Where's La Gramière??? 2006, that is.

Why is it taking so long? When is the 2006 going to be available in my area? Well, I've been getting a fair amount of those questions lately, and as it turns out the story is more interesting than you might think. As most things seem to be here at La Gramière these days....

 

The truth is, we've had a bumpy ride this past year. It all started back in July when we first presented our wine for the "agrément". For those of you who missed that post last year, the agrément is a process here in France practiced by most appellations by which a wine is "approved" by a panel of other winemakers and at least one enologist, and thus given the "right" to call their wine "Côtes du Rhône" (or whichever appellation the wine falls under. You are required to have your wine analyzed by an official laboratory and send that analysis along with the samples. They come to you winery (or house as the case may be) to pull the samples from the specified vats that you registered with them previously. You can present all or just one or two of your vats at a time, I presented them all since we were planning on blending them before bottling, and the entire vintage would be bottled at one time. The person that comes to collect the samples arrives with pre-printed labels and his own bottles, and he witnesses that you a pulling the wine from the specified vat so that you can't cheat. The wine is then taken to a central location, often Orange or Avignon to be tasted by the aforementioned panel. You have three chances to pass the tasting, and after the third, it has to be labeled as a lowly Vin de Table, or Table Wine, the lowest designation in France.

 

You can see where this is leading, I imagine. On the first round, our two largest vats of wine were refused, and our one barrel passed. The barrel was of course filled with the same wine that was in those vats... I was shocked! Absolutely couldn't believe it. Everyone loved the wine when tasting it out of the vat. We had taken sample bottles of it to many people, friends, professionals , everyone loved it. It's a super concentrated wine, due to the lack of rain and our conversion to organic, we had very small yields (22 hl/ha), maybe that was the problem. The reason they stated on Vat 4 was  "Ascence, fatigué" and Vat 5 "Ascence, oxydé" . Those are some strong words. Ascense is a enological term meaning that there is volatile acidity in the wine and that it will eventually turn to vinegar. Both wines were at 0.5 VA which is in no way "ascent". The fact that they called them "tired and oxidized" was even more incredible - when you taste this wine you'll see, it is far from being tired or oxidized. You can imagine our state of shock. To cut the story short, we were refused a second time, and then considered not sending it back a 3rd time so that we could say it was a choice to be in Vin de Table, to sort of save face, but we decided we had nothing to lose. The wine had now been bottled and everyone said that they wouldn't refuse it a 3rd time, it's like a death sentence to vigneron. Guess what? They refused it.

 

Even worse, the day they refused it was the day I was tasting with Kermit Lynch, our American importer. Ugh. I had, of course, told Kermit of our troubles, and amazingly he said that it's happening more and more, often to really great wines that are out of the ordinary and don't fit the profile of a classic wine from that appellation. Hmmmm ... Now we were stuck with Vin de Table, which is ironic, since we purposely bought vineyards 20 minutes away from our house so that we could be in the Côtes du Rhône appellation.

 

I called our German importer Martin Kössler to break the news to him and he said: "Great! That's terrific news, I don't care at all! The whole appellation system is falling apart in France, and some of the most interesting wines are being refused." Well, that made me feel a bit better. Kermit on the other hand was a bit more reticent. Côtes du Rhône sells well in the US, Kermit wanted to talk to his national sales manager Bruce Neyers about it, thinking it may be a harder sell now.

 

When these kinds of things happen, no matter how good you and others might think you wine was, it seeds doubt in peoples minds. It was a very hard thing to swallow, imagine trying to explain to your friends and customers. No matter how good they thought it was, they still might ask themselves what is really wrong with the wine. That's exactly what happened. Kermit took a few bottles with him back to his house in Bandol, the wine had just been bottled, and somehow that fact escaped him. Just after bottling wines tend to taste differently for several weeks if not a couple of months. Every time I opened a bottle I hated it, I said they were right to refuse us. How on earth are we going to be able to sell 1000 cases of a wine we don't like!! Matt however kept the faith and told me I was being too hard on it, that it was a good wine and it just needed time. We got an email from Kermit saying that he had tasted it and wasn't at all happy with it, and that maybe we should think twice about bottling it. My stomach was in knots. What were we going to do???

 

The thing was, we had bottled it, and for some reason Kermit thought that it was a tank sample. Luckily when I got a hold of him, he was relieved to hear that it had been bottled - "that changes everything," he said. He still had two more bottles, and decided  he would hold on to them for awhile, and taste them again. A few weeks later, I got an ebullient phone call from Kermit, he had just finished having lunch with François Peyraud, of Domaine Tempier, and they opened a bottle and thought it was great. Phew. But we weren't out of the woods yet. Kermit asked me to send 2 cases to his office in Beaune who would then send them to California where they would send out samples to distributors to see if they would bite.

