Wine Tasting, Vineyards, in France

Fiber vats with 2015 wineHarvest or vinification activity had ceased in Karim’s chai, it was all quiet and even the press had been put to rest and disassembled. He says it’s all dry already, this year the harvest and vinification were both early and swift. His own harvest began september 5 and lasted 2 and a half days for 5 hectares with 14 pickers. Amazing, the ideal harvest for a grower I guess, no time lost to sort out the grapes, money spared and healthy grapes. His pickers come from Poland now, he says the ambiance is less festive than in other picking teams but they’re very focused and reliable. He says before it was very stressful to manage the picking, especially that he had 10 hectares to pick.

It’s now the 3rd year he works with these poles and he’s very happy with them, in the years sorting is necessary they learn how to do it and they work fine even without years of experience. This harvest was also very different for him because his father passed away at about the same time than the beginning of the harvest, and he is still struggling to come to terms with it.

In this new place (I never visited his former facility) he says he has more room and he also can cool down the grapes before the carbonic macerations when before he had to do it at Guy Breton (nicknamed P’tit Max by his peers) or using cooling coils that were not powerful enough to go under 15 °C (59 ° F). Here in this wine farm he has a refrigerated room (here pictured on right) which is more efficient and where he can store large loads of grapes.

The now-disassembled vertical pressHe moved in in 2010 and the former owner still used to make wine in here, it was at the peak of its activity a large négoce, there were 40 vats in there. Asked about the age of this press he says he has no idea, it was given to him by Jean Foillard, one day he was having a problem with his press and Foillard told him he had a press (this one) which he could take if he wanted. If you look well you can see that it can be moved laterallywith low steel wheels, which can be very convenient in a chai.
In the early years of the domaine he made his wine in Beaujeu, about 13 km from here through winding roads, in a place equipped with a similar but much larger vertical press. This one looks big but he says it’s almost too small esdpecially that in the vats prior to the pressing the whole-clustered grapes take a lot of space because of the stems, and it’s tricky to have a whole batch fit in the press, especially that he doesn’t like to tamp the grapes, he prefers to tighten a bit and let drain, take more time. He says his pressings take almost 2 days each time. This is a long pressing time indeed. And he says that this year he cut [the cake] three times (to finetune the pressing by rearranging the compressed must). Before coming here he was renting a vatroom at Jean-Luc Gauthier in Villié-Morgon but here he found in a single place his home and his facility.

Cement fermentersHere are a few cement fermenters for the carbonic maceration Beaujolais style. Karim saw a picture of Aaron doing the forking job at Metras, and we speak about the danger and issue of CO2 that can make you faint and pass away when you’re in a fermenter. Karim says he workssometimes alone to devat a fermenter (he generally avoids to be alone) but then he opens the vat as soon as he pumps the freerun juice away and it helps already for the ventilation of the CO2, and he also puts a fan above the fermenter to accelerate the air renewal.

Speaking of the carbonic maceration length this year he says they were from 10 to 12 days, and this year he didn’t use the density to decide the start of the pressing (usually he presses between 1000 & 998 except for the primeurs), this time he took the decision from the tasting of the juice alone, the reason was there is high potential alcohol in 2015 and he didn’t want to risk having sluggish fermentations because of lack of good wild yeast, which could have happened if he waited too much. He had problems related to this issue in 2009 and he didn’t want to repeat that. Also, after the pressing he used to cool down the vats but he didn’t do it this year because of the risk to cripple the yeast. This year he’s very happy with the way the vinications unfolded, and with the cool temperatures (when we visited) he could temperate the vats by just opening the doors at night [now you know when to come if you want to taste Karim’s ne wine…;-) ] which leaves the vats at an average temperature between 16 and 17 ° C (60,8 ° to 62,6 ° F). The malolactic don’t start yet, the sugar is eaten slowly, that’s perfect for him, and anyway there’s now plenty of time for the rest of the vinification, he’s confident.

Standing vatsAlso Karim says that he decided not to put his wines in barrels : he used to have all his élevages in wood but he stopped because he got some trouble with his 2011 wines, with volatile and brett showing up in certain cuvées. Chatting about this problem around him, he followed the advice of Jean-Claude Chanudet from domaine Chamonard who gave him the advice to stop using wood. Chanudet who is nicknamed “le Chat” by his peers is a discreet but very important actor among the small group of natural winemakers in the area. Since 2014 he stopped using casks but oddly at tasting there remains something akin to discreet wood, as if the wine kept the expression of its previous vintages. Also as he had moved over here in this new place he wanted to start on firm ground and get rid of these volatile and brett accidents, so stopping the use of wood at least for a few years was the right and secure option for now.
He has still wine to be bottled that has had an élevage in wood, like the Moulin-à-Vent 2013 which has now been racked in this fiber vat pictured on left, this was the last vintage where he used casks, after which he threw them all away.

