Wine Tasting, Vineyards, in France

Drunkards (les Poivrots)

Caption : Ah ! si je bois, c'est pour me saoûler, non pour boire."If I drink, this is to get drunk, not to drink" L'Assiette au Beurre (july 27 1907) : Les Poivrots
When a whole issue of a satirical magazine is devoted to drunkards, or poivrots...
L'assiette au Beurre is a French satirical magazine which was an icon of humor during its short existence, between 1901 and 1912. Its format was simple ; each issue featured 16 full-page drawings, most of the time caricatures made by a single artist, people like Jean Veber, Bernard Naudin, Delanoy, Grandjouan, Jossot, Felix Vallotton, François Kupka, Camara or D'Ostoya. This time was a turbulent one in France with a strong anticlericalism and anarchist undercurrent. From our modern point of view these times seem wildly free with a press without boundaries, particularly for the satirical newspapers (much of the content would be censored today by the political-correctness police for hate incitement...).
This issue, which is dated july 27 1907 and was sold on the streets for 50 centimes, is devoted entirely to drunkards, and it is again hard to imagine such a publication today without the wrath of various taxpayer-funded associations specialized in victimization trials. The artist here is Gustave-Henri Jossot (1866-1951), who joins L'Assiette au Beurre from the start, many of the staff being what we would call today radical anarchists targetting through their drawings the usual suspects of that time, the bourgeoisie, the military and the catholic church among others. Ironicaly (or not so ironically), Jossot settled later to Tunisia in 1911 and converted to Islam in 1913...
Absinth has its place here and there in these drawings and captions : in 1906, the Ligue Nationale Française Antialcoolique made a petition against absinth (sounds familiar...) and in 1907, both vignerons (alas, yes !) and anti-alcohol leagues demonstrated in Paris to have absinth banned, which happened a year later in 1908 through a law...(source on this page).
These drawings are to be taken for what they are : these are probably scenes caught by a witness of the street and cafés life. Some of these drawings are very beautiful, if their humoristic value is so-so at best.
The paper has turned yellow after more than a century but I mostly left it this way. I found this gem last november while having my lunch break from work at the Saint-Mandé weekly flea market. I'm not into collectible books but the guy wanted only 5 € for it, so i bought it.
Click on the pics for larger versions.
Extracts from L'assiette au Beurre with commentaries in English.

Nicolas Carmarans (Aveyron)

Nicolas Carmarans in his Le Mauvais Temps vineyard Campouriez (Aveyron)
The Aveyron is an austere but beautiful mountainous region full of fortified villages, medieval castles and old stone bridges across rivers that you imagine abundant in fish population. You drive on narrow roads with very few cars (if any) at this time of the year and marvel at every turn : there is a feel of both untouched natural landscape and tight-knit old-style social fabric. We are here in the Appellation area of Entraygues (bright yellow patch on the upper right of this map), still part of the larger South-West appellation but very deep into the foothills of the Massif Central mountains. Of the many vineyards covering the slopes around here in the past centuries, only a tiny proportion remain, and the Pays d'Entraygues has only a handful of wine farms today, among them Nicolas Carmarans. After driving along its winding roads you understand that life was tough in this remote region, and for that reason many Aveyronnais like their neighbors the auvergnats left their region en masse for Paris in the 19th century and early 20th to open cafés and bars or become bougnats. You could still find bougnats, these retailer of both coal and wine, well into the mid-20th century.
Nicolas Carmarans himself comes from a family lineage of cafetiers aveyronnais and he happens to have been the last owner of the Café de la Nouvelle Mairie, one of the most interesting wine bars in Paris. He probably got the virus from the many artisan and natural wines he served there, because he decided a few years ago to leave Paris, settle down in the village of his ancestors, bring the vineyards back to life and make wine. The result is astounding. I was particularly impressed by his wines when I tasted a couple of them at Kevin's wine restaurant Autour d'un Verre a year ago (2nd picture of this story). If that was how Fer Servadou tasted, I was a new convert to these Aveyron varieties thanks to his talented winemaking.

Domaine Plageoles (Gaillac)

Bernard Plageoles in his veil-wines cask room Cahuzac-sur-Vère (Tarn, south west France)
The rebirth of a wine Appellation can sometimes be triggered by the strong will of a lone grower, and that is certainly the case for the Gaillac wines in the Sud-Ouest wine region in France, which found a larger public thanks to the determination of Robert Plageoles.
Let's first look at this French South West (Sud-Ouest) wine region : this is probably the less well-known wine region in France, because most people mistake it with the Bordeaux wine region, which is separate. The Sud-Ouest wine region is a cluster of appellations located south and east of Bordeaux. These appellations are scattered on a large territory as you can check on this map, and their respecting fame varies a lot. Among them are Irouleguy, Jurançon, Gaillac, Buzet, Cahors, Monbazillac and Bergerac, to name a few of the better known appellations. Gaillac is the appellation we'll stop at for this story. The Gaillac appellation area, which is located in the Tarn département on the foothills of the Massif Central mountains, was until recently under the radar in spite of being one of the most ancient wine regions of the Gauls. This area had its own indigenous varieties, red and white, which had unfortunately been replaced in the recent History by mainstream varieties fitting more easily into a wine distribution and mindset with little room for weird-name varieties. But a grower/winemaker going under the name of Robert Plageoles (Bernard's father) decided years ago to go against the commercial tide of planting mainstream varieties and he reintroduced the indigenous grape varieties of the area, vinifying the juices naturally (without additives).

