At the 2010 Academy Awards for Excellence Louise Gordon, head sommelier at London’s Clos Maggiore, won the Louis Jadot & Savoy Educational Trust Sommelier Scholarship.
Louise was singled out as being an excellent ambassador for her hotel and for the role of sommellerie and as someone who as well as holding down a demanding position has found time to gain her Diploma in Wine and teach at Academy seminars.
The award, supported by the Savoy Educational Trust, offered the winner an educational visit to the Burgundy region and first hand practical experience in advanced technical vineyard and winery procedures.
Here is her account of her trip to France…
On arrival in Beaune I headed straight out to Mâcon to meet with the Château Ferret winemaker Audrey Braccini. Audrey drove us to a vantage point where we could see the hills of Pouilly Fuissé spread out below us. Here Audrey talked about the history of the estate and in particular the influence of the women behind it and the issues she first faced when she joined the estate. It was first established in 1740 and was one of the first properties in Pouilly-Fuissé to bottle its own wines, more than 60 years ago, a move which was put in to place by Jeanne Ferret. When she died in 1993 her daughter Colette took over and when Jadot purchased the property in 2008 they continued the female touch by inserting Audrey as winemaker.
Audrey explained the layout of the vineyards to me and said that she is hoping for Premier Cru status for some plots as early as 2014. She is a true oenophile and does not like being called a winemaker, she prefers to be thought of as a caretaker, believing the terroir can produce the best grapes that it can and the wine can give a pure expression of that terroir. Indeed, this is a theme that seems to run throughout the winemaking philosophy of Jadot and its affiliates.
After a tour of the vinery we made our way across the petit courtyard, a tight squeeze for trucks with grapes on – especially after you see the narrow roads around the estate, and into the cellar for a tasting. Now I fully admit to never having done a comprehensive tasting of Pouilly Fuissé and am very glad that I had the chance to do so here. Audrey had selected some bottles of which my favourite two are below:
Château AJ Ferret, Pouilly-Fuissé, Autour de Fuisse 2009 – Some lovely warm toasty notes of foie gras, banana and apricot on the nose with good follow-through to a rounded palate. A nice mellow finish with good supporting acidity lends itself nicely to white meat, maybe even pork belly.
Château AJ Ferret, Pouilly-Fuissé Les Ménétrières, Cuvée Hors Classique 2006 – A slightly savoury feel to the nose with hints of smoked salmon and cream cheese on toast. A palate of roasted chestnuts with hints of saffron and a ginger spice to the base. Good length, but will continue to develop with a few more years. Definitely a food wine, I’d like to try it with pheasant or guinea fowl with a venison stuffing.
Having had an extremely educational yet fun day I was picked up from Château Ferret by Guillaume de Castelnau who is one of those wine makers whose unbridled enthusiasm and passion for what they do is so infectious that it would make even the strictest of tea-totallers have a change of heart.
“Wine is like music. The soil is the composer, the vine is the instrument and the winemaker is the musician. The musician can be talented, but only the
composer is a true genius.” This was one of the first things that Guillaume de Castelnau explained to me on the drive to Moulin-a-Vent. It is obvious to anyone who listens to him that he thinks like a biodynamic winemaker, and he was keen to impress upon me that the soil is alive and the wine is alive. The definition of this life is what Guillaume referred to as ‘subtle energy’ that all things have. He echoed Audrey by referring to himself as a caretaker.
Along the way, we stopped at a vineyard planted with chardonnay which was so dry it had Guillaume worried about the vines, as there had been no sufficient rainfall for a few weeks. He remarked that at this rate, harvest would be early this year.
We arrived at the beautiful Château de Jacques and Guillaume took me on a tour of his vinery. He works both organically and bio-dynamically, and I fully admit, when he first started talking about every living thing having subtle vibrations, and the bottling process being traumatic like child birth with the barrel being the womb, I was a tad on the sceptical side. However, as the morning progressed and he explained more about it, it did start to make sense, and by lunchtime, he had fully convinced me that working with and respecting the earth and not messing about with the grapes is absolutely the way to go. A lot of this new-found information will no doubt work its way through my team and onto my customers too!
In the cellar we did a mammoth tasting of his wines, including the superb Moulin-a-Vent ‘La Roche’ wines where the vineyards consist of mainly quartz. Top of my selection were the following:
Château de Jacques, Morgon 2008 – A big bouquet of smoky blackcurrant on this wine led to a palate of chewy redcurrant jam with chalky tannins. A good food wine.
