NYT on Biodynamic BDX
Posted: Fri Jun 16, 2017 10:13 pm
Dining: Bordeaux Estate Makes Fine Wines Naturally
2017-06-16 17:00:44.531 GMT
By ERIC ASIMOV
(New York Times) -- Correction Appended
ST.-CIBARD, France — The French have a notion that has no real counterpart in
English for discussing a delicious wine. It is digestibilité, digestibility in
English, a single word that, like terroir, connotes something far more
complex.
Digestibilité begins with deliciousness, but it also indicates wines that are
easy to drink without weighing heavily in the gut. It’s an immediate,
unmediated pleasure that nonetheless may be complex and contemplative.
The term is often used for natural wines, those produced with only minimal
intervention. That is one reason you rarely see the term applied in Bordeaux,
a wine region where the best wines, regardless of price, ought to be among the
most digestible wines in the world yet are too often weighed down by excesses
in viticulture, winemaking and reverence.
But here on a rocky plateau near this small town, just east of Pomerol and
St.-Émilion, sits Château le Puy, where the Amoreau family has grown grapes
for more than 400 years. The winery produces superb Bordeaux that epitomizes
the notion of digestibilité.
Indeed, digestibility is in a way part of Le Puy’s charter. Jean Pierre
Amoreau, the current custodian of the property — along with his wife,
Françoise; son, Pascal; and daughter, Valérie — told me on a visit to Le Puy
this spring that he has three requirements for a good wine.
First, wine must refresh. Second, the first sip must make a good impression.
And third, it must be digestible.
As with the best Bordeaux wines, those of Le Puy are marked by purity,
precision, lightness and drinkability that encourages taking another sip. They
also have an intensity of flavor despite their grace, a combination more often
associated with that other great region in the east of France.
“It’s the best Burgundy wine from Bordeaux,” said Steven Hewison, Mr.
Amoreau’s son-in-law, who is in charge of production.
Le Puy’s approximately 125 acres of vines, 50 years old on average, are
planted on a mixture of limestone, clay and flint soils that are certified
biodynamic. Le Puy is no recent convert to this now fashionable form of
organic viticulture.
Almost all agriculture was organic until after World War II, when chemical
agriculture became the norm. But not at Le Puy, where the soil has never felt
the sting of fertilizers and herbicides.
“My grandfather was too stingy to buy chemicals,” Mr. Amoreau said. His
grandfather, he said, was influenced by André Birre, a mid-20th-century
agronomist, who urged farmers to look after the health of their soils and
recommended methods not unlike biodynamics.
“Nobody in wine really talked about biodynamics until the 1990s,” Mr. Amoreau
said.
Now, Mr. Amoreau is among the most passionate advocates for biodynamics in the
true sense of the theory, which calls for farms to be independent, diverse
estates in which everything that is required for a healthy growing environment
is one ecosystem. This is not the compromised version that many grape growers
are compelled to practice.
In most wine regions, especially prosperous areas like Burgundy where
biodynamic viticulture is revered by many top producers, you see almost
nothing but a monotonous tableau of vineyards end to end.
A true biodynamic farm must be a polyculture, made up of not only diverse
crops but also untended wild areas, where beneficial birds, insects and
mammals live. This biological diversity theoretically creates symbiotic
relationships on the farm in which pests and diseases are kept in check
naturally rather than through artificial means.
Along with the vines, Le Puy has another 150 acres devoted to forests and,
among other things, fig trees, hazelnut trees and beehives. About 100 pounds
of oak-blossom honey were harvested last year.
“The ecosystem is even more important than biodynamics,” Mr. Amoreau said.
“When you work in a monoculture, it changes the fauna. You end up with more
parasites than predators. The wild areas have more predators. You have to have
wild areas around the vines to maintain a balance.”
Bordeaux has been slow to adopt organic and biodynamic viticulture. Slowly,
though, several top chateaus like Pontet-Canet in Pauillac and Palmer in
Margaux have begun to adopt the philosophy. Le Puy has been there all along.
