Wine Tasting, Vineyards, in France

Underground Dining

Let the feast begin !Cher valley (Loire)
This event is taking place every year in mid-november in this particular village: during two or three days on a weekend, a former quarry [see its entry on the right] which is also a former mushroom bed is turned into an ephemeral flower and foliage exhibition by community volunteers and artisans of the region.
The hills of the Loire region is covered with such tuff quaries, they've been used along the centuries to build all the houses and Chateaus of the region and while some are now used as cellars by wineries, most are empty and don't have a special use outside of storing farm equipment for example. In some places, the houses have been literally built partially into the hill, these are maisons troglodytes and they extend in the depth of the tuff through similar quarries. These quarries/cellars are usually stretched on one level only, with the opening being on the side of the hill and leading to horizontal extensions in all directions, sometimes hundreds of meters deep.
The idea of the people of Villentrois was to use one of the many quarries near the village for a special flower & foliage exhibition, some sort of last ode to the nature before the winter settles in for good. The organizers (a village community group) decides of a different theme every year (this year it was the cinema world) and the flowery decoration of each of the underground rooms follows this theme accordingly through still scenes that the visitors go see one after the other like they would do for paintings in a museum. The entry is free and whole families, who come mostly from the surrounding villages can bath in this otherworldy atmosphere with fairy-tale overtones. There is almost a Christmas crib flavor in this collection of scenes displayed to the multi-generational public.
Now, that's for the consensual family side of the event. In the evening, part of the underground tuff quarry transforms itself into a big multi-room restaurant where hearty food and generous wine make for a more pagan (but still civilized) atmosphere. Welcome to the underground cave dinner...

Nouveau Bottling & Tasting

L'Anglore's Eric Pfifferling bottling his Nouveau in ParisNovember 19th, Caves Augé, Paris
This november Nouveau tasting at Caves Augé in Paris was like the vintage 2009 : exceptionnal, with a perfect weather, unusually mild for this time of the year (november has been thoroughly mild until now, a welcome change when I think to the previous years where we had bursts of very cold temperatures at this season). It was cool but not cold, sunny enough to make the public cheer if the wines weren't already good enough for that. When I'm around, I rarely miss a tasting at Augé. This old wine shop (created in 1850) organizes some of the most entertaining wine tastings in town : small enough to let you taste all the wines and spend time with the winemakers and also it's a lot of fun because the artisan vignerons who come here are more real people who like to share a glass with visitors than efficient salesmen (or women) with a ready-made marketing discourse. This is Caves Augé, so of course all these vintners make their wines without lab yeasts or industrial additives, sometimes these wines don't have even been in contact with sulphur.
This tasting of Nouveau wines was also an artisanal bottling and corking line exercise : the vignerons had brought a full cask each and when they weren't pouring generously for the visitors, they filled bottles and corked them manually (several of them actually bottle their wines this way at their winery, I'm thinking to Philippe Pacalet for example who wasn't there today but who participates sometimes). The passerbys and Caves Augé's regulars could fill their glasses (clean glasses were at the disposal and easy reach on a cask on the sidewalk) at will. These 5 casks lined along the shop on the sidewalk with people working around gave people a bit of a feel of being in the chai and watching these vignerons doing these simple and ancient tasks help understands that these wines are indeed real wines, and not lab-tech designed.
The guy bottling the wine with a red label [pic on left] is Jean-François Nick (Les Foulards Rouges).

Terroir Landscaping

Pibarnon's amphitheater vineyards : an example of audacious landscaping (pic 2004)Categories : Terroir, bulldozers and miscellaneous....
There's a debate going on here and there about what is included in the concept of terroir : we know that it includes the progressive adaptation of a particular variety to a region and to its soil along the ages and we know that human intervention on the slopes and soils played a role with the selection of climats and building of walls and of drains. But how far should it go, is there some antinomy between massive bulldozer landscaping and the respect of terroir and its soil ? Many wineries are tempted to resort to some sort of vineyard landscaping in order to maximize available room (which is often in dire shortage in the sought-after Appellations) or get the best orientation for a given vineyard. Some wineries have powerful financial backing and anyway, an increased (or optimized) surface will pay back the expenses through a sizeable increase in revenues.
The bulldozer-made amphitheater at Pibarnon (known as théatre d'épidaure) in Bandol exemplifies what can be made in modern times : what our ancestors made in a lifetime, building terraces (called restanques in provence) with walls to hold the earth for cultivation, olive trees and viticulture, modern machines and daring investors can do in a year. If we did it painstakingly by hand in the past, why not do it machines today, then ? The answer is not simple. Of course, there's this shortage of available (and affordable) surface in expensive Appellations, and some droits de plantations (plantation rights, something that is stricly controlled by the Appellation bodies) are sometimes tied to potential plots too steep, too stony or too uneven for exploitation.

Rosé des Riceys (Champagne)

Emmanuel Horiot in front of the double-basket Marmonier press (1956)Les Riceys, Aube (Champagne)
Here is one of the littlest-known rosé still wine with ancient roots : the Rosé des Riceys. You'll have a hard time finding a bottle of Rosé des Riceys, even in Paris, and the amateurs of this inimitably aromatic and lightly tannic rosé routinely have to drive to the very few family wineries where it's made on the edge of Champagne to buy some. The wine had its era of glory long time ago, particularly before the phyloxerra and also before the invention of Champagne wines, and King Louis XIV is said to have been an avid consumer of this wine. He discovered the wine because a group of workers taking part to the construction of the Chateau de Versailles, and originating from this corner of Champagne, had brought their wines along. He had a bottle brought to him for a try, loved it and ordered more from Les Riceys. Provence was too far from Versailles or Paris and rosé wines didn't travel that well then.
An other oddity of this wine is that it comes from a corner the Champagne region just a couple of kilometers from the Burgundy limits : this still wine comes from a tiny terroir named Les Riceys made up with three close-knit villages named Riceys-Haut, Riceys Haute-Rive et Riceys-Bas. We can credit the monks of the abbey of Molesme (which is located a few kilometers away) for this wine, as they are the ones who selected these particular south-oriented slopes to make this very aromatic bright-red rosé. Actually each of the three Riceys villages were backed by competing bishops, respectively the ones of Dijon (Riceys-Haut), Troyes (Riceys-Bas) and Auxerre (Riceys Haute-Rive), that's why the churches are particularly interesting (there's a church in each Riceys even though they are barely a kilometer from each other). I think that these religious people were wise indeed because they gave a good place to wine in their world order and probably competed on this field too [see this sculpture featuring foot stomping on the church of Riceys-Bas]...All the best slopes (côtes) of the Riceys like for example the Côte de Tronchois were owned by the Abbey of Molesme.
Altogether, only 65 000 to 80 000 bottles (more like he first than the latter) of this atypical rosé are made yearly by the 20 estates on the tiny Appellation (only 30 hectares are actually used for this rosé). The three biggest producers of this still rosé barely make 10 000 bottles of it each, and not every year, only when the vintage is sunny enough for the right ripeness and natural sugar.
Scroll down this precise map of Champagne and enlarge it when you spot the purple area above "21 Côte D'Or" : this is the terroir des Riceys, and as you can see, this is the largest in Champagne.

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 great and insightful Russian-language blog (in English)].
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.