Domaine de Bellivière - Keeping it Real in the Northern Loire

The northern most vineyards in western France are in the Loire Valley appellations of Jasnières and Coteaux du Loir. The Chenin Blancs from these places have never been as sought after as those from Vouvray, Montlouis, or Savennières. Probably because this is a difficult region to grow wine grapes - it's cold and ripeness does not come easily. And there hasn't exactly been a plethora of inspired grower/producers either.

In the late 1990's inspired wine making came to Jasnières and Coteaux du Loir in the form of Eric and Christine Nicolas who own and operate Domaine de Bellivière. They are firmly in the healthy farming/natural winemaking camp. When they replant they use sélection massale or cuttings from old vines (as opposed to using clones), they plow all of their vineyard surface to aerate and to remove weeds (as opposed to spraying with herbicides), they harvest entirely by hand, and fermentation is achieved via naturally occurring yeasts. They have been fully organic since 2005 and as of 2008 farm their entire estate biodynamically.
All of this is meaningless, though, if the wines don't taste good. Well, they taste very good, sometimes great. There are sweet wines made in vintages that promote botrytisized grapes, but the workhorses of the Domaine in the white wine department are the four dry to off-dry Chenin Blancs, two from Coteaux du Loir and two from Jasnières. The Coteaux du Loir wines are L'Effraie (The Owl) from younger vines, and Vieilles Vignes Éparses (Scattered Old Vines) from vines of between 50-80 years old, scattered among several different plots. The Jasnières wines are Les Rosiers from younger vines and Caligramme, another old vines cuvée.

Of Bellivière's wines, the Jasnières are more accessible, more typical in their Chenin Blanc character, and more expensive. The single finest Bellivière wine I've had is the 2006 Rosiers (haven't tasted the other 06's yet though). I guess you might say that the Jasnières wines are "better." But in general I prefer Bellivière's Coteaux du Loir wines because of their unique terroir stamp.

L'Effraie and Vieille Vignes Éparses both show classic Chenin Blanc characteristics - aromas and flavors that include wool, wax, quince and other orchard fruit, herbs, honey, and minerals. But they show something else too, something that I have experienced in no other wine: distinct aromas of what I would call fir tree and wintergreen. Even in a hot and ripe vintage like 2005 when the wines were richer and sweeter than usual, these trademark aromas were still evident amidst all of the fruit.

If you're interested in Loire whites, all of these are definitely worth trying. Here are notes from bottles I drank in the past few months:

2004 Domaine de Bellivière Coteaux du Loir L'Effraie, $22. An incredibly strange wine, but I love it. This is all about fir trees and herbs - wintergreen, mint, bay leaves. The palate is fresh, not oxidized, and still kind of grippy. This has a long life ahead of it and I wish I had more. It reminds me of Oregon's Clear Creek Douglass Fir Eau de Vie.

2005 Domaine de Bellivière Vieille Vignes Éparses, $18 (because Chambers Street has it on closeout for some reason - it should be closer to $30). Like the 2004, this wine is bursting with fir notes. As per the vintage, this wine is fuller and thicker than the 2004, and I don't think that's a good thing in this case - the lithe intensity of the '04 made more sense to me. Decent acidity, a smoky herbal finish, this paired beautifully with my friend Adam's roast pork shoulder stuffed with lemon rind and capers.

2005 Domaine de Bellivière Jasnières Les Rosiers, $18 (again, closeout at Chambers Street). This has a lot of residual sugar and not enough acidity to elevate the wine. It is good, but not memorable. I preferred 2004 of this wine, and prefer the Coteaux du Loir wines in 2005.

2006 Domaine de Bellivière Jasnières Les Rosiers, not yet released. A much more complete wine than the 2005, this one shows its beautiful honeyed fruit but also a thick layer of minerals. It is on day 3 when the wine really begins to open up, showing broad and expansive flavors of classic Chenin wool, lime, and gorgeous delicate bitter honey. Super fresh and with good acidity, this is delicious wine that will age gracefully.

Bellivière's wines are imported by Louis/Dressner Selections.

Stagecoach Tavern: Taking it to the Country

It's not the heat, it's the humidity that gets you. I first heard that line in Houston, Texas in the summer of 1994. And it's still true. I don't mind if the thermometer tops 100, as long as it's dry heat. But even a mildly hot day, say 87, can feel unbearable when it's also very humid.

