Diving into La Dive Bouteille.
In which I try to write about wine and discover that it's hard. Possibly too technical for a general audience while also not technical enough for the specialists, but I hope you'll give it a go!
I often say I have another life in French wine, and it’s not really an exaggeration—most of my friends in France work in food and wine, running wine shops or working as sommeliers or chefs. I met them as an enthusiastic client, or through mutual friends, and over time fell into the French natural wine crowd. I’ve come to realize it’s like any specialized area. Everyone knows everyone in my niche research fields of family migration or refugee studies, because we go to the same conferences. Everyone knows everyone in natural wine, because they go to the same wine fairs.
The world of salons de vin
I’ve been to a number of these “professional tastings”, tagging along with people who are actual professionals. There is an entire calendar of them, mostly through the winter months, when it’s possible for winemakers to get away from the vineyards and cellars every now and then. People go to taste the new vintages, to identify new winemakers to do business with, and to maintain relationships with those they already work with. When I tag along, friends often have a pretty strict list of people they need to see, so I just follow them around in order not to get in their way.
The natural wine analog of the major annual conference in your research field—the APSA or the IMISCOE, for those of you who do what I do—is La Dive Bouteille. It’s a gigantic event that takes place in Saumur every year in February, over a Sunday/Monday (the restaurant weekend). Complementary and competing salons are scheduled around it and in parallel, so that you can now spend the better part of a week going from salon to salon with natural or biodynamic wines (Aaron Ayscough’s natural wine salon calendar lists 12 (twelve!) salons across the Loire between February 2-7, not including Jas Swan’s “renegade satellite micro-tasting out of her van”).
I’d often heard of La Dive, and to some extent been warned against it. I expected to be freezing cold, annoyed at the crowds, and at flawed wines. Everyone told me it was madness, and to wear lots of layers. At the same time, most thought it was one of things things one might want to actually experience at least once. I didn’t want to force myself upon friends who had actual commitments—Katie who would be pouring her wines, others were tasting—but when my Paris friend Cris invited me to come along with her, her husband and another friend, I jumped on the opportunity.
And so it was that I tasted somewhere between 150 and 180 wines this weekend (!)
(I hasten to add that practically all of it ended up in spit buckets.)
Tasting to learn
Learning about wine requires tasting a lot of wine. Tasting a lot of wine requires either a budget to buy a lot of wine, or access—usually through work—to taste lots of wines. I don’t have the former, and it wouldn’t be sustainable anyway, because to taste 150 wines in two days you do need to spit practically everything out. I don’t have the latter, either. Tagging along to professional tastings, then, is a way for someone like me, who has a well above average interest in wine, to learn a lot and taste a lot without spending more than the 5-10 euro entry fee and the cost of travel (and, of course, having some friends who will take me). If asked, I can say that I am with the caviste or restaurant of friends, or that I write about wine. It’s not exactly strictly a lie (depending on your definition of “with”), at least not after I sent this out! No one asked this time, though.
In these tastings, winemakers stand behind a table or barrel where their wines (usually 3-8 different cuvées) are lined up. People have a glass to taste in, which is issued at the entrance (often engraved with the logo of the event—we all tend to collect them). A spittoon is on the table for you to spit in or pour out the rest of your sample, or, in a nice new practice since the pandemic, you get a personal paper cup to spit in which you can then empty into larger buckets.
The winemaker will pour a small sample (maybe after having poured you a bit of water to rinse out your glass). They have a set order in which they serve their wines, usually starting with whites and moving to orange and red. Bubbles can come either at the beginning or end. For Jura wines, you might taste the reds first, as they are light, while the whites are more structured or oxidative. The winemaker will tell you about the grape, the process (details such as whether it’s carbonic maceration, how long the grapes macerated or whether it was direct pressed, etc), and how it’s been aged, as well as when it was bottled (or whether it has been, since much of this was barrel samples). They’ll often also talk about the terroir, meaning soil types, location and exposition of the vineyard.
I have a good overview of grapes, and at least a basic understanding of the different vinification procedures. I can smell it when I get a wine made with carbonic maceration, or when I have a glass of skin contact (/orange) muscat or gewurztraminer in my hand. I can have an opinion about acidity, or notice when the sugars haven’t quite finished fermenting. But I have to admit I cannot tell whether something is from clay or schiste or granite. So I try to listen, and sometimes dare to ask a question, and add to my mental library.
Noticing the weather, pondering the climate
One thing that has been really fascinating and recognizable through the wines I have been tasting, are the enormous differences between the past few vintages. Winemakers make choices about how long to barrel age wines before bottling them, based on both artistic and financial considerations (waiting to sell wines requires room to store them, and of course the cash flow to be able to hold off on the income). A lot of natural wine is sold quite young, so while there were some older wines from earlier vintages, I tasted mainly wines from 2020, 2021 and 2022. 2020 was a hot year in France, whereas 2021 was extremely cold and wet—in some ways, a year that harked back to a time before the climate had changed so much. 2022 was, again, extremely hot and dry, and probably more like our future will be.
