la gramiere

Terroir - What's ours made up of??

Last week I had the pleasure of finally meeting Bruno Weiller a specialist in soil analyses, plant observation, and biodynamic compost, among other things...  Bruno and his wife Anne-Laure run a company called Prométerre (site in French) that specializes in workshops teaching farmers and amateur plant lovers how to recognize medicinal plants in the wild (or in their natural habitat).  Matt had met him twice already this year, he participated in one of their  2-part seminars this spring and summer.  The first 2-day seminar was not far from here, in Laudun at Domaine Duseigneur, a biodynamic winery with vineyards in the Lirac and Laudun appellations.  The second part of the seminar was at Domaine Leflaive in Puligny Montrachet!  Not a bad place to study plants.  Matt even had the pleasure of sitting next to Anne-Claude Leflaive .  It was a great thing for him to participate in,  A) because he loves plants and B) because he got a chance to meet other vignerons that were interested in and practice biodynamics, and C) so that he could just be Matt and not have me there always interjecting and speaking better French than he - sometimes that can be annoying!!  In any case Matt really liked Bruno and his wife Anne-Laure, so he asked Bruno if he would stop by our vineyards and start consulting with us on the best ways to ameliorate our soil and our vines in an organic and biodynamic sort of way.

We spent lots of time walking through our various vineyards observing the different plants growing in and around them, and most of all checking out the different soils and stones found in each vineyard.  Bruno would often whip out a magnifying glass to get a closer look at the rocks he found, breaking them apart to get a better look at what they are made up of.  It was a very interesting session, and I look forward to working with him more in the future. 

The grenache is starting to turn now too, it's hot and dry here, some of the vines are starting to show signs of stress!  Harvest will definitely be early here, I think we'll start picking for the rosé at the very beginning of September, if not the end of August!  So far things are looking great, we're supposed to have thunderstorms on Thursday, hopefully it will simply rain, and not hail!

Meet Denis Gayte

Well, I suppose in some ways you've already met him.  He's appeared on, or been mentioned in this blog several times now, but have I ever really introduced you?

We met Denis about a year ago when he emailed us after over-hearing Tom Graisse the owner of Terroirs in Uzès talking about us and our wine.  It turns out that Denis also has vineyards here, and he too, makes Côtes du Rhône.  What a coincidence.  We've met or heard of other Americans, Brits, Belgians, you name it, who make wine in the area, but most are my parents age, not mine, so it was fun to meet someone our age doing the same thing.

Denis grew up in Seattle, but his father is originally from Avignon, and he still has lots of family in the area.  Once he finished college he decided to come to Europe for awhile, ski, meet some of his relatives and see where life led him.  Well eventually it led him to a village not far from here called Saint Pons la Calm.  Here he decided to take over the farming side of some family vineyards that had passed into his father's hands through inheritance.  So, Denis started farming the grapes and selling them to the local cooperative.  In 2002 he got the bug to make his own wine and bought 12 hectares of vineyards in Domazan, a village about 15 minutes from Avignon, on some exquisite terroir, similar to that of Châteauneuf du Pape.  He's got 24 parcels!! Can you imagine that?  I think it's hard with four!  He then found a small "cave" or winery to buy in the village and started his eponymous winery.  All by himself, no help, no employees, only his dad, when he comes over twice a year to give him a hand.  (Then he got smart and convinced his fiancé Kirsten to move over here. Now she helps out too!)  You think what we did was brave?  Denis has way more courage than we do!!  He's out there working his tail off every day to farm the vineyards, make the wine and then sell it too!!

The other day I met Denis at his vineyards and he gave me a tour.  It's a breathtakingly beautiful area, with at least three distinctly different terroirs; one like the afore mentioned Châteauneuf  terroir with galets roulés, another more sandy and well-drained soil and finally one with lots of the typical red clay we find in the region.  He has just about every varietal you can imagine, grenache, syrah, carignan, cinsault, mourvèdre, clairette, roussanne, grenache blanc, and even some picpoul gris!  His wines are blends of all of these grapes, depending on the appellation; Côtes du Rhône or Côtes du Rhône Villages, and of course the white Côtes du Rhône.   We tasted his 2005 Villages which is about to be bottled, it's a beauty and there's not much of it.  The 2006 which is still in tank, is great!  Fresh, pretty fruit, that typically 2006 forward, style with a touch of brambly spice. Delicious!!