It's been hot and very humid in NYC for much of the summer so far. BrooklynLady and I were incredibly excited to get out of the city on a recent weekend, excited to escape the heat but also show the BrooklynBabyGirl to a more rural setting. We went to northwest Connecticut to see her grandparents and then left her with them for Saturday night and went for a little husband and wife time in nearby Sheffield, Massachusetts. Right near Great Barrington. It's gorgeous there - horse farms everywhere, rolling hills, thick forest on the side of the roads.

But it was incredibly hot and humid. And there were way more mosquitoes.

We still had a blast, and one highlight was the Stagecoach Tavern, the unassuming but delicious restaurant where we ate dinner. Lots of local food featured, including specials of fiddlehead ferns and baby turnips. BrooklynLady's salad was simple and delicious, buttery bibb lettuce and sparky radishes with a subtle lemon dressing. Her braised chicken was excellent and my hangar steak with braised local greens and the aforementioned baby turnips was truly excellent. Without trying to do too much, this was a delicious and satisfying meal, and we loved every minute of it.

And get this - the wine list was wonderful. So many wines that I would have loved to enjoy with our dinner, it was hard to select just one. It's as if many of my favorite wines got sick of the heat in NYC and went for a weekend vacation, and happened to stay in this same little town.

I have this thing for pairing blood-rich cuts of meat like hangar steak with full bodied Chenin Blanc. BrooklynLady likes Chenin Blanc too...so it was settled. Too hot and humid for red wine anyway. We loved our bottle of 2004 Domaine de Belliviere Jasnières Les Rosiers. Who knew that the Dressners have invaded small town Massachusetts? More complex than I remember, this wine had a great summer fruit perfume and also a slight woolly funk, just a lovely nose. An energetic feeling on the palate, with great purity, richness, and also elegance. Not really off-dry, but not entirely dry wither. Maybe vin-tendre would be the right designation. A delicious wine that paired well with everything we ate, including my medium-rare hangar steak. There's something about the way high quality Chenin from the Loire compliments the pure mineral bloodiness of hangar steak. Maybe it's just me...

Roundup - Recent Sips

Its been a really good wine drinking month. I've tasted a few wines that have been on my "wish list" for a while, others that I've been meaning to try and finally found a good excuse to open, and new releases of yet other wines that I taste each year. Since I never seem to be able to write here about all of the tasting that interests me (and that potentially would interest you), here is a roundup of interesting wines from the past month:

Burgundy (yes - I still drink Burgundy wines, and still love them the most!)
2001 Domaine Rollin Pernand-Vergelesses, $30 (375ml). Drank at a restaurant, so retail would be about $12-15, I imagine. I post this to warn you - a lot of Burgundy suffered from too little sun, grapes were under-ripe. This parcel in the plucky village of Pernand-Vergelesses clearly fell into that category. This wine was thin, shrill, and green. Buy carefully in 2001...

2002 Sylvan Cathiard Vosne Romanee, $25 (secondary market). This was a Deetrane purchase at auction on Wine Commune. Too early to open it, and we knew it, but why not taste a bottle when you get a case at auction? This wine was deep ruby colored, a reserved and tight nose that showed a lot of iron, some underbrush. After a half hour open the fruit makes an appearance, lovely red berries and dark fruit too, but then recedes again, replaced by pine and leaves. This wine is chock full or potential, which is why I bought three of them from Deetrane (tertiary market?!?) to lay down in the cellar for a while.

Oregon
2003 Sineann Pinot Noir Phelps Creek, $40. What a pleasant surprise this wine was! An Oregon Pinot from cult producer Peter Rosback, but not from the Willamette Valley. This is from Hood River County. I sometimes find Sineann's wines to be too big, to overdo it a little. From a tough hot vintage, this wine is a perfect candidate for overdoing it, but it was great. Pretty garnet color with rich sweet smells of blue fruit and earth. After a half hour open, the aromas really blossomed: distinct mushroom and lavender aromas followed the dark berry fruit. The palate did not live up to the nose in complexity, but was certainly sweet and sappy, with a pleasant earthy finish. I wish I had more of this wine.

2004 Adelsheim Pinot Noir Bryan Creek Vineyard, $48. You know, I'm starting to wonder about Adelsheim. I have been seriously disappointed with their single vineyard wines from the 2004 vintage. Did they change wine makers? Change something else? I will have to call and ask, because the style certainly changed. This wine was clunky and heavy, and not because it's too young. You can sense when a wine is just tight and disjointed, but might unwind nicely. That is not this wine. Too much alcohol heat, too little fruit, nothing really here that comes close to meriting the $48.