Mobile Distillery in Puisaye

Régis' mobile distillery, in the middlle of a village Somewhere in the Puysaye (northern Burgundy)
The Puysaye is a region sitting at the limit of Burgundy (Yonne département), the Loire and the Nivernais. It's name has Celtic origins, meaning in the Celtic language both "humid country" and "forests" (it was all forests then). Although this map may make it look part of the Loire, it is often said that it's the door of Burgundy. It has a long tradition of cider making like you could see in an earlier story. But like many other regions in France, it has also its distillation culture, with mobile distilleries still scouring the region in autum to distillate alcohol for local people. In France, anyone owning fruit trees can have his fruits distillated in a registered distillery. People often use these mobile distilleries because they settle a few days near their village and this makes a shorter distance to transport the containers of fermented fruits (which can be quite heavy). Before going there with Gérard who had some stuff to distillate, we stopped at the charming village of La Ferté Loupière nearby to eat in a restaurant. The area seems to be ignored by tourists and many villages are lovely. The achitecture is very different compared to the Burgundy that we know, and here they use red bricks in old buildings.

Wine News (45)

Fred Cossard pouring This was on boulevard Haussmann in Paris, at the autumn Burgundy tasting organized by Caves Augé in november. Some 10 outstanding winemakers were pouring their wines for a free tasting outside the shop on the sidewalk. Great event like usual.
__I began with the whites of Alice & Olivier De Moor. Alice poured me their Aligoté 2010, a nice wine that glides in the mouth with ampleness and none of the acidic feel that you'd expect from an Aligoté.
__The next wine was her Chablis Humeur du Temps 2010, with a white pepper nose, lemon. Very well balanced and with a good presence in the mouth even after swallowing. And this, even if the wine was a bit above its ideal serving temperature, it passes the test without any problem.
__Then Chablis Bel Air et Chardy 2010 : minerality, intensity. On the nose, I feel some wet stone, and the mouth is superb, with length. Nice work. Lightly perly feel on the tongue. I don't begin my tasting correctly : can't spit all these wines....These wines were poured from magnums that they had filled from the casks.
__Chablis Bel Air et Chardy 2009, from a bottling, this time. Very nice too, but different. Alice says that 2009 is a solar vintage and 2010 made wines more tendus, tensed, and more pronounced on the mineral side. That was quite some time that I didn't taste some wines from the Do Moor and this was a real pleasure and excitement.
Fred Cossard was next to Alice's stand so I jumped to his whites.
__Cossard les Bigottes 2010. Nose with fruit and maturity. Mouth : nice drinkability.
__ Cossard Saint Romain Combe Bazin 2010. A turbid wine with fruit and menthol side or eucalyptus leaves, something of this nature. Classy mouth, almost like an austere beauty, but I exagerate, as this is very enjoyable to swallow. Nice wine indeed.
__Meursault 1er Cru Les Genevrières 2009. Very, very nice mouth, straight and neat. The back label reads "Frederic et Laure Cossard". Laure had such a nice maiden name... Here again, I don't spit these wines and I'll be obliged to pass several stands (actually casks) in this tasting because of that.

Wine in France in the 1930s (Winemaking)

Press in Gevrey-Chambertin (Burgundy, circa 1930) Click & enlarge Here is the second part on this story on French wineries in the 1930s'. Images sometimes speak more than texts, and many of these pictures shot in or around wineries in diferent regions of France give insightful information on tools, sizes and procedures. This was an era where the details of winemaking were not as much the object of interest from the part of the general population. The concept of wine tourism would have seemed completely out of place for most of the workers and vignerons on these pictures, and I think that these scenes represent a genuine reality without any intention to show themselves better than they are. I added "circa 1930" with the caption but many of these pictures may have been shot in the 1920s', even if in the late part of the decade.

When I'll add notes about the pictures, it will be a traduction of Maurice Constantin Weyer's text, or of the caption text.
Here, the caption under the picture says : In a street of Gevrey-Chambertin, the red grapes are pressed right after the destemming and they will give white juice.

Wine in France in the 1930s (Vineyards)

Drink Wine and Be Happy Imagine an nation-wide advertising campaign saying Drink wine and live happily or to be short, drink wine and be happy, this sounds like a sci-fi movie set on another planet, or like some sort of provocative Planet-of-the-Apes story dealing with the drinking culture of an alien civilization. But this was France in the 1930s', a country still breathing self-confidence and common sense regarding its relation to wine. Believe it or not, this poster, which was printed by Devambez, was commissioned by the Ministère de l'Agriculture in 1933 for its national campaign to promote French wines, definitely another era.
The poster was designed by Italian-born Leonetto Cappiello (1875-1942), a self-trained artist who lived in Paris and obviously shared this love of wine (he also contributed with outstanding poster-ads for French spirits).