Since he is from Seattle, lots of his wine goes to Washington. It is available through Cavatappi Distribuzione, which is the wholesaler.   If you live in the Seattle area you can contact them to find out where to buy Denis Gayte wines, the 2004 Côtes du Rhône "Cuvée Harmonie" is currently available and is drinking really well right now.  Or you can email Denis to find out where else his wines are sold.   

Jam for Miss Jennie

One of the great things about living in the country is that in the summer there's usually a wealth of fruit that magically appears on your doorstep.  In years past I've been given loads of apricots from friends and neighbors that have too much fruit to eat, also figs, cherries, blackberries, you name it.  This year it was plums!!! Our friends Denis and Kirsten came over with over 7 kilos of plums this weekend.  Some friends of theirs have a tree that has so much fruit they don't know what to do with it.  So, every year I make jam, so much jam that I can't eat it all, especially since for some reason, although we like it, we just don't eat that much jam.  (I think it's really because of the fact that I love jam on bread with lots of yummy butter, yes jam=vehicle for butter, and I try to eat a healthier breakfast than that these days. The problem with me is, I have no self discipline.) 

When we first moved here, I didn't really know how to make jam, so I went to see our neighbor Mme Rivet, who lives across the street.  Mme Rivet makes all kinds of jam and preserves so she volunteered to teach me how to make it.  In fact, it's insanely easy, 700 grams of sugar to one kilogram of fruit, cooked in a copper jam pan for about 45 minutes, then scooped into jars while it's still hot!  Then you flip the jar upside down so that the heat creates a good seal, no canning, no sterilizing, just turn it upside down, now that's my kind of recipe.

Every time my sister in law Jenn comes to visit from Switzerland she takes back as much jam as she can fit in her suitcase, she just loves it.  So yesterday I spent the day making plum jam in honor of Jenn, for this Thursday is her birthday!! So she'll have lots of yummy plum jam to eat all year long!! Happy Birthday Miss Jennie!!!

So far so good!

Oops! I almost forgot!  Thanks to Mark for reminding me.  Yes, we had a good meeting with Kermit!  I forgot to take a picture, so that's a bummer.  We spent a couple of hours chatting, listening to some of the cuts from his new CD that he went to Nashville to record, and then finally got around to tasting our wine---once it warmed up, that is.  I put the samples into the fridge the night before knowing that a 2 hour car trip isn't the best thing in the world for a tank sample.  Then we stuck it in a cooler and when we got there it was still too cold.  So we set it out on the table and proceeded to chat and have a glass of 2000 Dauvissat Chablis Premier Cru (sorry I forgot to note the vineyard).   Kermit is a real fan of Dauvissat wines even though he doesn't import them.   He says that Vincent describes wines the same way he does, in a very innuendo laden, masculine-feminine sort of way, if you know what I mean!

Once the wine was at a suitable drinking temp, I nervously poured 3 glasses for us to try.  We were soon joined by Kermit's wife Gail Skoff, and luckily she said straight away that she liked it.  Kermit got up to get his note book and started writing notes while Matt and I calmly tasted and swirled and sniffed and tasted and swirled.  It's a hard thing having someone taste your wine, especially when that someone is Kermit Lynch.  I think we both felt pretty good though, because the wine was showing really well, and we both knew it.  Finally he smiled and we both knew it was ok.  Unfortunately we didn't have much time because our friends in a nearby village were waiting for us, so we chatted a bit more and then prepared to head off.  Matt finally asked, "So, did you like it?" Kermit answered, "Yes, I did."   Then asked how much was available and told us that he'd be by in late August to taste it again, once it's in bottle.  So, so far so good.  Now we just have to get it in bottle.  We are both looking forward to having him to dinner at our house, cook a good meal, and drink some good wine.   It's always fun to have dinner with Kermit! After reading Eric Asimov's recent post on Kermit, I can't believe how lucky we are to have him as a guest!

Things are starting to cook here!