Mr. Amoreau believes it is crucial to maintain the soft airiness of the soil,
which he says directly affects its microbial life and, eventually, the quality
of the wine. Worms, microbes and bacteria weave passages in the dirt
permitting the roots to plunge deep into the limestone bedrock, which he said
contributed elegance and finesse to the wines. To that end, Le Puy was worked
closely with Claude and Lydia Bourguignon, who are among the world’s leading
experts on soil and its relationship to wine.
In an effort to maintain the soil’s lightness, Château le Puy now uses four
horses for plowing about a third of its vines instead of heavy tractors, which
can compress and harden the earth. In those plots, every third row is left
unplowed so that tractors have a path for spraying biodynamic preparations
made of ingredients like ground quartz and stinging nettles. The unplowed row
is changed each year to minimize soil compaction. Eventually, the chateau
hopes to use the horses over its entire property.
“You need life in the ground and life in the environment to get life in the
vines,” said Harold Langlais, an associate winemaker who is also a partner in
Le Puy.
Asked to describe his overall philosophy, Mr. Amoreau replied, “We have one
guy in the cellar, 20 people in the vineyard.” Nonetheless, the winemaking
process is important as well.
Le Puy relies on indigenous yeast and easy fermentations, avoiding extracting
too much in the way of tannins and color from the grape skins and seeds, which
can make powerful but tough wines, in a phrase, less digestible.
“We prefer infusion to extraction,” Mr. Langlais said.
Emilien, the estate’s workhorse cuvée, is aged in foudres — big, old oak
barrels that impart little flavor. The wine receives a small dose of sulfur
dioxide, the wine stabilizer used almost universally except in the most
natural wines.
The limited production Barthélemy, from a single parcel, is aged in small old
barrels and receives no added sulfur dioxide, yet in each of my experiences
with the wines, it has seemed completely stable.
Le Puy also makes small amounts of a sweet white wine, Marie-Elisa, entirely
of sémillon. Remarkably, it, too, is made without sulfur, particularly
difficult for a sweet wine as the residual sugar beckons seductively to the
sort of microbes that can ruin a wine.
The entire production from 2011, one barrel, is still resting in the cellar,
having been nursed along by Mr. Hewison until he thinks it can withstand the
rigors of shipping and storage.
Tasted from the barrel, it was luscious with sweet flavors of flowers, honey
and lanolin.
“I think it’s finally stable,” said Mr. Hewison, who is planning to bottle it
in September.
At dinner in the town of St.-Émilion, we drank the 2011 Barthélemy, deep, pure
and energetic and still light and graceful; and the 2010, vibrant and richer
than the 2011, with an added element of mineral complexity. Best of all was
the 2001, with an aroma of violets, silky and complex, fine and intense.
The Emilien is a little less dense than the Barthélemy and no less pleasing.
The 2011 was fresh, direct, pure and precise with flavors of red fruits and
minerals. It ages well: A 1982 Emilien that I drank in 2016 was lovely,
complex and bright, while a 1970 displayed complex secondary flavors of
tobacco and bramble.
As with almost all of the properties in the Right Bank regions of Bordeaux, Le
Puy’s reds are dominated by merlot, with lesser proportions of cabernet
sauvignon and other grapes. As Le Puy is not within the borders of the most
prestigious appellations, Pomerol and St.-Émilion, it is less expensive than
equivalent examples of those wines, around $40 a bottle for the Emilien. The
rarer Barthélemy is expensive, costing about $150, which, in the rarefied
world of fine Bordeaux, is about the price of a good St.-Émilion from the same
vintage.
Currently, the Le Puy estate falls within the Côtes de Bordeaux appellation,
but the name of this particular region has been shuffled frequently over the
years. Previously, it has fallen under Bordeaux, Bordeaux Supérieur, Côtes de
Francs and Francs-Côtes-de-Bordeaux.
