Castor Membership September 2022: Terre de Lune and The Notion of Classic
The facade of Clos des Lunes-Sauternes, Bordeaux.
“Terre de Lune”
Clos des Lunes by Domaine de Chevalier “Lune Blanche”, Bordeaux, France 2019
Recently, I was asked by an old music colleague who has stumbled into an entrepreneurial career examining the idea of creativity from an artistic space, and applying that to the larger world, to appear on her podcast and talk about the idea of creativity in wine. Near the end of the episode, she asked (as she does with all of her guests from various walks of life) my definition of the word creativity. My answer: “Creativity to me is about either producing something from within yourself or drawing something from others that creates a level of positive energy for either you or them.” I find this little maxim to be true with winemakers, in particular. They obviously put a tremendous amount of physical labor (and mental/emotional pressure on themselves) to realize their end goal of producing great wine, but I think the second part of my statement, drawing positivity from others, is arguably more important. Being able to align your vineyard workers and winemaking team to some unified vision is one thing, but if you apply that idea to drawing positive energy from the land itself, you have what in my opinion is the most critical aspect of winemaking. Combine this attitude with a creative spirit that is rarely satisfied and perennially searching for some new canvas on the horizon, and you have a true artist-these are the people I like to advocate for, and my creativity exists in simply being the messenger and presenting their work to my clients with humility and love. This piece is about a famous estate whose patriarch could very easily have rested on his laurels, but instead chose to seek out a new challenge on different terrain, with an (almost) different grape varietal, and draw from the earth something positive and new…creativity personified.
Domaine de Chevalier in Leognan, Bordeaux.
Domaine de Chevalier is its own panorama; the estate seems to extend laterally 180 degrees behind rows of vines in the commune of Leognan in Bordeaux. The estate has built its reputation on being the “subtle” Chateau of the Pessac-Leognan appellation, a perfect foil to the instensity of Haut-Brion and La Mission Haut-Brion. Their quality was brought to the forefront by Claude Ricard, who inherited the property in 1942, but was forced to sell in 1983 to the large Bernard distilling firm. One might have expected that a takeover of a small, quality-driven property by a larger corporation would mean a diluted final product, but on the contrary, the Bernards retained Ricard to run the Chateau and train his eventual successor, current estate director Olivier Bernard, in making what Robert Parker called “two of the most profound wines of the Graves appellation”. Indeed, with less than 6,000 cases produced between red and white wine, Domaine de Chevalier only further cemented itself as a boutique critical darling in the ensuing decades, with prices to match. It wasn’t until 2011, however, that Olivier Bernard together with his winemaking team decided to undertake a new challenge: Purchasing the Clos des Lunes vineyard that lies just outside the village of Caplane in the sweet wine-producing commune of Sauternes. In the shadow of the Premier Cru Superieur vines of the world-renowned Chateau d’Yquem, Bernard sought to make dry white wines that would be on par with the best in the world. Production, like that of Domaine de Chevalier, is again relatively small-from the 75-hectare vineyard a total of 6,000 cases are made, spread across three different cuvees: Lune d’Or, Lune d’Argent, and Lune Blanche. Tasting the three wines, you are struck by both the dedication of the Chevalier team to produce top-quality wines, but also the relative affordability: whereas Chateau Yquem’s dry White wine, Ygrec, fetches between $150 and $200, none of the three cuvees from Clos des Lunes reach triple digits, and the Lune Blanche is a youthful offering to which the term “entry level” need not apply. The fresh, tropical beauty of these wines can be primarily traced to the setting of the Clos des Lunes itself, and the primary grape varietal, the hallmark of the sweet wines for which Sauternes is known, Semillon.
Domaine de Chevalier General Director and the force behind Clos des Lunes, Olivier Bernard.
Olivier Bernard proposes that Sauternes is the natural homeland of Semillon, and the golden-hued grape truly does find some of its most viscous and powerful examples in this low-lying area not far from the Garonne River. To perfect dry white wine in an area known for its famous raisining of the grapes by botrytis (Pourriture Noble, or “Noble Rot”, which decimates the grape skins and shrivels them, fortuitously concentrating the sugars that remain into an orange nectar), Bernard and team harvest at peak ripeness but preserve the acidity by conducting a slow pressing of the grapes in a pneumatic machine and do not macerate the grapes, thereby preserving some additional freshness from the more weighty Semillon. In keeping with Bordeaux traditions of blending, less than 1/3 of leaner, citrus-driven Sauvignon Blanc is added to the final blend, adding more freshness still. The structure of Semillon and its renowned ability to age mean that the 2019 Lune Blanche is still the current release here in 2022, and tastes lively yet richly with its time in the bottle, serving up a peek at fall fruits with one foot still firmly planted in late-summer refreshment. Sipping the Lune Blanche for my tasting notes, I am struck by the spirit that makes someone so established as Olivier Bernard pursue an entirely different venture with such zeal-of course, owning a property with the renown of Domaine de Chevalier offers the means to seek out a piece of terroir so full of potential as the Clos des Lunes, but it is one thing to wistfully plan and quite another to will a dream into reality. In both their own labor and the magic they draw from the land, the Clos des Lunes team have visited both sides of creativity, and made my own journey as a wine messenger just a little more rewarding-D.
