Another in a series of posts from France by Morgan Twain-Peterson.

I am back in Bordeaux, this time stationed at Les Ormes de Pez, the smaller chateau owned by the Cazes. Though I loved living with the other interns at our little villa the village of Bages—the house was like a bad joke or sitcom waiting to happen—a swiss, a belge, an American, and a Mexican walk into a house in France… My new digs are a little classier than before, because god knows that a two hundred year old home lacks luster. I have a bedroom in the actual chateau of Les Ormes de Pez. Now do not get me wrong, it is a little chateau, quite manageable really. Just two stories, a kitchen, dining room, parlor, sun room, tv room, kitchen, patio, and laundry downstairs and some bedrooms upstairs. And of course a cellar filled with old vintages of Lynch-Bages and Pez.

My only roommate is a 19 year old student of tourism that is working as a picker. She actually lives elsewhere in the Medoc and sometimes stays a night when work runs late. Her family is from French Guyana and I can barely understand a word she says. She says she is learning Chinese, I think, so maybe that is what she is speaking to me. She spends most of every night talking on the phone.

On my first night back I practically fell into the arms of the belge and his mistress Isabelle. Being on the road alone is harder here than in Australia. I think it is because I know that home is so close—really only 6 hours flight to New York, I miss Jenn, and wish I could be home to oversee the harvest for Bedrock. French couples, or pseudo-couples, are not reserved about displays of affection, I am getting to the point where the next couple I see making out is going to get a wine-bottle to their respective thorax’. Also, this country spills over with romance, with quaintness and cuteness, with beautiful lighting and dramatic cinematic landscapes. One cannot help but feel a little movie-star like when cruising through Provencal evenings charged with purple light and the smell of wild thyme or pulling over to dive into the blue, blue, waters of the Cote D’Azur. There are roads that demand not to be driven alone.

But I must say it was nice to explore regions other than Bordeaux for a bit—to escape the hegemony of grandeur pervading the Medoc. Perfectly trained vines and perfectly cropped chateaux are great but so are red soils, little stone houses, and medieval goblet shaped grapevines. The perfume and elegance of claret gave way last week to the rough and tumble power of the south—bellum wines—made from bellicose varietals like Mourvedre, Grenache, Syrah, Cinsault, and Carignane.

I drove out of the Medoc in the rain to Pomerol for the afternoon where I lunched with Fiona McLeod Morrison Thienpoint M.W. (I love that name because it is actually longer than mine) and the other Thienpoint’s from Le Vieux Chateau Certan and Le Pin. Jacques Thienpoint gave me a taste of 2005 Le Pin (stunning, god-damn stunning Merlot) and a half-bottle of 1994 Le Pin (I now know what being a father is like pinotblogger – No chance!). For those of you who do not know Le Pin—it is the original garagiste wine, started in 1979. The first wine to turn the embedded order of chateaux on its ear. It uses 100% new oak for the 15 barrels or so of wine made from the 2 hectares of vines. It is plush, round, sexy wine—like cashmere for the tongue. Unfortunately it is also more expensive than cashmere. The 2005 will sell for 500 Euros a bottle, making it among the top three most expensive wines in Bordeaux. Despite this seemingly outrageous price-tag, the setting and feel of the place belied its pricetag. The wine is literally made in the basement of Jacques and Fiona’s home—just a few tanks, a small press, and a rustic gravity fed line to the barrels. Though the group who sat for the standard two hour lunch was cosmopolitan—there were Belge and Brits who came down for the picking, it was also just a lovely two hour lunch with simple food food, good wine, consumed by people with dirt under their fingernails and rouge in their cheeks. Children pranced around and asked loud interrupting questions and people talked in three different languages and ate cheese and then grabbed a bicycle and pedaled back to the vineyard all sated with food and comfort and love. The crop for Merlot this year is going to be of interesting quality..good weather until the first week of September and then, poof, rain and lots of it. The result is fruit that has attained high levels of sugar ripeness but still are phenolically a little tough—I am sure for some of the lesser estates of St. Emilion and Pomerol where crop levels are not watched closely this will mean a tinge of pyrazine-greenness (green bell-pepper) in the palate. I hope to return to Le Pin for a day and taste the fermentations so I will let you know how the best of estates handled the wine.

