The coldest day in 50 years, some one said. March declared itself with a bitterly cold blast of the Best from East all over Europe, and even here, we had a few snowflakes and sub-zero temperatures. Then by Day-2 all was forgiven: a touch of spring in the air again, and the mountains smiling down at us from the horizon under a startling blue and benign sky.
Thursday March 1
6138 hectares, to which we can claim possession of only 30 – that is one-two-hundred-and-fifth calls itself Rives-Blanques – has been identified as an « exceptional » place with « remarkable biodiversity » thanks to its mosaic of agricultural lands woven into swathes of woodland, meadows and prairie land. It is not us saying that, it is a European directive called Nature 2000. This makes us an deal home for bats: six species of them, including the Little Rhinolophe, the big Rhinolophe and … the medium-sized Rhinolophe. I never knew that a bat eats the equivalent of its entire weight in a single night: that translates into 2000 insects, not bad going for a single sitting. No wonder we hardly ever have mosquitos here. Speaking of which, it is an environment also much loved by the Lucanus Servus, an ugly and menacing-looking coleopter, the biggest in Europe with big snapping snappers all the better to snap you with. And orchids too, we have orchids a-plenty. The lady sitting at our desk who is the administrator of Nature 2000 promises us that we can find at least five species in under an hour if we look properly in April or May. Having once been put to shame by a Dutch wine writer who pounced triumphantly on a wild orchid within seconds of getting out of the car at the chardonnay Odyssée field, we are prepared to one-fifth believe her, at the very least.
Tuesday March 6
Caryl’s at home looking after both Benson, the new Springer Spaniel puppy receptionist at Rives-Blanques, and a virus that hit her somewhere between Millesime Bio and Vinisud. Jan père is having a field-day at a portfolio tasting organised by Tanners in Shropshire, UK, our most beautiful importer. (Caryl feeling very sorry for herself, this is the favourite medieval spot for plying our wares). Jan fils is in Montpellier, tasting through a barrage of IGP Pays d’Ocs with a panel of people who will decide if the wines are worthy to be classified under that label.
This is interesting. IGP Pays d’Oc is one of the generic brand names for wines that cannot or do not want to be part of the AOP system. The rules are more liberal and tolerant. Theoretically the divisions and sub-divisions of the French system are meant to be a quality thing, constructed like a pyramid: the AOPs at the top, the IGPs in the middle and the Vins de France – basically, a potential free-for-all – at the bottom. But it doesn’t always work that way. Sometimes a winegrower will want to do something really special that his appellation rules don’t allow. As we did with our Facsimile, and our late harvest Lagremas d’Aur, actually the only IGP Pays d’Oc to win three stars in the authoritative Guide Hachette 2018. The trouble is, you have to know your grower.
Jan-Ailbe’s group finds fault with 10% of the wines they taste today, and they are sent back either to be rectified, or to be declassified. Pretty impressive, actually. Do other wine-producing countries have such strict quality controls?
Thursday March 8
It’s International Women’s Day today, so let’s hear it for the Vinifilles! The Vinifilles is the Association of female winegrowers of Languedoc-Roussillon, of which there are 18 members. The Vinifilles is a book waiting to be written. Some of the members have big, impressive chateaux, some are tiny biodynamic plots of not much more than 5-ha, some are in big business and have swish offices with proper secretaries and sales managers, others are family holdings, over-worked, under-paid, understaffed, and stressed out. All are absolutely committed to what they’re doing and how they do it. Together, these 18 women have weathered all the storms of life: divorce,, total annihilation by hail or frost, misogyny, problems in the vineyard, problems in the cellars – and always with optimism and courage. The Vinfilles are amazing. And full, just boundlessly brimful of energy and enthusiasm.
One of their aims is to show that wine is not a men-only province: not the making of it, the growing of it, the selling of it, the ordering of it, the culture of it, or the enjoyment of it. Wine belongs to women too.
Never been a great fan of gender-selective (or gender-exclusive) groups myself, but I cannot believe an all-male or even a mixed group could achieve what the Vinifilles achieve. They organise training sessions, master classes on new viticulture and viniculture methods, wine tastings for professionals, training sessions for sommeliers … the list goes on and on, and all thrown together and executed with such effortless grace and good humour.
Friday March 9
Jan père comes home, Jan fils arrives in Brouilly, Beaujolais, to be a jurist of the Chardonnay du Monde Competition, Caryl still feeling sorry for herself, and Benson still doggedly refusing to be house-trained.
Jan-Ailbe arrives at the Chateau Ravaty, a gift from a wealthy family to the Institute Louis Pasteur, where they make wine, host marriages, and hold this international competition for the so-called best Chardonnays of the world (There is no best chardonnay of the world). The profits this impressive estate makes all go into research, as befits an Institute Louis Pasteur.
Jan A is tasting generic Burgundies today, but after the session is over, can walk around all the tables tasting chardonnays from Australia, the Americas, South Africa: every where in fact. It’s a great opportunity for him to meet the many faces of chardonnay in its many nationalities.
Sunday March 11
Speaking of chardonnay, maybe we should have sent a bottle of Facsimile to the Chardonnay du Monde competition, that would have been fun.
Facsimile is a wine we made after Jan père and Jan fils did an extended trip to Burgundy, in search of the holy grail of chardonnay, which certainly lies there. Our own chardonnay, Odyssée has so often been compared to a top Burgundy by luminaries such as Jancis Robinson, that we’ve come to almost believe it ourselves – even though we, like everyone else, know that the terroir is completely different. But what they discovered, is that the Burgundians also make their chardonnay in a completely different way. In fact, in ways that breach the rules of the Limoux appellation … ergo, Facsimile’s been bottled under the Pays d’Oc label, and not the Limoux AOP.