 

Problem was, we had to re-design the label. In our lovely logo, there are the words Côtes du Rhône, which are no longer allowed to be there. Double UGH. So, Mark, if you're still reading, that's the real reason we had to change the labels after everyone voted... Thus our new label. It took longer than we thought to get the labels printed, which delayed the shipment of the samples. Just before Christmas though, I got a call from Dixon Brook, the manager of the Kermit Lynch office in Beaune. The samples had arrived and were being sent out, but even without them, the National Sales Office already had orders for 100 cases! Wow! The only way that could be possible is from the power of this blog; otherwise, how would distributors even know it existed?? Now hopefully those distributors who received samples will order some too. So if you’re interested in trying some, click on the link at the left hand side of this page (Find La Gramière in your state).  Now’s the time, the samples have been sent, and hopefully they’re ready to order!

The 2006 La Gramière is not a shy wine, it’s super concentrated,  but backed up by lots of ripe fruit and spice. Typical to 2006 southern Rhône wines, it’s very fruit forward with medium tannins. I like to drink it at cellar temperature, that is to say a bit cool, as I think it really brings out the fruit.  It goes wonderfully with any kind of roasted lamb or beef, and I think it will be great this summer with your best BBQ ribs. We even had it with a hot Indian curry and it really stood up to it well.  I imagine that it will keep getting better over the next few years, but who’s to know, it’s only our second wine!

I don’t think you’ll even notice that it doesn’t say Côtes du Rhône.

Comments

[Greg]

I'm sorry to hear about your appellation issues. For those of us who have tasted your wine, it doesn't change the prospect of tasting another vintage of DdlG. I still planning on picking up a few bottles as soon as I can find them. Are they/do you know when they will be at KL in Berkeley?

À bîentot,

Greg

[Steve L.]

What a nightmare for you. Don't know whether I'm typical but I am way past caring if a wine passes AOC muster--many of the most exciting wines I've enjoyed over the past 12 months have been vins de table. In fact, as long as I know it isn't plonk, I've started interpreting that term as a badge of honor, signifying a vigneron who is making wine that BETTER than the norm.

[Mark]

Amy,

What an ordeal. Had I known, I never would have made that comment about the label change. I for one will definitely buy your '06. Having missed out on the '05, nothing will stop me from trying the '06 -- certainly not a change of three little French words. Both Côtes du Rhône and Vins de Table were among my favorite wines of the past year.

I hope La Gramiere makes it to NJ or NY this time. If not, I'll just have to fly out to Berkeley, or better yet, the South of France. So keep a few bottles ready in your cave!

Stay positive. It'll all work out.

[Cathy Connors]

Hi Amy, Matt
Bummber about the wine! I looked up the distributors in Texas on the link you have, and will be calling them this week to place my request for a case! I have a bunch of friends in Houston that are BIG wine drinkers, I'm going to plan a wine tasting just for your wine, and encourage them to go and buy it. SO, with that said, I am in need of a dinner/food menu to perfectly compliment the wine. Please send me some suggestions!

All the best!
Cathy Connors
(from the Sarah and Jim Connors Clan) :-)

[johng]

Bummer!

I know it seems like a non-sequitor, but it's late here in CA and it makes perfect sense to me right now. The other day we were talking about so many things taking a wrong direction here in the USA and I remarked that it's actually getting easier to deal with the DMV. And Jury Duty. Etc. Sounds like the French need some of that.

I am certainly among those who loved this wine out of barrel.

[Yaron Zakai-Or]

I really hope your wine will find it's way to Israel. Reading this one feels this wine must get a fair chance. I'm sure that the lack of Cotes Du Rhone classification wouldn't be an issue here.

[Frank Kaemmer]

I've drunk this wine yesterday night with dinner (actually had to taste it for my new book about organic wines on the German market) without knowing this strange story. I was extremely happy with the wine and wrote down in my notes "this would set many renowned producers ashamed for their CdRs". After reading this story, I've retasted a sip from a small rest which had stayed in the bottle overnight: If this it "ascence, fatigué" then I'll probably have to watch out for more wines with that distinction! You can be assured that you will get a magnificent review about his wine in my book.

Frank Kaemmer, MS
Germany

[ross estes blum]

i live in berkeley and shop at klwm. your wine is very nice and i hope the french "powers-that-be" don't notice the c-d-r stamp on the cork. good that they were used and not tossed! afterall, like in the godfather, it's not personal, it's business. guess you all have to deal with that and it appears that ultimately you're having fun with it...

[Joe Dressner]

I live in St-Gengoux-de-Scissé and the wine is not available here. But don't let the wine police get you!

Keep up the good work!

Best,

Joe Dressner