Wednesday, July 9, 2008
Today we headed to the Chablis region and had a very interesting talk from a viticultural consultant about the soils of Chablis, and the underlying geology. Best talk of the trip thus far, in my opinion. There are several layers of soil profiles surrounding Paris, and they appear in concentric rings.
Chablis is famous for producing Chardonnay wines with minerality and crisp acidity. This is said to come from the underlying limestone soil, that created calcareous soils. Basically, clay with big limestone rocks, and 30 cm deep you hit a pure limestone layer. The limestone layer will be either solid, or fairly crumbly.
A long time ago, this area was a sea that rose and subsided several times. The solid pieces were deeper water, and the crumbly layers were the shoreline areas. The resulting wine from the land over the solid bits will have higher minerality, and be tighter. The wine over the crumbly soil will be more open and fruity. Best description of soil and resulting wine I have heard, and I think the wines from this region are the best expression of the effect of terroir.
There is a big problem of spring frost in this area, and there are different means to protect the young shoots in April. A common and inexpensive means is sprinklers, but we saw a new method that was pretty extreme. They put a resistant wire along the bottom trellis wire, and then run current through the wire to provide heat. Wow. The obvious question was cost, which is about 25,000 Euros/hectare (~$16k/acre at 1euro=$1.60) just for the materials. Additional cost for installation and running the electricity to the vineyard make this an expensive proposition. This will provide either 10watts/meter or 20w/m in a pulse type application. I’m not sure exactly how much heat that provides, but it seems like it might protect the young shoots. He did point out that if a freeze hit in May, they shoots would be too far away from the heating element. Very interesting, and another example of how much money they put into the vineyards here.
I still can’t reconcile the vineyard costs here with the relatively low prices, compared to California wines. Once an accountant, always an accountant I guess…
We saw more interesting things in the vineyard as well. The pruning system in Chablis is unique, where they have a successive cane pruning system. We also saw a helicopter spraying a nearby field, and some unique over the row tractors. These are really neat tractors that straddle the trellis, and can handle slopes pretty well. Neat stuff. There was also a fair amount of lime induced iron chlorosis, which is an iron deficiency caused by heavy rainfall in lime soils. The rain messes up the ion gradient that the root has created, and the plant cannot take up iron. It will recover. We saw a lot of this in Switzerland.
We then visited Domaine Borgnat, where one of the Summer University’s coordinators has ties. They have a very old cave and winery, that is essentially a castle. It has been in that family for countless generations. They treated us to an incredible spread at lunch, that included all of the wines they make. Wow. Crémant (a sparkling wine), Aligoté, Rosé (really Pinot Gris made like a red wine, not a white wine), two Pinot Noirs, and a third that includes an ancient variety César. Then an almond flavored liqueur and a grappa, but I had to pass on this round. The sausage at lunch was quite interesting, and to put it lightly, “gamey”. Always good to try something new, but this one was not in my ballpark.
Instead of a nap, we then headed to a cooperative Crémant producer that is located in a giant cave, about 10 acres underground. It was a former limestone quarry, then a mushroom farm. Incredible place, albeit really moldy and wet. There were several sculptures put into the walls by local artists. Annual production of 3 million bottles, with an average of three years in the cave. So, about 9 million bottles in the cave. Wow.
We tried the wines, and they were alright. Not really my cup of tea. But Kathe & I tried a kir, which is white wine with Crème de Casis. Now we’re talking. We had to escape the mold smell, so we went out and took some neat pictures with our new friends Andrew & Nicole from Cal Poly.
We went to dinner with them that night, and had a really nice spread, including a Sicilian Chardonnay blend that was quite nice.
There is a big problem of spring frost in this area, and there are different means to protect the young shoots in April. A common and inexpensive means is sprinklers, but we saw a new method that was pretty extreme. They put a resistant wire along the bottom trellis wire, and then run current through the wire to provide heat. Wow. The obvious question was cost, which is about 25,000 Euros/hectare (~$16k/acre at 1euro=$1.60) just for the materials. Additional cost for installation and running the electricity to the vineyard make this an expensive proposition. This will provide either 10watts/meter or 20w/m in a pulse type application. I’m not sure exactly how much heat that provides, but it seems like it might protect the young shoots. He did point out that if a freeze hit in May, they shoots would be too far away from the heating element. Very interesting, and another example of how much money they put into the vineyards here.
I still can’t reconcile the vineyard costs here with the relatively low prices, compared to California wines. Once an accountant, always an accountant I guess…We saw more interesting things in the vineyard as well. The pruning system in Chablis is unique, where they have a successive cane pruning system. We also saw a helicopter spraying a nearby field, and some unique over the row tractors. These are really neat tractors that straddle the trellis, and can handle slopes pretty well. Neat stuff. There was also a fair amount of lime induced iron chlorosis, which is an iron deficiency caused by heavy rainfall in lime soils. The rain messes up the ion gradient that the root has created, and the plant cannot take up iron. It will recover. We saw a lot of this in Switzerland.
We then visited Domaine Borgnat, where one of the Summer University’s coordinators has ties. They have a very old cave and winery, that is essentially a castle. It has been in that family for countless generations. They treated us to an incredible spread at lunch, that included all of the wines they make. Wow. Crémant (a sparkling wine), Aligoté, Rosé (really Pinot Gris made like a red wine, not a white wine), two Pinot Noirs, and a third that includes an ancient variety César. Then an almond flavored liqueur and a grappa, but I had to pass on this round. The sausage at lunch was quite interesting, and to put it lightly, “gamey”. Always good to try something new, but this one was not in my ballpark.
Instead of a nap, we then headed to a cooperative Crémant producer that is located in a giant cave, about 10 acres underground. It was a former limestone quarry, then a mushroom farm. Incredible place, albeit really moldy and wet. There were several sculptures put into the walls by local artists. Annual production of 3 million bottles, with an average of three years in the cave. So, about 9 million bottles in the cave. Wow.
We tried the wines, and they were alright. Not really my cup of tea. But Kathe & I tried a kir, which is white wine with Crème de Casis. Now we’re talking. We had to escape the mold smell, so we went out and took some neat pictures with our new friends Andrew & Nicole from Cal Poly.
We went to dinner with them that night, and had a really nice spread, including a Sicilian Chardonnay blend that was quite nice.
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