Wine Tasting, Vineyards, in France

The Ambassador's wines

Ambassador David Bruce being knighted in Burgundy (1951 - source USIS)A couple years ago, I wrote a story (Wine Oblivion) about the post-war period which saw the cold war unfold, the then-disastrous economic situation of Burgundy and the nascent use of synthesis chemicals in the vineyards. To illustrate my prose, I used (among others) several pictures of U.S. Ambassador to France David Bruce being knighted by the Confrérie des Chevaliers du Tastevin in Burgundy. I had found these documents by chance a few months earlier and had made some research about this post-war period for the story (I had never heard of David Bruce at school). I was contacted several months ago by the historian Kenneth Weisbrode who was writing The Atlantic Century, a book about the American diplomats who forged the Alliance with Europe. He was looking for pictures of Ambassador David Bruce and his Google search led him to Wineterroirs. These pictures were original prints with the USIS stamp on the back. The USIS was the overseas branch of the USIA, a now-defunct U.S. information agency (I noted in my post that Julia Child's husband Paul was on his way to work for the USIS when they both arrived in Paris in 1948). But most important, these black & white shots were the best pictures of David Bruce that the historian had ever seen and he wanted to use one of them for his soon-to-be-published book. No need to say, I was almost as proud as if I had taken the pictures myself and we made a deal. Somewhere in our email exchanges, Ken told me that he remembered spotting a personnal wine list which proved a keen interest by the Ambassador for wines and particularly French wines.

This post is centered on the incredible wine cellar inventory that appears in an exchange of letters between Ambassador David Bruce and his friend William Burden who had just been named Ambassador in Belgium. David Bruce was on his way back to the U.S. and although it's not entirely clear, this outstanding wine list (You'd be quite rich if you had just one tenth of these wines today...) sent to William Burden is possibly the former Ambassador's private cellar that he considered selling whole or part to Burden. In a letter dated on september 4 1959, David Bruce speaks of this list as being the inventory of his wine cellar totaling 2007 bottles.
The wine cellar inventory is dated from 5/31/1956 and the sum-up found in the letters, which are dated in 1959 and where David Bruce speaks of 2006 or 2007 bottles, may be concerning an additionnal batch/delivery on its way to the U.S.

I asked historian Ken Weisbrode to write a few words of introduction. Here they are :

Bikers' Club (Donetsk)

Bikers with an attitude at the door of the Biker's ClubDonetsk (Donbass) - drink beer, listen to music, nothing else
If young people do like to have a beer together in public parks in Donetsk like elsewhere in Ukraine, that doesn't mean that there are no fancy bars and venues in town. We tried this one which is named the Biker's Club, I think it's an offshoot from the nearby Chicago Club, a big high-end Disco where many different types of events can take place. Chicago is a night spot large enough for hundreds of persons, it has a top-of-the-art sound system and hosts a lot of partying events or concerts. There's always a bunch of sleek cars parked in front. International music stars come at Chicago like here earlier this year techno king Stephan Bodzin (Donetsk show video). The Chicago night club was built maybe 10 years ago and it is considered also as has having the best strip-tease shows in town (no picture, sorry).

Wine News (25)

Supporters at the new Donetsk stadiumDonetsk, Donbass (Ukraine)
In Ukraine like in Russia, drinking in the street is not automaticly associated with disorderly conduct, it's a tradition in a region which never had many pubs or bars and where the living standards made buying drinks in stands or in shops more affordable than going in a bar anyway. These pictures were shot a few minutes before a football match (soccer of course) where the Donetsk team Shakhtar was taking part (I'm ashamed to admit that I didn't catch who was the other team). Shakhtar means coal miner and that's why some supporters here wear a coal miner's hat. Don't play down the Donetsk team, there is a vibrant supporter life here and the city invested a lot in its Shakhtar brand, plus the spirits are particularly high with the opening of this new stadium in the perspective of the Euro 2012.
Beer was accessible right near the gate without restriction before this match, through several stands set up by the main Donetsk brewery Sarmat which makes a light beer that is a very honest drink. Groups of youths would grasp a half-liter glass and enjoy it before entering the stadium. Some guys seemed to have had more beer than necessary but everyone was cheerful and nothing bad happened. Take it as a proof that beer can flow at football events without necessarily provoking riots between supporters. In France I think that there are restrictions to the sale of alcoholic beverages near the stadiums and at times the bars in the vicinity of stadiums are even prohibited to sell alchohol before the match. It just translates into supporters bringing their own booze and even though they can't go through the gates with it, they'll probably drink more than if they had had to order the stuff at a counter.
The autumn is very mild in Donetsk and in the evening at dark you would see lots of small groups of young people sitting on benches in public parks or on Lenin square (Donetsk is a green city with many parks) drtinking beer, sometimes girls-only groups. A half-liter bottle of good Ukrainian beer costs 45 GRN (40 Euro cents) in a kiosk or in a shop and that's it.

