la gramiere

Tagged! A few thoughts on why I blog...

Mike Duffy over at Winery Website Report tagged me and 4 others, asking why I blog.  It's going around the wine blogosphere so I'm sure if you read other wine blogs you'll see a lot of the same comments, but here's my 2 cents worth.

1. I originally started this blog so that family and friends could be kept in the loop with the happenings over here during our first year of vineyard ownership and winemaking.  Then of course, more people started reading along.  Mike Duffy was actually one of the first bloggers to write about my blog, and that brought a lot of other readers to my site.

2. Of course like everyone else who is blogging, it's about creating awareness of our wine, creating a market for it before it even existed, and long before it reached the United States.  Marketing is very important, as always, especially when you are making a Côtes du Rhône, one of several hundred produced, so you have to find a way to differentiate yourself from the crowd, our unique story definitely helps!

3. Most of all, I blog to give people an idea of what it's really like.  We are not wealthy people playing around, throwing money at an expensive vineyard project.  We are two people that dreamed of one day making our own wine and we are doing it on a shoestring budget.  There's no trust fund or dotcom fortune behind us, just a lot of hard work, dedication, and a lot of help from family and friends.  I think that's what makes my blog different than other wine-related blogs out there.  Yes of course to most people we are "living the dream", here in sunny southern France, but we are also the ones doing  all of the work. We have no employees, just a few incredibly dedicated, if not gullible friends who for some reason or another like to come help out.

4. Farming, it seems to be a thing of the past, but that's really what a lot of my blog is about.  We are first and foremost farmers, who have the incredible opportunity to convert our crop into something wonderful.  I like the idea of reminding people that without the grapes there would be no wine, it's virtually the only ingredient. Neglecting that part of your production, no matter what kind of technology you might have at your fingertips, will never result in the same quality product.  At least that's the way I see it.

5. You can't ignore the romance factor of living in this part of the world.  People seem to love to hear about trips to the market, the pottery studios, the wineries and the cheese makers.  I think it's also important to demonstrate to people that the French have been so very helpful and open to us.  Without the help of other local farmers and winemakers we never would have gotten this far, and I do like to share these wonderful stories with people.

All in all I guess I'm having fun telling our story and am flattered every time I get a comment of encouragement or thanks.  It helps you come back to the computer to write another entry, especially when you're way too busy and way too tired.  It's just then, that somebody out there will send you a comment, a two sentence entry that makes you realize that it's definitely worth it to keep writing. Even if there's only 10 people out there, it's fun to think that those 10 people enjoy what you have to say!

La cuisine de Beaucastel

Last week I was lucky enough to once again spend a day tasting wines with Thierry Desseauve in Châteauneuf du Pape. And, once again I was lucky enough to have lunch with the Perrin family, in their kitchen.  "La Cuisine de Beaucastel", as I like to call it, is a magical place.  Filled with provençal charm, comfortable and welcoming. It's like being invited into the heart of the château, the family home.

Well, maybe I should back up a bit, because first of all Château de Beaucastel is a magical place in itself.  One of the top producers of Chateauneuf-du-Pape wines, arriving at Beaucastel, you immediately fall under it's spell. It's a place filled with a sense of history, a sense of importance and a sense that you are very lucky to be welcomed into a world that is not accessible to everyone. We were soon greeted by Marc Perrin whose charm and sincerity immediately put you at ease.  We started off by tasting through all of their 2006 varietals separately.  That is to say before they are blended; viognier, bourboulenc, clairette, grenache blanc, roussanne, cinsault, counoise, grenache noir, syrah and mourvèdre.  How often to you get to taste bourboulenc, clairette or counoise all on their own?  It's a great exercise in understanding the complexity of the blending process in Chateauneuf du Pape.  Then we moved on through the Perrin Family wines which are wines that come from a large range of vineyards that they own throughout the southern Rhône Valley. From Côtes du Rhône and Vinsobres to Vacqueyras and Gigondas, the family produces many high quality wines at very reasonable prices.

Now back to the kitchen... This is the second time I've had the honor to eat with the Perrin family. The previous time was also with Thierry Desseauve in January.  I had wanted to write about it then, but I didn't have the nerve to ask them to take pictures. This time though, Thierry's wife Nadine was along, and she was happily snapping photos, so I felt like I could do it too!  Now you can imagine just how wonderful it is...

A couple of years ago the Perrins decided to hire a chef to help them create a series of recipes and food and wine pairings to go with their "Perrin et Fils" wines. The idea is to develop recipes that can easily be reproduced by their customers at home to go along with their wines.  When the Perrin family decides to do something, they do it right.  They hired Laurent Deconinck who worked at none other than Lucas Carton in Paris for 5 years! Laurent is an amazing chef who has such a gentle personality , you wish he would sit down at the table and join in the meal.  Alas, he is a true professional and stays behind the counter preparing everything down to the tiniest detail.