As said his present surface for the 2nd consecutive year is 5 hectares (down from a peak of 10 in 2013) but he has plans to buy grapes from someone in the Moulin-à-Vent area, the idea being to have the grower do the right work done on the soils and the organic sprayings, and then he’d vinify the grapes under a négoce mode, this would be like if he augmented a bit his surface without having to go over there do the plowing and sprayings.

Beaujolais Villages__ Karim Vionnet Beaujolais Villages 2014, the entry cuvée. Vines on Lancié and Beaujeu. Bottled end of july 2015, being delivered to Paris shops soon (Petit Celestin, Caves de Reuilly). I like the substance, my stomach sings as I down this first sample, that’s usually a good omen. Chew is pleasurable.

Speaking of SO2, since 2014 he adds a gram at bottling, that’s very little but enough to avoid the problems he had years ago, like in 2010. In 2014 some cuvées had SO2 some not, now all get this symbolic gram. For the filtration it’s case per case, if he considers this is an issue he makes a tangential filtration, which is very respective of the wines. The Beaujolais Villages are unfiltered here. And when he used the élevage in barrels he never filtered, he would just stop from taking the wine at the bottom of the barrels, blend all these bottoms together and just filter this part and blend it back to the rest.

Du Beur dans les Pinards 2014__ Du Beur dans les Pinards, Beaujolais-Villages 2014. A new cuvée made from vineyards belonging to Jules Chauvet, near where Christophe Pacalet also recovered Jules Chauvet parcels, near La Chapelle de Guinchay. Karim says that the vineyard is not that old, maybe between 45 and 50 years. The back label states these are from the vineyards of Jules Chauvet, this was a requirement from his niece who rents him the parcels. On the other hand he noticed that when he took over the parcels they were being sprayed with herbicides, they’re now farmed organic of course. Anyway the wild yeast population was still very active as Karim says from the start he had no problem using the wild yeast, whatever type of farming was in place there before.
Nice nose with depth, exciting. Mouth : nervousness, unctuosity and freshness. You drink that so easily, lovely wine, Aaron loves it too. 4000 bottles only, should go away pretty fast. Unfiltered wine too.

The name needs some explanations, it derives from the French expression “du beurre dans les épinards” something you say when you got a bit extra money that will allow you to “add a bit of butter in your spinach”, to say it shortly. Here Beur which sounds like beurre (butter) is a French slang word for Arab, the name was kind of invented by the socialists under François Mitterrand in the 1980s’ to curry favor with the growing North African youth living in France, young Arabs at the time calling themselves willingly beurs to assume their difference. Karim being from North African origin wanted to highlight humoristically his origin by including the name. With pinards (slang for wines) instead of épinards (spinach) he had a funny game of words to tell about his origin…

Chiroubles__ Vin de KaV Chiroubles 2014. KaV for Karim Vionnet and KaV sounding like Cave (cellar) of course. Vineyards located a bit below the Col [pass] du Truges which has an elevation of 480 meters. The parcels there are exposed on the north, and this year it was very nice, no sorting to do, the quality was optimal, and with only 12,66 % in alcohol with a super good Ph.
Nose is discreet. Gourmandise in the mouth, delicious. Light filtration (tangential filtration). I feel some notes of coffee and mokka maybe.

Speaking of his prices, his entry Beaujolais Villages costs 8 € tax included at the domaine, the Beur 11 €, the Kav 13 €, the Chénas 15 € and his Moulin à Vent 17 €.

Chénas 2014__ Chénas 2014.
I feel notes of coffee and mokka on the nose. In the mouth : what a chew !! that’s something. The 2nd mouth is more on the acidity, this goes down very well. Karim says that this cuvée is traditionally more aerial.
The vineyard is located near the Beaujolais Villages of La Chapelle Guinchay, on a relatively flat surface, 1 km from the Chauvet parcels he uses for Beur. Here in 2014 the vinification was very easy like usual in this vintage, the carbonic maceration lasted something between 16 and 18 days.

Moulin à Vent 2012__ Moulin à Vent 2012. He doesn’t have these vineyards now, this was a rental. Vineyards aged 60 years on average for the oldest, the youngest are 40. He can’t afford buying surface there, having already invested a lot in his new facility. Recently some surface in Moulin à Vent was solt for 90 000 € an hectare (Morgon costs now between 60 and 70 000 €/ha, Fleurie 100k) and the price hike is also fact that outsiders with money come here, like wineries from Burgundy.

Nose : heady and expressive, a bit lactic too says Aaron. The color is relatively clear and turbid. Mouth : delicious ! intense. Again my stomach seems to applaud. Tannins well refined. The wine is meaty, fresh, superb.

Karim Vionnet’s wines are exported to Japan (VinsCoeur), the United States (Savio Soares), Canada (Quebec – Oenopole), Belgium (Godaert – Cuvée), Denmark (Pétillant), Poland (Bistro Rozbrat), Germany (la Vincaillerie), Australia (Demilt Wines)

The best time of the visit…