Cemetery Booze (Donetsk, Ukraine)

Wine, vodka and caviar (engraved marble)...Mushketovskoe cemetery, Donetsk, Donbass (Ukraine)
Don't be surprised to come occasionnally accross a drunkard or a bum in a Russian or Ukrainian cemetery (I did in one of my cemetery visits this time), they're probably looking for booze leftovers....
This hasn't to do with wild parties taking place at night in these unlikeliest settings but it is rooted in one of the most special relation that the people of these regions have with life, death and earthy pleasures. For Russians, Ukrainians and Belorussians (actually this is the same extended family) ther's a very important concept named "be together" in Russian translated either in the word Vmiestie (бместе) or Zastolie (застолье) and you can see it embodied everywhere from the friends/family picnics in the trains to the drinking parties on the benches of city parks, but this life philosophy doesn't stop with the end of this present life : survivors will make sure to pay regular visits to the dead in the cemeteries to sort of share with him/her some hearty meal and generously poured vodka.[for more insights on Russian words through which you'll discover the Russian soul, check this Russian-language blog].
This post is an ode to the simple beauty of cemeteries in this part of the world.

Soviet Champagne History

Soviet Champagne on Lenin Square (Donetsk)Remember the Paris wine tasting of 1976 which was an unexpected shock for the French wine establishment ? For those who forgot the story, let's remind the facts : In a blind wine tasting held in Paris that year, the California wines which were tasted unknowingly among top Burgundy and Bordeaux scored better than their French counterparts. The event was a great day for the Americans whose wines were at last taken seriously by the French themselves.
Now, another incredible similar blind tasting took place many years before, generating an equally-shocking bewilderment : This was at the Paris World Exhibition of 1900 (the Eiffel Tower was only 11 years old). A Russian "Champagne" made by a Russian aristocrat born in 1845 and named Lev Sergeievitch Golitsyn went out first in a Champagne blind tasting, beating all the French Champagne wines taking part. Golitsyn's Novy Sviet, named from his estate and winery in Crimea (Novy Sviet means New World, can you imagine ? that's a foresight !) brought a sudden fame to the burgeoning Russian Champagne know-how. Getting a Grand Prix in Paris, the City of Light and of Champagne from the hands of the French tasters themselves was for Golitsyn a welcome reward for his tireless effort and research.
Along the years and in spite of the difficult times that the region went through, the Novy Sviet estate managed to keep its edge : Recently, a Champagne blind tasting was organized in Moscow by expat Champagne-lovers and a few Russians. With the supervision of Russian sommelier Nikolaï Lesenkov, 5 of the best Russian (actually one of them was from Artyomovsk, Ukraine) sparklings and 5 top French Champagne were tasted blind and guess which came out first ? the Novy Sviet bubbly, Golitsyn must be celebrating with a bubbly in heaven... The good news for us French is that the real Champagne (Salon, Bollinger, Billecart-Salmon and Louis Roederer) got the 4 following scores. See this Moscow website page (in English) for the detail of the tasting.

Artyomovsk (ex- Soviet Champagne)