Château de Jacques, Moulin-A-Vent, ‘La Roche’ 1999 – A truly barnyard nose here with ripe raspberries and strawberries on the base. Elegant tannins and an incredibly long finish rounded it off perfectly.
For lunch at the Château we had foie gras pate made by Guillaume’s wife, which was utterly superb, and a selection of cellar wines. On retiring to the drawing room, we finished off lunch with a 1986 Château des Jacques Marc de Bourgogne, which put me sufficiently to sleep for the train journey back.
I had dinner that evening at Le Gourmandin in the Place Cabot which was simple yet tasty, all helped along by the Cremant de Bourgogne that I drank for the whole night. The highlight however had to be the two Australian ladies on the table next to me, who when confronted with the chalk board of white Burgundian wines, turned to the waitress and said “have you got any chardonnay?” Classic.
A short walk the next morning brought me to the House of Jadot on Rue Spuller, which literally looks like a house, albeit a very posh one. There is no sign to say Louis Jadot, the only thing to reassure me that I was not knocking on the door of a private house was the bust of Louis Jadot inside the archway of the door that you can only see once you have entered the courtyard and turned around.
After knocking and being re-assuredly greeted by his assistant, I met Dominique Mounier, the managing director of Louis Jadot. Dominique took me out to their winery on Route de Savigny, only about 10 minutes from the centre Beaune. Inside the cool entrance way, he showed me a map of Burgundy with all of their vineyards on and then took me into a huge circular room with a vaulted ceiling that is their new winery. To say it was impressive would be an understatement. It is an all singing, all dancing modern winery that still “let’s the wine make itself”. This is winemaking on a large scale, at its’ finest. With all the technology available, they still use as little interaction as possible, so you get a true expression of the grape in each bottle. High-tech, low impact winemaking. The small circular wooden platform in the centre of the room has a ring of open topped barrels around it which they use for some of their wines and still punch down by hand. The whole winery is incredibly impressive and absolutely beautiful; I would love to see it in full swing just after harvest.
All their wines lie in barrel for approximately 16 months, and as they were in the middle of bottling the 2009 vintage the cellar was not full. However, this did not deter Dominique, who grabbed a couple of glasses and proceeded to let me taste nearly every barrel in the cellar. I must have tasted a wine from almost every appellation they have, and I have to say, the consistency of quality was brilliant. There we no ‘shockers’ and if anything, it made me dismiss any notions I may have had about the practices of big estates. We then went into the tasting room to try a selection that Dominique had set out, which included:
Louis Jadot, Macon Blanc 2010 – This is a lovely clean and crisp white with flavours of lemon zest, pineapple and a fresh green bell pepper spice. Would serve as a brilliant aperitif, or with light seafood, like marinated scallops.
Louis Jadot, Meursault-Charmes 2006 – A bouquet of sweet apricot, roasted hazelnuts and clarified butter all follow through on the palate with hints of nutmeg on the side. A great drinking white that will keep maturing over the next 10-15 years.
Louis Jadot, Beaune 1er Cru, Therons 2002 – Delightful strawberry jam and a slight menthol on the nose leads to a black pepper and wild fruit jam palate. A wonderful wine that is maturing nicely, but still has more to give. Would be great for game dishes.
Louis Jadot, Clos Vougeot 2005 – Plum, prune and fig with a air of hung game pack some punch on the bouquet and the juicy palate gives way to some huge and chewy tannins. This wine feels a bit young at the moment, but it shows great promise if where it will go given a decade or so.
This marathon tasting was followed by a lovely lunch within the winery with Dominique and a couple of half bottles, my favourite of which was a Bâtard Montrachet from 1983. It was so complex and big that it was practically a meal in itself. Truly the finest half bottle and one of the finest white wines that I have ever tasted.
After a drive out to the stunning vineyards of Corton I had dinner in Beaune, at the Jazz themed Bistro Cabot where I had a glass of Meursault, scallops and a raspberry macaroon dessert that was to die for. Then it was back to the hotel and the next day back to London and back to reality.
Huge thanks to the Savoy Educational Trust, Academy of Food and Wine Service, Hatch Mansfield, Louis Jadot, Audrey Braccini, Guillaume de Castelanu, and Dominique Mounier for making it such a wonderful visit. For details of the 2011 Academy Awards for Excellence and how to enter or nominate someone please click here.
