This might seem like another non -sequiter from amphora wines, but this is an important preamble.
Last week, I was at Ten Bells, wondering where vigneron Thierry Puzelat was, oh, probably out there somewhere in Brooklyn getting a black eye or something, while I was drinking K, the gorgeous Marsanne from Dard et Ribo.
I didn't catch the vintage but would have to be 2008, though tasted more like the kick ass 2007, decanted. The night was just rolling and vigneron Eric Texier ran over to me and urgently asked, 'What's the guys name!"
Eric last year in France.
Eric, give me a hint!' I asked.
'Neauport!'
"Jacques!"
Eric runs away to continue a conversation elsewhere in the moshpit. I run after Eric.
'You just can't invoke that name and run away," I complained, knocking back another gulp.
And that's when he started on the trouble with the modern interpretation of Chauvet and sidekick Jacques Neauport.
This is actually ground breaking news and I am hesitant to give it away for free. So, if you're a journalist or a blogger, and you want to use this information, you better give me credit or interview me, or I'll haunt you and your first born (or wife, or husband or nearest relative) down, until you check into the 5th floor of Gracie Square Hospital, or hand over your column to me, because actually, I am really over my work being used without credit by people who have paying jobs. Okay?
Now that we have an agreement, I'll go on.
Chauvet is considered the big daddy of the Modern vin naturel movement for his work on making wine without sulfur. However, that is not in whole truth, Eric said. "Chauvet never advocated making wine without sulfur. And he only advocated cold carbinoc maceration with Gamay on Granite soils."
Today, this method is practices by Chauvetists everywhere on every grape and on every soil. The hardcore naturalists don't use sulfur even at bottling.
'Chauvet, in his written publications explained 2 things :- the use of SO2 during microbiological transformations (Alcoholic and malolatic fermentations at least) as a powerful way to select yeast or bacteria strains that will orientate the aromatic expression.'
And this means, Chauvet was extremely against using any S02 during the fragile, transformative time from grape to wine, which is basic to vin naturelists.
Eric continued, 'Chauvet never said anything about the use of SO2 as a stabilization agent when these transformation are over and further more for the bottling. By the way, there are a lot of evidence that Chauvet never bottled without adding sulfur.
Then he and I discussed the problem with the 'Chauvet' method of cold carbonic mascaeration, a technique that reduces almost all of its wine to gulpable vin de soif but seems to eradicate terroir.
Except for some producers, such as Andrea Calek, that mad Czech guy with a trailer domicile in the wild Ardeche who's wines are carbonic but its taste is more traditional. This is interesting and would support Chauvet's thesis if his vines are on granite, but then, his grape is not Gamay.
So, case in point, while i'm crazy over the wines of Axel Prufer, or from Eric Pfifferling, just delicious stuff, can I really taste the difference in the carginan from grenache?
Eric graciously continued, 'The semi carbonic maceration was in Chauvet mind the best way to express Granitic Terroirs from the Beaujolais. He wrote down somewhere that applying it to grenache was an heresy!!! Neauport, meanwhile, was advocating the cold carbonic maceration for all terroirs and all grapes.'
But till a mystery for me is that where Neauport is barely remembered (he is, alive and very much kicking, by the way), Chauvet-ists, if I'm to believe Eric, are really Neauportists, and they don't know it.
The conversation ended, I slugged back some of Overnoy/Houillon Ploussard before I hopped the bike and ran back home, while others headed up north for more drinking and from what I understand, naked combat.