Mr. Amoreau shrugged. “We’re just Château le Puy,” he said.
2017-06-16 17:00:44.531 GMT
By ERIC ASIMOV
(New York Times) -- Correction Appended
ST.-CIBARD, France — The French have a notion that has no real counterpart in
English for discussing a delicious wine. It is digestibilité, digestibility in
English, a single word that, like terroir, connotes something far more
complex.
Digestibilité begins with deliciousness, but it also indicates wines that are
easy to drink without weighing heavily in the gut. It’s an immediate,
unmediated pleasure that nonetheless may be complex and contemplative.
The term is often used for natural wines, those produced with only minimal
intervention. That is one reason you rarely see the term applied in Bordeaux,
a wine region where the best wines, regardless of price, ought to be among the
most digestible wines in the world yet are too often weighed down by excesses
in viticulture, winemaking and reverence.
But here on a rocky plateau near this small town, just east of Pomerol and
St.-Émilion, sits Château le Puy, where the Amoreau family has grown grapes
for more than 400 years. The winery produces superb Bordeaux that epitomizes
the notion of digestibilité.
Indeed, digestibility is in a way part of Le Puy’s charter. Jean Pierre
Amoreau, the current custodian of the property — along with his wife,
Françoise; son, Pascal; and daughter, Valérie — told me on a visit to Le Puy
this spring that he has three requirements for a good wine.
First, wine must refresh. Second, the first sip must make a good impression.
And third, it must be digestible.
As with the best Bordeaux wines, those of Le Puy are marked by purity,
precision, lightness and drinkability that encourages taking another sip. They
also have an intensity of flavor despite their grace, a combination more often
associated with that other great region in the east of France.
“It’s the best Burgundy wine from Bordeaux,” said Steven Hewison, Mr.
Amoreau’s son-in-law, who is in charge of production.
Le Puy’s approximately 125 acres of vines, 50 years old on average, are
planted on a mixture of limestone, clay and flint soils that are certified
biodynamic. Le Puy is no recent convert to this now fashionable form of
organic viticulture.
Almost all agriculture was organic until after World War II, when chemical
agriculture became the norm. But not at Le Puy, where the soil has never felt
the sting of fertilizers and herbicides.
“My grandfather was too stingy to buy chemicals,” Mr. Amoreau said. His
grandfather, he said, was influenced by André Birre, a mid-20th-century
agronomist, who urged farmers to look after the health of their soils and
recommended methods not unlike biodynamics.
“Nobody in wine really talked about biodynamics until the 1990s,” Mr. Amoreau
said.
Now, Mr. Amoreau is among the most passionate advocates for biodynamics in the
true sense of the theory, which calls for farms to be independent, diverse
estates in which everything that is required for a healthy growing environment
is one ecosystem. This is not the compromised version that many grape growers
are compelled to practice.
In most wine regions, especially prosperous areas like Burgundy where
biodynamic viticulture is revered by many top producers, you see almost
nothing but a monotonous tableau of vineyards end to end.
A true biodynamic farm must be a polyculture, made up of not only diverse
crops but also untended wild areas, where beneficial birds, insects and
mammals live. This biological diversity theoretically creates symbiotic
relationships on the farm in which pests and diseases are kept in check
naturally rather than through artificial means.
Along with the vines, Le Puy has another 150 acres devoted to forests and,
among other things, fig trees, hazelnut trees and beehives. About 100 pounds
of oak-blossom honey were harvested last year.
“The ecosystem is even more important than biodynamics,” Mr. Amoreau said.
“When you work in a monoculture, it changes the fauna. You end up with more
parasites than predators. The wild areas have more predators. You have to have
wild areas around the vines to maintain a balance.”
Bordeaux has been slow to adopt organic and biodynamic viticulture. Slowly,
though, several top chateaus like Pontet-Canet in Pauillac and Palmer in
Margaux have begun to adopt the philosophy. Le Puy has been there all along.