In January,  truffle season was in full swing, so we started with a hot Aigo Bouido, a Provençal soup made with whole cloves of garlic, a simple, but perfect,  omelette full of black truffle shavings, followed by a salad of mache, shaved raw beets and more truffles! We finished with a roasted quince with orange peel and sage.  Heaven.  This time we again had the Aigo Bouido, followed by tuna tartar with preserved ginger, soy sauce and pink peppercorns.  They were discussing the recent addition of the pink peppercorns, which really made the flavors of the wine come out.  The main course was roasted porcelet (piglet) with a purée of potatoes and bay leaf.  As if we were still hungry, all of this was followed by a perfectly ripe Banon (local goat cheese aged in chestnut leaves).  The best thing though, might have been dessert, Choquettes, or cream puffs that have little chunks of sugar on top, freshly whipped cream and strawberries. (You can see him preparing them in the background)  We all ooohed and awwwed, quickly finished our plates, and wondered secretly if there were more.  Luckily François Perrin (above is Jean-Pierre Perrin), Marc's uncle asked, and magically a whole basket of them, a bowl of whipped cream and the rest of the strawberries were placed on the table before us.  I'm not sure how you say "dig in " in French, but that is what we all did.  That, is the magic of "La Cuisine de Beaucastel" ...

Rain, rain, rain!

Yes, we finally got some rain!  Two straight days of light, gently penetrating rain.  It was gray and drizzling, and we were so happy!  Well, it wasn't so great for my poor sister and her boyfriend who were here visiting from England, but they joined in our celebration, even if they would have preferred a few sunny days! We had a picnic in the vineyards on Sunday, kind of an annual celebration of spring.  It was a beautiful day, even hot!  The leaves are just starting to open up in the grenache,  for now it seems like our vineyards might be a little behind our neighbors.  I don't know why, maybe it's because we don't fertilize them, maybe it's for another reason... 

Today I am off to Beaucastel and Rayas in Châteauneuf du Pape with Thierry Desseauve, and then we're ending up in Lourmarin at Tardieu-Laurent.  The last time we were there, we didn't have time to taste the 2005s so we're going back, then we're having dinner at La Fenière, it's supposed to be a gem, I'll tell you all about it when I get back!

La Remise

La Remise is a trade winetasting  that groups together 30 or so wineries in the south of France (and one from Spain) who are all into "natural winemaking".  Matt and I went to the annual event last Monday with our friend Serge to check out what these wineries are up to.  What, you may ask is the definition of natural winemaking?  Well, I asked the same question to many of the vignerons/winemakers present.  The answers were varied, most seemed to be organic, but the main thread that ties them all together is that they use no sulfur during vinification and little or none at bottling.  This year's poster featured a vigneron walking a tight-rope, which is very apropos to this sort of winemaking.  I have to admit it's something that intrigues me, and something that we may just well toy with one day, but you have to be careful, because one can get burned.  So far, sulfur dioxide is the only preservative that has been proven effective in winemaking. It's anti-bacterial as well as anti-oxidative; meaning that it helps protect the wine against little creatures that want to turn it into something else!  My biggest problem with the use of SO2 is that most of what is available in the market is actually a petroleum byproduct that is collected in the smoke stacks of oil refineries and converted to liquid form.  You can imagine how stupid I felt when I read this for the first time on Alice Feiring's blog.  How could we be using something like this in our "natural wine"???  It turns out that we can get natural SO2, but there's no source for it in France.  It's supposedly available from someone in Italy but his production hasn't been approved for importation into France.  I've heard that you can get it in Germany too, so we're going to put our German importers on the trail so that we can try and get some here at La Gramière.

Anyway, back to the tasting...We tasted some wines that were great.  You would never know that they weren't made conventionally. We tasted some that were definitely at the limit of what would be considered drinkable, but it was all very interesting.  The atmosphere was a bit like a Harley rider get together. Several of the winemakers seemed to be as on the edge as their wines.  It sort of seemed like you needed to be part of the "club" to belong there.  I didn't take any pictures for you, since I already felt like we didn't quite fit in.  Unfortunately, we went late in the day when things were starting to wind down. People were itching to relax and have a few drinks themselves.  I think from now on I'll go to tastings like that first thing in the morning, when there may be less people. All in all, it was a good experience, but I didn't leave there feeling like we just "have" to stop using SO2 at all. We already use very small amounts.  It's definitely a viable way to make wine, I'm just not sure I'm willing to take those kinds of risks... My balance isn't that great anyway. I might just fall of that tight rope into the abyss, and that would not be good!

Babying our babies!

Well, we finally finished all of the pruning this weekend. What a relief! This is the first year (after only 3) that I felt like we were finishing right when we should be. The two previous years I’ve felt like we were behind, but not this year. I guess I’m just used to being late!!

Spending a lot of time in the vineyards you tend to see some pretty amazing bugs, spiders etc. Take a look at this really cool praying mantis that Matt found the other day. It’s pretty amazing, isn’t it? We always see them as a good sign. They like to eat lots of other bugs, so we’re happy to have them crawling around in our vineyards. Plus, anything that is as incredible looking as a praying mantis has to be a good thing!

Over the Easter weekend, we decided that we had to water our newly planted vines. The ground is rock hard; we haven’t gotten any of the spring rains we have been hoping for. The weather forecast will say rain, and then it will just drizzle a bit not even penetrating past an inch or so. I think we are going to have a long summer! So Matt and I were out there watering the little guys. Over the past few days most of them have shown signs of life, one baby leaf opening up. On some of them you can just see the buds getting ready to burst. It’s very exciting given that when we put them in the ground, I never would have guessed that they would actually grow. Now the question is, what do we need to do next?  I’ll have to ask around and see. One thing that I was told yesterday was that the local hunters have just release a bunch of rabbits so we’ll need to put plastic sleeves over all of them to keep the rabbits from eating the tender leaves. Can you imagine? Releasing a bunch of rabbits just so you can shoot them? All of this just because they over-hunted them in the first place so that there aren’t any wild ones left. Can you tell I just love the hunters???