After lunch I got into the car and powered through, under cloudy and wet skies, until Aix-en-Provence. While passing that lovely city and diving into Provence the stars came out and accompanied the next two hours until I reached Nice. And what is in Nice you might ask? What of oenological significance possibly goes on in that city by the sea? And to that I respond, only the most quickly evaporating AOC in France, the little district of Bellet, of whose wine only 12,000 bottles are produced. Actually, though I was interested by Bellet I was mainly attracted by the specter of meeting my friend from high school Alli Arbuthnot, who is backpacking Europe right now before finishing up school. The wines of Bellet are quite pleasant, albeit far too expensive for what they are. But, unlike the back country of Provence, the land around Nice is worth quite a bit of money to real estate developers these days, so land costs much be higher, and wine costs must be higher to justify their continued production.

After spending a couple of days traveling from Nice, to Cannes, to Saint Tropez, and finally to the most wonderful of all cities, Aix-en-Provence, I was ready to re-engage with wine. Using Aix as my home-base for a few nights I traveled the 45 minutes south to Bandol—where harvest was in full swing. Though Bandol, which lies directly upon the Mediterranean, sounds like another excuse to bask in the climate of the sea, it carries greater personal importance for me. I have always loved the rich, dark, primal wines from this region where Mourvedre reaches its Platonic zenith. The rare combination of moderating ocean influence and hot Provencal sun has created a climate perfect for the ripening of the grape with the longest ripening cycle. Though Bandol is most famous for its rose’ wine, a zesty citrus, strawberry, raspberry fruited wine with mineral and hawthorne that is uncannily long and rich in the palate, I find the reds to be the most interesting. Those of Domaine Tempier, Chateau Pradeaux, Ott’s Chateau Romassan, and Pibarnon, are the reference points (and typically the most easy to find in the United States), but a number of smaller producers are making wines both traditional and reflective of their own mesoclimatic peculiarities within the larger Bandol area.

(trees and vines in Bandol, the sea is over the mountains in the background)

The region is a Y-shaped valley rising from just above the seaside resort-town of Bandol at its base and stretching about 10 kilometers in each direction from its splitting point. The valley walls are made of rather tall, glacially inspired hills with broad shoulders and moderate slopes. Like any other wine region featuring hills and multiple varietals the decision of what to plant where is important. Typically, although by no means the rule, the slower ripening Mourvedre is grown on the south and south west facing parts of the hillsides, while the complimenting grapes, Grenache and Cinsault, are grown on the slightly slower ripening hillsides facing north and north east. Those wines grown on the chalk rich hillsides on the west side of the main valley tend towards greater elegance, while those wines grown in heavier soils tend towards a larger, chunkier, style. Additionally, the white varietals (about 4 percent of Bandol’s production is a funky white wine), of Clairette, Bourbelanc, Picpoul, and Sauvignon Blanc are grown on these cooler slopes. The AOC rules stipulate that 50% of any red wine must be made of Mourvedre, though some cuvees from Tempier and Pradeaux are fully Mourvedre.

Traditional winemaking techniques dominate here. To use even an iota of new oak is controversial. Grapes are picked ripe (normally with about 14% potential alcohol), fermented traditionally using natural yeasts in tanks (some see pigeage, other pumpovers, sometimes a mix of both), and fermentaton and malo are undergone in tank. The wines are aged for up to two years in foudre (large, oval tanks), and then bottled. It is pretty basic winemaking on all accounts, but one must love the rugged honesty of it. The reds take several years to soften up and come around, but they can be wonderfully dark, sauvage wines proffering up a bit of Mediterranean heat on cold winter nights.