Artyomovsk winery - left : entry to the underground galleriesArtemivsk, Donetsk Oblast (Donbass - Ukraine)
The Artyomovsk winery in eastern Ukraine is a good example of a Soviet Champagne Kombinat turned into a more qualitative sparkling outlet with the privatization and economic changes following the dismantling of the Soviet Union. At the time of the USSR, there were many Sovietskoe Champanskoe (СОВЕТСКОЕ ШАМПАНСКОЕ - Soviet Champagne) production units scattered throughout the huge territory. For those of us who travelled in the USSR, this semi-sweet sparkling is associated with memories of improvised parties with Russian (or Ukrainian) friends. In these conditions, the Soviet Champagne was always good, breaking the ice and making everyone feel good as a starter, before shifting gear with vodka. I brought Sovietskoe Champanskoe several times back to France but it seems that the magic stayed at Sheremetyevo or Borispol each time...
Artemivsk is the name of a town in eastern Ukraine not far from the Russian border, and it is about 90 kilometers from Donetsk, the main industrial hub of the Donbass region with coking-coal and metallurgical plants. This is the Russian-speaking part of Ukraine here, as opposed to Western Ukraine, which speaks Ukrainian and is more turned toward the rest of Europe. The town, an ancient Cossack fort (1571) which was named Bahmut until 1924, went through a strong economic development 2 centuries ago when (this was the Wild East then, wide open to foreign economic adventurers and investors) a German entrepreneur signed a contract with the town and got the right to exploit the rich gipsum deposits in exchange with his commitment to repair the roads of the region and to build water ducts in the city. The city was the site of endless fight between the bolshevik militias and the counter-revolutionary troops. The communists could fully impose their rule on the city only in december 1919 and renamed it as Artemivsk.
This is precisely in these deep and vast abandonned gypsum mines on the edge of the city that the Artyomovsk winery was set up in 1950. Nowadays, the city looks like a typical industrial town built during the Soviet Union times, with lots of drab apartment blocks and memorials with tanks (I saw at least two of them) and a fighter jet.

Noëlla Morantin (Loire)

Noella Morantin checking the filling of a wooden vatPouillé, Touraine, Loire
Another load of Côt grapes were pushed by the belt elevator into the Grenier wooden vat as Noella Morantin was checking the filling and she brushed off the grapes from her head with a laugh. This is Noella Morantin's first harvest from her own vineyards, I mean, she rents them from the nearby Clos Roche Blanche winery, but it is still her first vintage as a wholly independant estate making wine from its own vineyards. She worked for years for Les Bois Lucas (owned by Japanese Junko Arai), where she vinified natural wines from organic vineyards. Her new location is a handful of kilometers from there, on the same southern bank of the Cher river in the Loire Valley, and as she was looking for vineyards, she jumped at the opportunity that Didier Barrouillet and Catherine Roussel of Clos Roche Blanche wanted to downsize their surface by half. The soils and vineyards benefited from years of care and from the organic farming of Didier, which was essential for the types of wines that she wanted to make. The vineyards, which are intermingled with the ones that CRB keeps for itself, sit on the upper hill on the slopes along the Cher river and are surrounded by woods with a lot of wild life (including roe deers against which they had to set up an electric fence).
She wasn't afraid of all of the tasks that awaited her when she would set up her own winery, and at the Bois Lucas she was already doing as well the vineyard work (a hard work when organic, particularly for a woman) as the cellar/winemaking one. On the financial side, she took a loan at the bank, for the first expenses and also for the investments in tools and machinery, and she hired Laurent Saillard [pictured on left as he checks the sugar level] part time for the vineyard work (Laurent left his Brooklyn restaurant to start a new life in the Loire wine world).
As these vineyards were made available by CRB only from last autumn (after the harvest 2008), Noella made wines in 2008 with purchased grapes. Here again, she bought the grapes from fellow vignerons who farm their vineyards organicly and use no additives or lab yeasts.

Wine News (24)

Dropping for a Quincy, ending with Dutch beer & Côte Roannaise...Never think that you can drop at a friends-owned bar and leave with the single glass of wine you had in view, a Quincy in this case...
I showed up some time ago at the Bistrot des Halles in Paris, after finishing a job nearby. I hadn't seen Jean-Claude for a while and his bistrot is so friendly, I just wanted to have a glass of white wine and see what where the news , I was in the mood for it. J-C was fine, his business was good as usual (this guy is a hard worker...), he advised me a Quincy Beauchamp 2007, a refreshing white from the Loire. I asked which new wine he added to his list recently and he told me about this Turbullent by Stephane Serol, a surprising rosé with only 6,5°, which is made with 100% Gamay. The fermentation took place in the bottle and the wine is designed for light drinks without risk of hangover. The Côte Roannaise is located west of Lyons, it's almost touching the Beaujolais but is considered part of the Loire. That's a long way from the Muscadet... Serol makes special cuvées for the Trois Gros in Roanne. I have to visit that guy, the Côte Roannaise is another of these disregarded Appellations with beautiful little-known wines, but it's pretty out of our way when we travel in the region, we'll have to drive in unchartered territorry. Read Jim's Loire Story on Serol.
While we were speaking and commenting on these wines, I had noticed this guy nearby at the counter, who was offering glass after glass of beer to this old woman, a local and regular of the bar who seemed utterly happy of the chance. She kept praising this man for his gentleness and his generosity... He was actually from Holland and was a sales agent representing a dutch brewery. He had just made of Jean-Claude a new buyer for his Grölsch beer and as we turned to him, he offered me to taste the beer too. Reluctant at first (beer after wine ?!?), I accepted to share his happiness, nodding to the old woman who was obviously enjoying her umpteenth beer at the counter. The beer was fine, light and with character at the same time, although as I told him, I would prefer one these dark beers from Düsseldorf like the Diebels Alt, but we never see them here. Anyway, I left the company with 3 glasses down instead of one...