Clos des Lunes by Domaine de Chevalier “Lune Blanche”, Bordeaux 2019
Country of Origin: France
Places and People: Owned and worked by the Bernard family of Cru Classe Pessac-Leognan Chateau Domaine de Chevalier, Clos des Lunes is a rolling vineyard sloping downwards from above the tiny village of Caplane in the Sauternes commune, just south of the vineyards of Chateau d’Yquem . The average age of the vines is 35 years, with some parts of the plot significantly older, contributing to the weight and complexity on the palate. The Clos des Lunes vineyard is 75 hectares in size and has areas that face Sauternes to the south, Bommes to the northwest, and Barsac to the north, giving varied soil types and characteristics to the final blend. Only 6,000 cases are produced in total, split across three different dry white wines.
Soil: As mentioned above, three soils exist: on the Sauternes side there are deep gravels combined with the source of groundwater for the vineyard. Facing Bommes, the gravel topsoils are buoyed by clay and limestone beneath. Finally, the Barsac side of the vineyard has alluvial deposits from the Garonne River, providing the mineral secondary notes in the wine.
Grape Varieties: 70% Semillon, 30% Sauvignon Blanc.
Winemaking: Hand-harvested and sorted (typically from mid-September to mid-October), the Lune Blanche arrives at the winery in small crates and is slowly pressed in a pneumatic wine press, without any destemming or maceration. Cold settling is carried out by gravity prior to fermentation.
Aging: Once the blend is finalized, the Lune Blanche is aged in small concrete vats for 6 to 7 months prior to bottling. The fine lees (spent yeasts left over from fermentation) are kept on the wine during this time, with regular batonnage (lees stirring) to ensure they touch as much of the wine as possible.
Flavors and Foods: The Lune Blanche is a spectacular amalgamation of its two chief influences: the Bordeaux appellation in general, and the Semillon grape in particular. All the stylistic and textural notes you’ve ever heard about white Bordeaux (steely austerity, good acidity, a nose of crushed gravel, and fruit that is reserved on the palate) are all here in abundance, and yet the wine is more giving than many of its counterparts because of the vineyard’s location within Sauternes and the emphasis on the Semillon grape variety. Rather than the grapefruit and lime tonic of Sauvignon Blanc, the Lune Blanche gives a nose of fresh apricot, white peach, golden delicious apple, and rocky earth. The palate brings along the apricot/apple blend and adds Quercy melon and papaya to the mix, along with secondary notes of orange blossom and caraway seed. Despite Semillon’s relative juiciness, Olivier Bernard and his team lend the wine a refreshing acidity that reminds of the deeply graveled soils the grapes reside in, and the finish is substantive without lingering, making the Lune Blanche a great bottle to open while cooking and continue enjoying at the table-in short, this wine demands food but will not torture your palate while you’re working in the kitchen to oblige. A perfect gateway between summer and fall, the Lune Blanche is a generous companion to both a salad featuring late summer fruits (passion fruit, first apples) and the autumnal peak of oysters, clams, and mussels. Oven-roasted cod, haddock, or Dover sole would be excellent as well.
Service and Cellar: The Lune Blanche 2019 is sitting in a fantastic “plug and play” space at the moment, and I suspect it will continue to inhabit this sense of weighty-yet-ready mouthfeel for another 1-2 years. Service temperature is best around 50 degrees F; the reserved, elegant nature of the fruit is definitely lost if your bottle lingers in the refrigerator too long, so if using a standard fridge remove the wine at least 15 minutes before serving.
An autumnal scene in the vineyards of Domaine Faury, Northern Rhone.
The Notion of Classic
Domaine Faury Syrah, IGP Colline Rhodannienes, France 2021
When it comes to good old-fashioned griping, I sit in a rather privileged spot: just young enough to complain without being labeled a crusty old grump, and just old enough to have a wide variety of life experience from which to cull said complaints. So, without further ado and with no small measure of shamelessness, I’ll tell you what I’m sick of: being bombarded with “what’s trending” in wine, and the putrid misunderstanding of the word “classic” which always seems to follow, in reference to regions, producers, or the wines themselves.