Incidently, I happen to have stumbled upon a very interesting twin-volume book from the early thirties last summer. This was in one of these village attic-sales (vide grenier) where people sell all kind of stuff on the sidewalks. This heavy two-volume book was waiting for me to leaf it through. It is titled La France Travaille (France at Work) and it has excellent pictures of workers in all the manual professions of that time in France, from artisans and farmers to fishermen and heavy-industry workers. Of course there was some content related to winemaking and of course I ended up buying the two volumes. The 1930s' was an era where the worker was at the center of many studies, including photographical, and you find this trend with an aestheticism underlining the work values and national pride in many other countries, like in Germany, the Soviet Union and the United States (where Lewis W. Hine's Men at Work, published in 1932, is a landmark of social photography).

Paris Wine Bars : Le Vin au Vert

Sébastien and Zoe Métro Anvers (line 2), Paris
It's not that common for a genuine and casual wine venue to be found at a walking distance from a very touristic area in Paris. Usually you have to go to the unchartered waters of the 10th, the 11th or the 20th arrondissement, which is OK for the weathered Parisian but a bit adventurous for a first time visitor. Here (at 70 rue de Dunkerque) with Le Vin au Vert, we have an excellent and relaxed caviste/wine bar at only 30 seconds maybe from the Métro Anvers, which is the landing pad for tourists on their way to the Sacré-Coeur hill. Like many other métro stations elsewhere in Paris, the surface structures were designed by Hector Guimard in the Art Nouveau style (pic on right). Hector Guimard also authored the Abbesses métro station which is close by (a must-see spot).
When you step out from the Anvers métro station, the tourist crowd usually walks northward, taking the narrow and sloppy streets leading to the Montmartre hill. These streets with their lined shops selling junk souvenirs and cloths are the common feature of mass tourism with also the scam players and their cardboard boxes, nothing really exciting if there wasn't this wonderful view on the Sacré Coeur up there and the promise of more quiet streets in between. But if you walk just the other way from the métro station, I mean southward, the area is more authentic and untouristic, and that's where you'll find this wine bar, surprisingly close from the tourist magnet. I understand that when you reach the surface at Anvers and have this glimpse on the Sacré Coeur (pic on the left), it's hard to resist and not follow the crowd, so let's consider that this wine-bar visit will be for at least your second visit in the area, when you're beginning to look for real Paris, and eventually for real wines.

Pressing apples & cider making

Apple juice flowing from the press Somewhere near Joigny, Burgundy
When the late-autumn season settles in, with its dark days and bone-freezing, humid temperatures, you can choose to cocoon indoors listening for example to vintage son-montuno music, it works well, it's an exhilarating experience, particularly when the piano solo starts. Another way to fight the winter gloom is to jump in the cold but share a heartening experience with friends, and if some booze plays a role, that could help (I don't mean booze must be in everything you do...). That's what I did this saturday near Joigny on the northern-most tip of Burgundy when I joined early in the morning a group of buddies who make cider together every year, for the fun of it, because the product they get is at the same time very natural and pure, devoid of any hidden additives, and because it's damn cheap (but it doesn't really count compared with the two other reasons). There's no organic-hype connotation or commercial motives in this initiative, just the love of real products and the will to keep the old apple orchards in use.
This frigid, grey and misty weather is ideal, my friend Bruno says, to press the apples, which is the first and most important stage of cider making. And if this region is known to be cold, it's not that it's much colder than, say, Paris, but the humidity of this part of Burgundy (same for Chablis which is 40 km away) makes it feel really cold deep inside.
Pic on left : a wheelbarrow load of Avrolles apples, the variety which counts so much for a great cider.

Tasting wines with Olivier Cousin (Anjou, Loire)

Pouring the Gamay Primeur Martigné Briand, Anjou (Loire)
After arriving at the farm of Claire and Olivier Cousin, I spent maybe an hour chatting with both of them in the kitchen, which is also a pleasant living room with a fireplace and a wood cookstove. First, they hadn't finished their lunch yet, as I showed up earlier than planned, but this turned out to be convenient, because he could expose to me the events he had been through in the recent years with the administration, the compulsory tax to the Loire-wines corporate body et al. He left a second for the cellar and came back with this bottle of Gamay Yamag, a delicious Primeur or Nouveau wine, with a vivid and bright red color, and a healthy feel of life and pleasure with the small-red-fruits aromas to go with. That's how all Nouveau wines should be, and I'm sure that not so long ago, maybe around the mid-20th century and before, many were probably of this style, light, fresh and so appealing that you can drink quite a few glasses. It's made with a 15-day carbonic maceration (whole-clustered), harvested in boxes an vinified of course without additives including SO2.
Olivier Cousin is a free thinker in many issues, and not only regarding the appellation clergy, he says with a grin that some people may complain that he's never going to the church, but he points to the kitchen window, he doesn't need to, the church is so close that he hears everything that is said in the church, and its tower almost peers through the courtyard [I heard the church bells, very nice by the way, at least for a Parisian like me who longs for the real village life].