, except for the easy drinking part. I don’t know whether it’s his terroir or the winemaking, but this guy’s reds are some kind of fierce. It may just be unripe tannins, but he’d be better off making rose. Speaking of which, the 2011 Rosé d’Un Jour (you know the joke) is darker and more tannic than previous vintages, but it remains an extremely appealing wine with a strawberry nose and a bit of rs that will all delight the Olgas. For some reason, he filters this three times. I don’t ask, but I suspect he is doing some old-fashioned but unsterile filtration, so he’s probably beat up the wine more than he would with a modern cross-flow device and yet not made it free from refermentation risk. So keep it cold.
Pinon
On a saner note, we visited Pinon, which is always a treat. There is the guy himself, of course, but his place is picturesque as all get-out, dug into the big chalk cliff, and he has a beautiful home nestled there as well. He was hit hard by the frost in April, lost a lot of his production. He took us to one site that was particularly injured, but it was a curious thing—it was more or less at the top of a hill, not what you would expect for frost. He also took us to the plateau above the house, with vines planted in 1944. It’s a sign of real optimism that you would be willing to plant vines in the summer of 1944 in France, isn’t it? I mean, you knew about the Normandy invasion, perhaps, as you worked, but certainly you would have been justified to take a dark view of the world. And indeed, François relates that they lost a lot of the young vines within the year when an American fighter plane that was shot over Montlouis crashed into the vineyard. He said that it happens less often now, but they used to find pieces of the plane all the time when they worked the site.
Anyhow, the clay of this site has big hunks of silex noir in it, and the grapes go into that bottling. The aluminum also offers a contribution.
I mentioned previously how difficult 2012 was for him. He said they had to be extremely attentive to the selection, in the vineyard and in the cellar, and his wines were clean to my palate. Not rich, but clean. A couple of cuvees for the fizz were grapefruity and bright, with zippy acidity. One was only 10.5, though reasonably ripe. A second was riper, with less grapefruit. He mentions 2004 as the last vintage to be mostly fizz. Interestingly, he reports he has never once had an MLF. He muses that if you let the wines sit in cask through the summer you might, but he doesn’t. He finds these wines good, but lacking in the structure that he wants in still wines, he can’t see himself with a bottle on the table for a meal, so into fizz they will go. He also has a small cuvee of sec in 2012, none to come to the US. It is lean, a bit dilute, OK.
A bottle of 2010 Brut is very, very good. The wine is NV, but there is a small code that says “L10” to tip you off. Month bottled, year, and lot number. As we look at a map and contemplate his vineyards in the context of Vouvray, Francois says, “See? Our vineyards are the heart of the AOC, not out there on the periphery.” Hahahaha. For those slow on the uptake, the “periphery” includes the famous vineyards on the premiere cote over the Loire. My note on the 2010 non-dose is “hubba hubba.” The wine is smoky, tasty, really good. The 2011 fizz at this point is a bit reduced, but should come around and will be non-dose. The Brut is