We’re taking some bottles of it with us to ProWein at the end of the week, the biggest, most important international wine fair in the world, an event that looms large on the calendar, as inevitable and unstoppable as Christmas, with a little message in the bottle for the professional pundits there: Terroir and Technique: opposing or complimentary influences, and which prevails? Please compare and contrast.
Wednesday 14 March
Black gold. The illustrious, illusive truffle, like an irresistible fly, thrown out by the invisible hand of the great fisherman, playing, plying, teasing, tempting, and finally drawing in to its thrall simple souls like ourselves.
« There is no truth about truffles. There is no right way, there is no wrong way. Everything we tell you may be absolutely wrong for you. There are no explanations ».
This is our neighbour speaking, the local truffle expert. He is conducting a workshop on the art of cultivating truffles, and there are about 60 truffiés, or truffiés-to-be like us, standing around him, listening attentively.
We are already in a business where there are no absolute truths. Do we really need another?
Apparently yes.
You can (he continues) plant your truffle oaks, you can follow the book and chose the right soil, the right prospect, treat the trees and the land they are in, in the right way, prune the trees according to instruction (if prune you do, sometimes it’s better not to), irrigate (or not, as you think fit), train your truffle dog (or pig), and wait patiently … wait patiently …. wait patiently, and nothing happens. That has happened to our neighbour – and he is the truffle king.
At lunch after the workshop, our retired accountant who is probably the other big truffle expert around, leans across the table and says, « You know, it really is fascinating, this business. Truly fascinating. »
Do we really want to run two truly fascinating agricultural businesses?
Apparently yes.
Saturday March 17
The beginning
It’s cold in Dusseldorf. Everywhere we look, along the sides of the roads and along the banks of the Rhine, there are signs saying Prowein, as if anyone needed reminding: 6800 exhibitors, and about tenfold that number of visitors. Prowein has positively taken over Germany’s seventh biggest city, and reduced it to a caravanserai of exorbitantly expensive hotels, U-Bahns with standing room only, and restaurants that were already booked out a month ago. You can’t get a flight in today, and you can’t get a flight out on Tuesday evening. Dusseldorf is Prowein and for these three days, has no life that can be worth living beyond the wein-word and the wein-world.
So what are we doing here? we ask ourselves, as we set up our stand at die Messe which looks no-way ready for tomorrow’s opening. This Fair is way too big! What to do indeed? It’s expensive, it’s time-consuming, it’s exhausting, and surely there
The middle
must be other, more effective ways of selling your wine? We are too small for such a big bonanza. Our stand can hardly fit all the people who come by to taste and say hello, and besides, nearly all of them are existing clients anyway.
« This is the last time, » we agree.
But by the end of day one, we already know that it is not.
The world’s biggest wine trade event is unmissable, unstoppable, and irreplaceable. You simply have to be there, even if you are winegrower-exhibitor no. 6798.
The end
Our lives live themselves out intensively over the next three days in 12m2 with the ever and unfailingly unflappable Andrew Nutter of the Minervois Chateau Saint Jacques d’Albas, with whom we are sharing this privileged postage stamp space. At the end of the epic, we turn to each other and say, « Well, what about it? Next year, the same again? »
Unquestionably.
So we finish off with dinner at the Byblos, a Lebanese restaurant favoured by the late and lamented importer of Chateau Musar, who knew more about Lebanon and its neighbours than any person, importer or not, can possibly have reason to know, and raised a glass of its 2005 to him, the inimitable and unforgettable Detleff Rick … and to Prowein 2019.
Wednesday 20 March
Before leaving Germany, we go to Cologne to visit its famous Michelin 2** restaurant, le Moissonnier, a really cosy, casual, unstuffy restaurant offering some of the best food in Germany… which unfortunately we are not going to be able to enjoy. We have a flight home. Le Moissonnier will be celebrating its 30 th anniversary next month, and for one third of its lifetime, our entry-level chardonnay-chenin Pays d’Oc has been its housewine.
Funny how spellcheck changes housewine to housewife.
True, it’s been an intimate and long relationship, though this is the first time we have gone through its front door. We are really proud to be in such an iconic place, and thrilled to meet the people we have been working with so long.
So that’s another thing to look forward to in the programme ProWein 2019: dinner at le Moissonnier.
Friday 23 May
Big day today. Planted mauzac in the field called Pointe Ecurie, and chardonnay in the Pointe Jardin. Two nice fat slices of the Rives-Blanques cake.
Jan-Ailbe directs operations, his sister Xaxa does what she’s told, and his brother-in-law executes with competence. And Bacchus of course. This 2nd generation collaboration is a real investment in the future of the vineyard and the 3rd generation of vines in this field
We won’t see the result of this work for another four years … but that’s a lot faster than a truffle.
Friday 30 March
Jan packs his bags and heads off to our New York appointments all alone, Caryl stays at home sulkily nursing a persistent infection that won’t go away. We love NY, it is full of enthusiastic, knowledgeable wine buffs who are game to run with something as exotic and unknown as a mauzac from a place as provincial and far-removed as Limoux. Not to mention a hotel with a breakfast room with a stunning view over Central Park. Oh well, bon voyage, Jan! Say ‘hi’ to the Big Apple for me!
../to be continued next month