We've been incredibly lucky this year, as opposed to seemingly the rest of France.   In regions like Bordeaux, Champagne, Alsace and Burgundy, they've been getting hit with drenching rain, thunderstorms, hail and more rain.  Looking over the French blogs over the past month all you see is rain, hail and mildew.  In the past week things have dried out and warmed up, but it's been a long few months for everyone else.  Here in the sunny south though, we got the rain we needed, and if you were on top of things mildew hardly even set in.  That said, I have talked to a few vignerons that have had some serious problems with mildew, but it's definitely not wide-spread.  Thank goodness this isn't our first year, or I would have been panicking!  We've got a few spots of mildew in all of our vineyards, it's not a big deal as long as you stop the progression of it, which we have.  Now that it's warm, there's less need to worry, mildew doesn't like heat, and boy is it hot!!!

It's July though, and we need the heat.  One more good rain between now and harvest would be nice, but as long as we can keep going like this (hot and dry)  we should be in for a great year.  In our vineyards, as I've said before we had a very uneven flowering and that lead to some fruit loss, but what remains is looking great, small grapes, smaller than all of our neighbors, but that should make for some really great wine!  I'm getting excited just thinking about harvest.  But I shouldn't get ahead of myself, we're not there yet, you never know when the skies are going to open up and rain or hail and rain some more.  It's true we've been spoiled so far, besides drought and super low yields, we haven't had to deal with devastating rain or hail  I take that back and am knocking on wood 100 times!!  Don't want to jinx ourselves!!

The syrah has just started to turn from green to purple (does somebody know what that's called in English?) In French it's called "veraison".  This is means that the grapes will now start to produce sugar and develop more flavor as they ripen, and soon we'll be harvesting them! 

Since it's so hot, we have to water the baby mourvèdre vines we planted this spring.  Ugh.  It's not fun.  First we are going around to all of the plants and using a spade to break up the ground around the plant and make a little bowl for the water to sit in.  Sounds easy right?  Well, not so.  The ground is like concrete, super dry and hard and there are lots of rocks in the soil, so half the time when you plant the spade you end up hitting a rock, and having no effect on the soil.  It's not my favorite job... and with the heat you're standing there dripping with sweat!!  Luckily Matt did a lot of the digging while I watered the vines.  I have just a few rows left to finish tonight when it cools off.  It's hard to motivate to go down there, especially in the evening when it's wine:30!!

One last cool picture:

Now isn't she a beauty!  I was walking through the vineyard today when I felt something crawling on my shoulder, I looked down thinking it was a "cigale"  (cicada)  but yikes!!  I'll admit I squealed and brushed her off in a panic!  Then I spent the next few minutes trying to find her so that I could get a better look.  Her body is at least the size of a nickel!!  Amazing.  Very cool to look at, but not something I want crawling on my shoulder!!

Label changes - revisited

First of all, thank you for all of your suggestions and input about the labels and the changes that should be made to them.  It's not an easy thing to do, although our wine doesn't have a huge distribution, once people get used to your label it isn't easy to change it.  Oh well, we're going to do it anyway, it's only the second year, maybe we'll change it every year, who knows...

A few people commented on the blank space in the off-set label, that we should fill it up, or use it somehow to tell our story, but the simplicity of it is exactly what I like about it.  Here's a revised version in which we decided to reduce the size of the empty, green space so that it would seem less like you had to turn the bottle to read the label.  This change though, sent all of the information to the back, which probably won't please some people, but you can't please everyone, and people around here seemed to like it better than the square one.   That said, we are meeting with Kermit Lynch tomorrow at his house near Bandol to taste the 2006, we'll certainly be interested in what he has to say about the label.  But more importantly, we'll be sitting on pins and needles, hoping that he likes the 2006 as much as we do!!!!  Send us your tasty wine vibes!

A whole lot of bottles...