When did the word “classic” come to mean old and dusty? Because in fact, classic has nothing to do with being ancient or passe; the definition of the word refers to a high standard that has been set and maintained with consistency. Does that take time to achieve? Of course, but why in our one-click, nonstick modernity do virtues like staying power and excellence have to be outdated? Creating something that is timeless and lasts beyond ourselves is extremely difficult, and dare I say, requires humility and an understanding that one is working towards something bigger than oneself, and it is that fact that I fear we are losing in the world at large. The problem with all of these fast-paced attempts to turn wine into content and commodity like so much else of what we see in commerce is that wine is at its core precisely antithetical to these notions. Wine takes time to make, and more time for it to be ready to enjoy, and it’s often made by people whose families have been doing so for generations: building, planting, doing some of the hardest work you can find on this planet, with the idea that what they’re doing will endure. Now, let me mercifully pause all of this “get off my vineyard” drivel to speak of a family whose story I chose to highlight precisely because of my feelings on this subject: Domaine Faury in France’s Northern Rhone Valley.
A typically unsettled weather pattern in the Northern Rhone Valley.
When winemakers defy expectations, producing great wines that aren’t in keeping with a region’s established “classic” profile or using grape varieties that aren’t traditionally associated with their home turf, it’s the best kind of thrilling, but even better sometimes for me are those producers who, year in and year out, create what I’ve always called “postcard” wines: bottles that pull up a chair, stick a dot on the globe, and say YOU ARE HERE. In the Northern Rhone town of St. Joseph, the Faury family have been putting out the dictionary definition of the region’s wine style since the 1970s. Back then they were a small operation selling wine, peaches, and cherries to an entirely local clientele; then Philippe Faury reconcentrated the family’s efforts on wine and gradually built the domaine’s vineyard holdings (although not too heavily; the total production of all cuvees is still only 7,000 cases) and consequently, its reputation. Whether from their home village of St. Joseph, the celebrated steep slopes of nearby Cote Rotie, or the Viognier-lined avenues of Condrieu, Faury wines became known for a sort of rustic elegance, particularly with the region’s dominant red varietal, Syrah.
Northern Rhone Syrah is one of the more singular “region and grape” relationships in the wine world; the wines just don’t resemble anything else around. Plant this same variety in Australia or the US (or even a few miles south in the Mediterranean-influenced Southern Rhone Valley) and you have a rounder, inkier version of Syrah that is higher in alcohol and more prone to bombast than the Northern Rhone. What Northern Rhone Valley Syrah lacks in sheer size, it more than makes up for by being a case study in the word complexity. From regional IGP designated wines to the hauntingly deep fruit and varietally spiced examples of the famed Hermitage and Cote-Rotie appellations, the best bottlings of Syrah here are brimming with a savory nature that quickly becomes co-chair of the wine’s taste along with its fruit, leaving you looking for the nearest cookbook to describe all of the flavors, textures, and foods you discover with each return to your glass. Despite being on the same mostly granitic soil as the neighboring Beaujolais region’s Gamay, Syrah as a grape offers much more in terms of structure, and although the comparatively rainy, cooler climate mitigates the alcohol level, gamey meat and peppery spice abound in these wines, making them some of the most food-friendly reds around. The Faurys make their Syrahs with an innate attention to detail, soft-crushing the grapes with a pneumatic press and controlling the fermentation temperatures to preserve fresh, lively notes that can at times be lost in some examples from the region, their fruit blocked behind a wall of cigar wrapper, black pepper, and bone broth, among other notes. Another obstacle to the purity of Syrah is the use of oak: the region is traditionally known for aging the wines in concrete to preserve the Syrah’s fruit and keep it in balance, but many vignerons have responded to the call for fuller-bodied reds in past decades with an explosion of new oak usage with a grape that often doesn’t call for it in this climate. Luckily, at first Philippe and now his son Lionel (who began making the wines in 2006 and is regarded as one of the finer young winemakers in the south of France) have an aversion to the woodsy, drying notes that new oak brings these wines and use almost exclusively older, larger-format barrels.
Winemaker Lionel Faury, having taken over from his father Philippe, has overseen the domaine’s transition to sustainable viticultural practices while preserving the distinctive quality of the family’s wines.
In terms of wine style, the term classic has also been made out to be foul language: there is a segment of modern wine professionals who seem to feel that the benchmarks we have heretofore sought in outstanding wines from particular regions (ironically, the same descriptors that are regularly mentioned by many of these somms in blind tasting exams as being representative of the place they hail from) should all be thrown out the window in the name of something new, and while there’s nothing wrong with new wines or wineries in and of themselves, I find a good many writers/sales ambassadors/other trade pros choosing to promote or advocate for the NEW AND DIFFERENT over the GOOD. When I assess a wine’s quality, that’s the first, and really only question: is what’s in my glass compelling? Because if not, the backstory of the horse-plowed fields/the fact that the wine is made by an ancient tribal sect deep in the trenches of an extinct volcano/the meeting where the salesperson informs me that the wine “overdelivers” for the price (just writing the term gives me the shakes) are all meaningless. Wines should be delicious first, and THEN the story behind it can set you off on your journey with that particular bottle. When a producer like Lionel Faury can bring you those familiar pleasures year after year, the style of their wines becomes classic, and when artisanal producers make wine in classic styles, well, that’s pretty much the essence of what I hope GWC can be all about.