Mr. Amoreau believes it is crucial to maintain the soft airiness of the soil,
which he says directly affects its microbial life and, eventually, the quality
of the wine. Worms, microbes and bacteria weave passages in the dirt
permitting the roots to plunge deep into the limestone bedrock, which he said
contributed elegance and finesse to the wines. To that end, Le Puy was worked
closely with Claude and Lydia Bourguignon, who are among the world’s leading
experts on soil and its relationship to wine.
In an effort to maintain the soil’s lightness, Château le Puy now uses four
horses for plowing about a third of its vines instead of heavy tractors, which
can compress and harden the earth. In those plots, every third row is left
unplowed so that tractors have a path for spraying biodynamic preparations
made of ingredients like ground quartz and stinging nettles. The unplowed row
is changed each year to minimize soil compaction. Eventually, the chateau
hopes to use the horses over its entire property.
“You need life in the ground and life in the environment to get life in the
vines,” said Harold Langlais, an associate winemaker who is also a partner in
Le Puy.
Asked to describe his overall philosophy, Mr. Amoreau replied, “We have one
guy in the cellar, 20 people in the vineyard.” Nonetheless, the winemaking
process is important as well.
Le Puy relies on indigenous yeast and easy fermentations, avoiding extracting
too much in the way of tannins and color from the grape skins and seeds, which
can make powerful but tough wines, in a phrase, less digestible.
“We prefer infusion to extraction,” Mr. Langlais said.
Emilien, the estate’s workhorse cuvée, is aged in foudres — big, old oak
barrels that impart little flavor. The wine receives a small dose of sulfur
dioxide, the wine stabilizer used almost universally except in the most
natural wines.
The limited production Barthélemy, from a single parcel, is aged in small old
barrels and receives no added sulfur dioxide, yet in each of my experiences
with the wines, it has seemed completely stable.
Le Puy also makes small amounts of a sweet white wine, Marie-Elisa, entirely
of sémillon. Remarkably, it, too, is made without sulfur, particularly
difficult for a sweet wine as the residual sugar beckons seductively to the
sort of microbes that can ruin a wine.
The entire production from 2011, one barrel, is still resting in the cellar,
having been nursed along by Mr. Hewison until he thinks it can withstand the
rigors of shipping and storage.
Tasted from the barrel, it was luscious with sweet flavors of flowers, honey
and lanolin.
“I think it’s finally stable,” said Mr. Hewison, who is planning to bottle it
in September.
At dinner in the town of St.-Émilion, we drank the 2011 Barthélemy, deep, pure
and energetic and still light and graceful; and the 2010, vibrant and richer
than the 2011, with an added element of mineral complexity. Best of all was
the 2001, with an aroma of violets, silky and complex, fine and intense.
The Emilien is a little less dense than the Barthélemy and no less pleasing.
The 2011 was fresh, direct, pure and precise with flavors of red fruits and
minerals. It ages well: A 1982 Emilien that I drank in 2016 was lovely,
complex and bright, while a 1970 displayed complex secondary flavors of
tobacco and bramble.
As with almost all of the properties in the Right Bank regions of Bordeaux, Le
Puy’s reds are dominated by merlot, with lesser proportions of cabernet
sauvignon and other grapes. As Le Puy is not within the borders of the most
prestigious appellations, Pomerol and St.-Émilion, it is less expensive than
equivalent examples of those wines, around $40 a bottle for the Emilien. The
rarer Barthélemy is expensive, costing about $150, which, in the rarefied
world of fine Bordeaux, is about the price of a good St.-Émilion from the same
vintage.
Currently, the Le Puy estate falls within the Côtes de Bordeaux appellation,
but the name of this particular region has been shuffled frequently over the
years. Previously, it has fallen under Bordeaux, Bordeaux Supérieur, Côtes de
Francs and Francs-Côtes-de-Bordeaux.
Mr. Amoreau shrugged. “We’re just Château le Puy,” he said.