2005 Belle Pente Willamette Valley Pinot Gris, $17. Pinot Gris is now the number one white wine coming out of Oregon. There is a lot of great Gris out there and a lot of mediocre wine. This grape, known as Pinot Grigio in Italy, can create crisp and light (and in my opinion, insipid) wine, or as in Alsace, richer more floral, more nuanced wine. Most Oregon Pinot Gris producers veer toward the Alsace style and there are some fantastic wines at really good prices. This is not one of them. Austere to the point of boredom. Sure, the wine has nice citrus notes and it is clean tasting, but there is not enough going on to keep me interested, even as a stand alone sipper.

Loire Valley
2004 Cazin Cour-Cheverny, $12. Rough and tough, an acidic and briny wine, very good with shellfish. Not easy to drink on its own though, and needs food. I'm not yet sure how I feel about this bottle. I liked it more at the Real Wine Attack tasting than I did at home with dinner, and that's the opposite of what usually happens with me. I have another bottle so we'll see in a few weeks...

2005 Domaine de Belliviere Jasnieres Les Rosiers, $28. Away from the more famous Loire villages of Vouvray, Chinon, and Sancerre, there lies the Loir river, the masculine counterpart to the Loire. White grape is still the eloquent and majestic Chenin Blanc, appellations are called Coteaux de Loir and Jasnieres. This producer is the one making waves with wines from these appellations, and there is good reason for this. There are four white cuvees each year, an incredible and fascinating rose made from the forgotten grape Pinot D'Aunis, and a red wine that I have never tasted. The most expensive clocks in at under $30, and all of the wines are wonderful with food, clean, well balanced, and expressive. This wine is no exception. Deep gold in color with an interesting nose, new to me I must say, of soy sauce and ginger, with some honey and roses, although that might have been the power of suggestion, as 'Les Rosiers' is the name of the wine, and there are rose bushes bookending the vines. A sweet nectary palate, a big wine, but lots of underlying tension - the wine feels alive on the tongue. It's not going to get any more interesting than this, folks.

2005 Mark Angeli Anjou La Lune, $26. I first read about this producer on the Wine Doctor's site, and then again on Dressner's site. Even just a quick read and you gotta admit - sounds interesting, right? So I finally grabbed a few bottles and popped one the other night with some roast cod. I am in love with this wine - LOVE, I tell ya. So pure, such a lovely nose of white fruit and flowers with a touch of honey. And the palate is a study in tension: acidity, minerals, sweet fruit, delicate floral flavors, all happening at once. There is a full mouth feel, like a dessert wine. And you can tell that this wine has plenty of growing to do in the bottle. If you have the opportunity, you really should spend the $26 (?!?) on a bottle of this wine. I will certainly be buying more myself.

Spain
2001 Bodegas Muga Rioja Reserva, price unknown. Deetrane opened this the other night, and he bought it retail, not from some shadowy crook. How do you like that? I enjoy Rioja in general, as long as I can taste wine and not only new American oak. This wine started off pretty woody, but a little time in the glass brought out plenty of juicy black cherries and a bit of meatiness to go along with the vanilla scented oak. Very enjoyable indeed, and would be better with food, I imagine.

California (huh? I know, I don't usually go there, but it's a crazy unpredictable world...)
1999 Simi Reserve Cabernet Sauvignon Alexander Valley, $45. I enjoyed this tremendously. Lush and dark, very aromatic with cassis and spices, dark fruit too. Smooth round tannins. Took a while to open up, but very nice. This is 93% Cab and 7% Petit Verdot. Really fun to drink this with a flank steak, so unusual in our household. BrooklynLady really liked it too.

2001 Hafner Cabernet Sauvignon Alexander Valley, $32. Brooklynlady's dad turned us on to this wine. It's his house red, essentially. Not available in stores, you have to order it from the winery or at restaurants. After tasting it at pop-in-law's house a few years ago, I ordered a half case and have been slowly making my way through it. This, the third bottle, was the best so far. I probably should have let them all age a little bit. We cracked this at Mike's house at a recent holiday dinner and everyone, including seasoned California Cab fiends, was really impressed. I thought it was very good - creamy dark cassis and plums, very round and smooth.