Today, we enjoyed the result of our newly poured cement floor.  Early this morning the bottles were delivered for the imminent bottling of our 2006 vintage.  Well, I say imminent, but it's not so imminent, we were supposed to bottle next Tuesday and Wednesday, but due to a scheduling hiccup, we've put it off another week, or maybe two.  Last year that would have been a huge problem, because we had no place to store the bottles, but this year, this year we have a brand new floor in the "cave"  !!!  It was simply amazing how easily we just rolled all 12 pallets of bottles into the garage and shut the door, I'm still trying to get over it.  Last year I would have had to call the bottle supplier and delay the delivery which is never a good thing, especially in the summer months when a lot of people go on vacation, and especially this year since there is a shortage of bottles and many people are having to delay their bottling because of it.  This would pose a big problem for us since we have to bottle before harvest, we don't have enough tank space to hold 2 vintages at a time.  So, you see, this year is going much more smoothly (knock on wood!), now we just have to get a date for bottling.  Our bottler assures me that we'll find 2 days to do it, I don't think I'll sleep well until we've got another date booked, but we're trying to pick the right days.  The right days in the biodynamic calendar, that is.  We've asked several people what are the best days to bottle according to the lunar calendar, and we've gotten several different responses.  It seems like each time we find two days that we think might meet the criteria, they fall on a weekend!! Here, nobody works on the weekend, especially in July and August.  So, I'm keeping my fingers crossed and hoping that we find a day or two that will work for everyone!

(That's quite a floor - isn't it??)

Finding my Groove

Now well into our third year of production, I feel like I am finally finding my groove in almost every part of our adventure.  What really made me realize this is driving the tractor.  In the beginning, I was terrified of driving the tractor.  Really, it doesn't seem like such a big deal, a small tractor almost 10 years older than I am, shouldn't be that hard to master.  But, in reality, it's not that easy.  In order to push in either the clutch or the brakes, I have to practically stand up and put all of my weight on the pedals! The first few times I tried to turn the thing, I thought I was going to flip over.  Luckily, my dear husband, Matt, had much more experience than I did (His grandfather was a farmer and he spent his summers helping him out).   

My biggest fear though, was spraying.  The sprayer on the back of the tractor filled 3/4s full is quite a bit of weight for our little tractor, and it makes the front end pretty light when going up the little drive to the vineyard.  The first year, every time, we went down to spray, something went wrong;  one of the arms on the 3-point hitch broke,  we couldn't figure out how to turn the mixer on, we didn't properly clean out the sprayer and it clogged up terribly.  Every time it was stressful and it took twice as long as it should have.   Then, when it was my turn to spray for awhile, I felt like I was on a bucking bronco and a roller coaster all at the same time!  You see, a tractor from 1962 has no power steering, so it's quite a handful when you are trying to turn, and even when you apply the brakes, it just keeps on speeding forward until you remember to push the clutch in!  Tractors also have a lever that you can disengage which separates the right brake from the left brake to help you turn really tightly.  Matt showed this to me telling me that when I want to turn left I jam down the the inner (or the left brake pedal) as hard as I can and crank the steering wheel so that I magically can turn on a dime at the end of the row instead of having to stop back up a bit and complete the turn.  I watched him do this a few times, and thought for sure I could do it, but holy cow is it scary when you're actually trying to pull it off.   Scary for the vine that is at the end of the row and directly in your path if you don't make it, that is.  I'm sorry to say that a couple got completely run over, which is something I can't bear to think about!!   So, it took me awhile, and at first it took me twice as long as it did Matt to spray the same surface area because I never could quite make the turn, so I had to throw it in reverse and back up before being able to complete the turn without taking out a vine...

The other thing that is very scary on a vineyard tractor is  uneven terrain.  Our tractor's wheels are set very close together so that it can fit between the rows, which makes it feel really tippy when the ground isn't perfectly flat.   On the border of one of our vineyards there is  a spot where we have erosion each time it rains and it's on a slight descent, to boot.  Slight is really the word, but I cannot explain the terrible feeling in my stomach going down this little descent, one side of the tractor higher than the other,  with the sprayer on the back. It really feels like the whole thing is going to tip over and I haven't mention going down the steep drive that leads from the vineyard to the road.  I put the tractor in the lowest gear and inch down, all the while knowing that this very well might be the end...