Bernache Season (Loire)

Bernache !Meusnes, Touraine (Loire)
Open season for Bernache, the sugary juice-turning-into-fermented-beverage. This was saturday late afternoon and as I was spending the weekend in the Loire, when a sudden thought popped up : this is Bernache time, how didn't I remember ? I often miss by inattention this narrow window of opportunity when shortly after the harvest you can go to a winery or a coop and purchase this deliciously fermenting juice called bernache in the Loire and vin nouveau elsewhere. Many wineries and coops sell bottled bernache. The bottles are usually closed with a light cap with a hole, because otherwise the fermenting juice could burst out of the bottle with the pressure, ruining everything in the way in the car or in the kitchen. The earliest type of bernache, when fermentation has just begun, is the best, don't miss this stage : the juice is utterly onctuous and sugary and still has this faculty to get you high with the developing alcohol. Later, it's also interesting somehow, but something has changed, the juice has lost its ingenuousness, it has already turned toward the more austere features of the future wine.
With these sweet recollections in mind, I grabbed an empty bottle of water and remembered that I also wanted to buy a case of Jacky Preys's Sauvignon Cuvée Silex, a particularly mineral Sauvignon. So I had an excuse to drop there and fill my bottle with bernache.
Now, what would I do without these wonderful plastic bottles ? Be it for raw milk or rosé in bulk, they've been on every story lately...
I took my motorcycle to go to Jacky Preys in Meusnes, the road is pleasant and it's not a big road, I remember that there was this light truck I had to follow and couldn't pass for some time, making me wondering if I wouldn't arrive too late at the winery and find the door closed. It was not too late, and Jacky Preys was still working in one of the vatrooms, but it happened that I had just missed Jim Budd (the author Jim's Loire) by only three minutes... He was on his way back from the Quincy region where he inquired about the 2009 vintage and had stopped at Jacky Preys, whom he wanted to visit for a long time. That's too bad we missed each other, that would have been interesting, Jim has been visiting many places in the Loire for this harvest. See his post about his stop here, there's a couple of pictures of Jacky Preys.

Benoit Delorme (Burgundy)

Benoit Delorme in his cellar/vatroomRosey, Côte Chalonnaise (Burgundy)
This bottle of Burgundy wine came on our table almost by accident : B.'s brother had met on a farmer's market somewhere in Burgundy one of his old-time acquaintances who had since become a vigneron. Benoit Delorme (that's his name) was selling his Côte-Chalonnaise red Burgundy wine and a couple of bottles landed on our table. The only thing we knew when we drank this wine in Paris is that the guy worked on 1,5 hectare in the Côte Chalonnaise; the simple design of the label and the type of paper hinted at someone considering wine with a certain ethic and philosophy. This label, which is so stretched that it goes almost round the bottle, has an enigmatic drawing on its left end. I liked his wine from the first sip, we both liked it, this Pinot Noir was generous, it was earthy, and it was alive. I didn't even have to know how the vigneron worked here, this wine had its own life, it spoke to me. There are wines like that, they are not necessarily the most perfect wines, but when a wine is true and hasn't been forced to be what it is, it has a personality of its own and an unmistakable charm. That's the difference between an interesting-but-ordinary wine and a wine where you just finish the bottle (at two, don't worry...) without even noticing.
The Côte Chalonnaise is a lesser-known Appellation of Burgundy, the vineyards are located on the slopes and hills west of Chalon-sur-Saone (which lies in the plain). With other Burgundy Appellations being priced in the high bracket, that's where you can find affordable Burgundies in the region, like in the Côtes du Couchois or in the Maconnais. There may be also (am I right ?) the feeling that the region kept a low-profile, family-estate style in comparison with more flamboyant parts of the region.
Benoit's grand-grandfather was both a vigneron and a baker (boulanger) in Mercurey, and part of this heritage sort of bounced back in his espousing the wimemaking life.