Planted between 1995 and Lionel’s second vintage in 2007, the vines that fall outside of the family’s appellation-classified holdings (and therefore take up the name of the regional designation Collines Rhodaniennes) are even higher in altitude than the hilly vineyards surrounding the Domaine in St. Joseph. At a scant 1.35 hectares, the Faury Collines Rhodaniennes vineyards produce very little wine (only 14 cases of the wine were imported into Virginia!), but thanks to the family’s efforts to continually produce “classic”-tasting Syrah, this regional wine is bursting with a lush main course of fruit and all of the savory trimmings. Perhaps my cranky musings on the use or misuse of the word “classic” can continue another time, but until then, pour yourself a glass and allow this “postcard” wine to pull up a chair on a steep Northern Rhone terrace facing southeast towards the mighty river. As long as there are winemakers like Lionel Faury, we will always know that sustained excellence does indeed have a taste-D.
Domaine Faury Syrah, IGP Collines Rhodannienes 2021
Country of Origin: France
Places and People: Domaine Faury has long been one of the Northern Rhone Valley’s more artisanal producers, making a scant 7,000 cases annually of all their wines in total across 4 appellations. When Philippe Faury took over the winery in 1979, the family was selling wine, peaches, and cherries to a local clientele. In 2006, his son Lionel took over, continued to build on the growth Philippe achieved, and is recognized as one of the more talented young winemakers in the Rhone. The vines for their Collines Rhodaniennes Syrah are located at a higher altitude than hilly St. Joseph and are approaching 30 years in age.
Soil: The soil for the tiny 1.35 ha vineyard of Collines Rhodaniennes Syrah is all granite.
Grape Varieties: 100% Syrah.
Winemaking: The grapes are hand-harvested and 80% de-stemmed, meaning that some whole cluster fermentation occurs, serving to add some spice and savory notes to the wine. After a 10-day maceration of the fruit in temperature-controlled cuves (small vats) with daily pump-overs of juice and punch-downs of the cap of skins/seeds(performed by foot in the traditonal manner rather than with tools), the wine is transferred to demi-muids (larger oak barrels) to undergo malolactic (secondary) fermentation.
Aging: The Collines Rhodaniennes Syrah is aged for six months in wooden demi-muids (all older, between 3 and 10 years).
Flavors and Foods: The Faury Collines Rhodaniennes Syrah is a “postcard” wine-one look, one sniff, one sip, and you are transported to the Northern Rhone Valley. This wine is the definition of “classic” Northern Rhone Syrah-an electric, inky color on sight, a nose of black raspberry, Italian plums, figs, wild strawberries, cigar wrapper, dried bouquets of roses and violets, and fresh thyme-in short, this medium-bodied wine makes up in complexity what it lacks in hugeness-every smell and taste is something new. The palate is also textbook Syrah, but with a nice depth of concentration of inky fruit that enhances the elegantly rustic savory aspects. The wild strawberries on the nose become more raspberry-like in your mouth, with the Italian plums still residing midway through your palate giving way to a savory symphony of grilled gamey meat or dry-aged lean steak, black olive, anchovy, and homemade beef stock. The finish has a distinct hint of seasoned white oak which is, thankfully, not accompanied by drying tannins (think wood-fired cooking more than overtly oaky notes). The Faury style of barrel aging with older, larger barrels allows flavors rather than structural influence to come through the wood. A perfect bridge from late summer to early fall, this wine is ideal with lamb or lean, fibrous beef cuts (flank, bavette) grilled over a wood fire-if you have the time and space to skip the gas grill, you’ll be much rewarded for the harmony wood brings to the “country” elements of this wine. Fresh herbs (thyme, sage) would be excellent rubbed into your protein of choice, and I heartily recommend a grainy starch (think farro, lentils), preferably cooked in a pot over that same wood fire and reduced in homemade stock and a dash of this very wine, should you be able to part with any.
Service and Cellar: The Faury Syrah Collines Rhodaniennes is undoubtedly intended to be enjoyed in its youth, but the structure of the wine definitely lends another 3-5 years for this to open and be enjoyed while still maintaining its fruit. Given the granitic soil on which the vines are planted, the Faury does well with a slight chill on it (56-58 degrees F, either pulled straight from a red wine cooler or 15 minutes in a standard refrigerator), which serves to smooth out but not sacrifice all of the savory goodies mentioned above.