Well, now 3 years into it, I have finally reached a point where I feel more comfortable on the tractor and with the sprayer.  Right before we left for San Francisco, we had to treat the vineyards.  It's been an unusually moist year here, and there is a lot of mildew, so copper (bouillie bordelaise)  is essential.  It was in the middle of the week and Matt was super busy with work, so I had to do it, I had to go spray all 4,5 hectares on my own!!!  You know what?  I did it!! All by myself.  I was exhausted at the end, but I managed to do it.  This week, I did it again, all by myself.  It's quite a feeling of accomplishment.  Now I can step on that brake pedal and turn on a dime just like Matt does.  Going down that little hill on uneven terrain is still quite scary, to the point that this week, I let out a little scream, thinking I was really going over this time, but in the end I made it.

I suppose the worst part about it is, that now, Matt knows I can do it.  Now I'm stuck!!!  If he's too busy, I have to do it!!  Why is it that we always figure these things out afterwards!!!  Oh well, too late, I'm sure I'll still be able to convince Matt to spray from time to time...

La Gramière dans Le Monde 2!

Le Monde 2 is a weekly magazine that is published in the Saturday edition of Le Monde.  La Gramière was chosen as wine of the week this week!! 

La Gramière a été choisit comme vin de la semaine dans Le Monde 2, le supplément au Monde qui sort tous le samedis!

Here's a rough translation: 

On her blog, she happily signs it "wine girl".  Nothing could better characterize Amy Lillard, an American from Colorado, who came to France with her husband, he too a pure Yankee, to live not far from Uzès in the Gard, in order to better her knowledge of wine and vineyards.  Crazy in love with the region, the couple possesses the qualities you would expect of Americans:  pragmatic, they go quickly from theory to practice, by purchasing a small vineyard which they cultivate like a garden; idealists, they farm more than organically and vinify favoring the natural expression of the grapes.  Result: a delicious Côtes-du-Rhône generously fruity and "gourmand" (lush, full - no good translation here),  even more accomplished for their second vintage (2006) to be bottled in the coming days.

Now that's a nice review!!!

 

If it's July, we must be making cement!!

Yes, for the third year in a row, we're making improvements to our set-up here at La Gramière.  The last two years it was in the back of the house where we make the wine. This year it's in the front where we store it.  We have a long, narrow garage at the front of our house where we stock the wine once it was in bottle. It had a dirt floor originally, then we put in a layer of rock.  This is not very convenient when you're trying to move pallets of wine around.  It's, in fact, impossible!  Last year we prepared each pallet for shipment, case by case, unstacking it from one pallet and re-stacking it on another pallet right in front of the door so the transporters could pick it up. 

Of course, at this time of year when we are preparing to put the 2006 in bottle, we started to think about cement. Ugh.  I have absolutely no desire to ever mix cement again, and luckily neither did Matt.  So this year we got a cement mixer!!! Yippee!! Only one hang up though, Matt decided that we need to lay more rock down.  We got 3 m3 of river rock delivered last week.  Well, we isn't quite right, Matt was out of town for work, so I got 3 m3 of rock delivered.  The only problem was that the truck couldn't back up into the garage because it was too big, so he dumped it as close to the door as possible, leaving me to shovel, by myself, the rest of it into the garage.  At first I didn't think it was any big deal, but after about 10 shovels full, I realized I was in trouble... Luckily for me, and unluckily for her, my friend Lucy happened to drive by and amazingly offered to come back and help me!! It went much faster with the two of us, and a little bit later our neighbor Jean-Marc came by and gave us the extra hand we needed to finish.  People are amazing, I don't know what I would do without my friends!!

Over the weekend, we worked on spreading out the rock and getting the levels marked on the walls.   This morning the cement mixer arrived. Peter and his son, Cameron, came to help, and we put together the nifty troughs that Matt made to get the cement all the way to the back of the garage (which we now call the "cave" or cellar).  It only took 1 hour from start to finish to pour 8m3 of concrete!!!   We asked ourselves why we would ever bother doing it any other way!  Well, there is the cost of the cememt.  I's quite a bit more expensive, but it's totally worth it.  This new cement we used is even self-levelling.  It was amazingly easy to use, and now we'll be able to use pallet movers and dollies and all kinds of other cool things.  Until we bottle the wine, we can even used it as a roller skating rink!