For me, it was just exciting to see Mourvedre reach these heights, and also to appreciate that I could never make a wine that tastes like it in California. Though Bedrock (our new vineyard in Sonoma Valley’s banana belt) has two blocks of 120 year old vine Mourvedre, neither the climate nor the current market would allow me to make such a funky, interesting, wine made traditionally which places a priority on flavor elements rather than immediate fruit. That does not mean trying is not an option however.

After Bandol, and a brief drive around of the beautiful, if not particularly important AOC of Cassis, I was back to Aix for a night and then up to the city of popes. Avignon, which sits at the mouth of the Rhone river before it fans out to reach the sea, is the historically religious heart of France. Following the papal split in the 16th century, when the world got not one, but two!! Popes (lucky world), Avignon was the city chosen for the papal palaces. It is now home to a university, a little less than a zillion tourists, and very little parking. It was from Avignon which the pope commanded his new vineyards. If the country wines of Compania were the favorites of the Italian branch of papal authority, the vines planted in Chateauneuf-du-Pape (New house of the Pope), were ordained to be the favorite of the French side. I personally think the French pope got a better deal. Granted, drinking Chateauneuf-du-Pape is about as close as I get to a religious experience.

The region of Chateauneuf stretches out for 3300 hectares (about 8000 acres) around the eponymous city. Here, the grapes bake in an oven of hot sun and stone—the reflected light and absorbed heat of Alpen stones flushed down the Rhone river in the glacial age ripen grapes here to a level considered scandalous in regions such as Bordeaux and Burgundy. To receive AOC status, CDP (Chateaunuef-du-Pape) must reach 12.5 percent minimum alcohol, the highest of any region. In reality, most wines here are between 13.5 and 14 percent with a few top cuvees regularly achieving 16%.

That the vineyards here were established by papal authority is historically interesting, but what is more historically influential today is that the AOC system, outlining qualitative rules for select regions, was begun in CDP in 1923 by Baron Le Roy of Chateau Fortia.

(young vines growing in CDP, note the “galets� or large stone)

Its early AC status may account for the flexibility in its rules. For one, the appellation is the third largest in France (behind Chablis and St. Emilion). For two, thirteen varietals of grape are accepted for use in the red wine (14 if the white clone of Grenache is counted). And, as a reminder that AOC regulations and boundaries are as much a political beast as any other governmentally made decision, those thirteen varietals do now include Carignane, but do include the rather miserable Terret Noir and Muscardin grapes—apparently a shot across the bow of neighboring Lirac and Tavel by Baron Le Roy, who despised the high-cropping grape, as well as the qualitative possibilities of the rose’ made from it. Not surprisingly, there is no AOC for rose CDP, only for white and red wines. The relative quality of the region is additionally kept in check by the maximum yield of 35 h/ha (about 2 tons an acre), which ensures adequate concentration and alcholic strength.

I paid visits to Paul Avril at Clos des Papes, consistently one of my favorite wines from the region—perfumey, spicey, and powerful. To Domaine de la Mordoree, made famous by a certain American wine critic, where they use new oak and extended macerations and get amazing color and high levels of tannin in their wine, and also to Chateau Fortia, the great historical chateau which still possesses the one CDP made with large amounts of Syrah (a wine I have always loved for its easy perfume and accessibility young). In addition, I tasted the interesting oaked whites of Chateau La Nerthe at their grandly edificed castle. CDP ranges from the rustic and powerful to the refined and powerful. These are not wines that are shy about alcohol, but at their best, the heat is balanced out by wonderful white spices, ginger, strawberry and raspberry fruit (that is sometimes almost like kirsch), and integrated tannins. The best example of this that I found was Clos des Papes—a winery I appreciate for its stead refusal to make a “luxury� cuvee while sacrificing the quality of their base wine, as has occurred at Mordoree, Cuvee de Vatican, Pegau, and others.

The next update:

Gigondas, Vacqueyras, and Cote-du-Rhone Village.

Saint-Chinian and Minervois

Bordeaux—Haut-Marbuzet, Beychevelle, Lafite-Rothschild, and the Cabernet harvest.

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