The differences in the wines can be extremely noticeable. I like feeling this connection to the seasons and the climate, though it’s not necessarily a pleasant thought. The 2021 wines are much higher acidity and lower alcohol, whereas the 2020s and especially the 2022s are “bigger”. In some whites, I was missing a bit of acidity the ‘22s, and in some of the reds, the alcohol didn’t quite feel integrated into the wine yet. Other ‘22s felt surprisingly “finished” and ready, even though they are very fresh. I had this same thought about the 2022 Beaujolais Nouveaux—they had had an actual extra month between harvest and release compared to the ‘21 nouveaux, and were fully formed finished wines. Some of the ‘21s I tasted, on the other hand, were almost overly tart, where it felt like the grapes had hardly ripened.
When they were good, however, the ‘21s were so good. Will there be such wines in the future? Ethereal, low-alcohol ones, with such finesse? Are they the part of the last such vintage? The production was small, since so much froze or was lost to hail or mildew. Maybe I was lucky to taste some of them at all.
Anyway, getting on to some of the wines we tasted! We managed three salons over the two days, so here are some highlights from each. A lot of this might be entirely useless as far as wine tips go, since many of these will be hard to find, but some of them could pop up!
Les Anonymes salon, Angers
This first salon we went to was held in a fancy assembly hall in central Angers. (Facebook page here). It was very crowded, and uncomfortably hot inside, especially since I was wearing so many layers. We tasted a number of fairly local winemakers from Anjou/Loire, and quite a lot of winemakers from the south. I identified the flaw called mousiness in a number of wines, which is always annoying (you can’t smell it, but then it comes as an unpleasant surprise when you exhale afterwards). I found the first spontaneously fermented sauvignon blanc that I absolutely couldn’t stand, since it tasted like a “conventional” one (I always thought you avoided that by not using a specific strain of yeast). I also tasted some very nice things:
a lovely chenin as well as a gamay/grolleau blend from two local women winemakers called Margot et Natalia
beautiful orange/skin contact wines from Alsatian Jean-Marc Dreyer
some really nice skin contact wines as well as grenache blends from a lady in the South called Julie Brosselin, working under the name Les Cigales dans la Fourmilière (photo below)
Sylvain Bock’s excellent and excellent value wines from the Ardèche
NaturAll, Moulin de Drapras
This little tasting was organized by natural wine impresario/rapper/frequent feature of in Dua Lipa’s instagram stories Clovis Ochin, and showcased his own wines and wines of his friends in an old mill 40 minutes from Angers. It wouldn’t win any awards for organization, and not everything was left when we got there, but the vibe was good. I did get to taste the thing I really wanted to, namely the Jura wines of Bruyère-Houillon. So very good, and so very expensive and hard to come by (though I suppose I have a connection.) JC Garnier’s wines were also lovely, and there were some interesting Italian wines from indigenous grapes I wasn’t familiar with.
La Dive Bouteille
Arriving at the Caves Ackerman, you get an inkling of the size of the operation. Portapotties, tables, a gigantic barbecue, an oyster stand. You follow the flow of people in and get your glass and paper cup, and then continue on into the depths of the earth. And it just keeps going. The signage alludes to the size of the place: first “IT’S THIS WAY”, and then “IT’S FURTHER THIS WAY”. Supposedly there are 7 km of cellars, and while I didn’t see all of that, I barely made it to the inner parts of the fair where the Loire wines were. One large underground hall leads to another, and you get lost in a veritable labyrinth. It is overwhelming. Thankfully I had worn the right number of layers as well as a hat, and I was never cold, even though I spent a lot of time waiting for my turn. (I have no good photos from in there due to the low light conditions, rushed movement etc).
I have to say I almost forgot about the crowds, though, as I was frankly blown away by the wines. I tasted very few things that were flawed, and not even very much that I didn’t particularly like. We started on a high note with Tschida’s white Himmel auf Erden, and it just continued from there. Cris knew him, and he seemed genuinely happy to walk us through. I particularly loved Birdcage, the field blend which he described as “trying to find the space between a red wine and a rosé". Our little best of Austria tour continued with Wertlitsch and Strohmeier, and it was all just beautiful. I gave up on tasting Robinot, Yann Durieux and Ganevat, because the groupie crowds were so big I simply didn’t have the patience. But I had lots of other lovely things, in no particular order:
Katie’s Maison Maenad 2022s are tasting amazing. The Trousseau is so elegant, and the chardonnay is delicious. I was so happy to introduce them, and her, to Cris.
Maison Valette can do no wrong. The Mâcon-Villages, their entry level cuvée, is incredible wine for the money.
Louis Maurer is so charming, and making beautiful wines in Alsace.
Guy Breton works magic, and makes incredible wines no matter the year or the conditions. The ‘22 Marylou did feel a bit too “hot” for me, but oh, oh, the other ones… Among the few that were just simply too good to spit out.
Les Mangeux d’Pierre are making really nice chardonnays in the Bugey, which I think is a really interesting up-and-coming region (local to me here in Lyon).
Nicolas Carmarans makes wonderfully fresh wines in the Aveyron—even in 2022. The carbonic maceration Josette was really joyful.