Sauvignon de St Bris - a hidden gem?

Anyone who claims to know all of France’s wine appellations (or PDOs as we should now learn to call them) is either a liar or has an extraordinary capacity for memorising lists.  There are literally hundreds of them, ranging from the world-famous (Châteauneuf-du-Pape, Chablis) to the vanishingly obscure.  Wines labelled Irancy, to name but one, are hardly household names, even in their own neighbourhoods.

Others, while obscure, stick in the mind.  Sauvignon de St Bris is one such.  The area of production is titchy, yet it’s a micro-region that I’ve known about ever since cramming for my Wine Diploma years back, learning that this is the only part of Burgundy where Sauvignon Blanc is grown.  I memorised that single fact as a way to avoid a trick question in an exam, then promptly moved on, content never to know more about this renegade Chardonnay-shunning corner of Burgundy, let alone know what the wines might actually taste like.

This summer, however, I finally set foot in St-Bris-le-Vineux, an attractive and typically deserted village in the valley of the Yonne river in a northern corner of Burgundy, which is the centre of production, such as it is.  St Bris is much closer to Chablis than to the Côte d’Or, so while yes, technically it is part of Burgundy, it is a long way from the heartland of the region.

When you ignore the administrative boundaries and just look at a map of France, it becomes clear that while St Bris may be next door to Chablis, it is also only a short drive from the Loire Valley and those twin powerhouses of Sauvignon Blanc:  Pouilly Fumé and Sancerre.  Why they grow Sauvignon and not Chardonnay here begins to make more sense.

St Bris shares the same Kimmeridgian and Portlandian soils as those found in Chablis, thereby giving a tantalising hint of what Chablis might taste like, if it was made with Sauvignon Blanc instead of Chardonnay.  You've never wondered this?  Oh, just me then.

What I hadn’t learned as part of my Diploma studies, was that this area also makes red wines from Pinot Noir, in line with Burgundian orthodoxy.  These are pleasant oddities, light and lacy versions of an already light style of wine – the kind of thing to chill and sip in the garden on a sunny day. 

And, to my surprise they also make wines from Chardonnay here (so much for my Diploma studies), though these Pinot Noirs and Chardonnays are entitled only to the generic label of “Bourgogne Côtes d’Auxerre”, a designation used to mop up various little vineyards around the town of Auxerre and which fall outside the Chablis area.  Sauvignon de St-Bris can only be used for, well, Sauvignon.

In St-Bris-le-Vineux (the clue is in the name) I hopped out of the campervan and decided to try some wine.  British tourists abroad often cite the difficulties involved in visiting wineries in France.  It is true that the willingness to knock on the doors of places which look resolutely closed and the ability to speak at least some French are pre-requisites.  I took the sign “cave ouverte” on a wine press outside one producer’s house as an encouragement.

Despite the “ouverte” claim, all looked deserted.  Having managed to disturb the lunchtime semi-siesta of an elderly lady, I was pointed in the direction of a bell to be rung.  In the manner of the shopkeeper in Mister Benn, a man emerged, as if by magic, from an ivy-camouflaged door that I had not noticed and I was welcomed into a cool tasting cellar.

Alert, perhaps, to my intention of tasting the Sauvignon de St Bris and then scarpering, having ticked it off my mental list of wines to taste before I die, Monsieur Goisot of Domaine Goisot Anne et Arnaud insisted that I start by tasting his Chardonnay.

Chardonnay-shmardonnay.  Was it really possible that this lowly Côtes d’Auxerre Blanc could have something to contribute to our understanding of that noble variety that its illustrious neighbours in Chablis and the mighty Côte de Beaune had not already done more emphatically, elegantly and eloquently? 

In a word, no.  Dear reader, Côtes d’Auxerre Blanc is no undiscovered gem.  M Goisot’s Chardonnay was perfectly decent with some peachy, floral aromas and a nutty, savoury palate.  But no scales dropped from my eyes; I was not moved to forsake Grand Cru Chablis or Chassagne-Montrachet forever more.  I moved on to the main attraction.

And what is it like?  St Bris Sauvignon may not have the depth and concentration of the best wines from Sancerre and Pouilly, but it does have distinct fragrance and a gentle, stony persistence in the mouth.  There is a softness, allied to the characteristic crisp acidity of the variety, that makes for pleasant holiday drinking. 

I bought some of M Goisot’s wines, along with another Sauvignon from a neighbouring domaine, Philippe de France, on my travels, so I will be able to find out if this is one of those wines that tastes perfect as part of a carefree sunny holiday, but that loses something in the move to a greyer, cooler UK, with work and family concerns to contend with.

I think you are more likely to trip over a black cat while on your way to redeem a winning National Lottery ticket than you are to stumble across any Bourgogne Côtes d’Auxerre, Rouge or Blanc, in mainstream wine outlets in this country - or in France for that matter.  However, you do stand more chance of happening on a bottle of Sauvignon de St-Bris.  The two domaines I visited do not seem to be imported into the UK, but there are a number of others that you can search out – so you can tick this wine off your list too.

French specialist merchants Nicolas list a Sauvignon de St Bris from the excellent Chablis-based co-operative, La Chablisienne, Les Vaux Sereins at £9.99.  Waitrose has Simonnet-Febvre’s version for £9.99.  Highly regarded organic producer Domaine Goisot’s Sauvignon de St Bris 2009 is available from slurp.co.uk at £10.49 a bottle.

The other French fizz

“Champagne, in victory I deserve it.  In defeat, I need it.”  This quote, attributed to Napoleon, says a lot about Champagne.  It is an emblematic, almost talismanic, substance which transcends mere wine.  When marking an important event, nothing fits the bill like Champagne. 

You can test this out by popping the cork on a bottle of Champagne and just wait for someone to ask “What’s the special occasion?”  Don’t try this when on your own, obviously.

Sometimes though, we might just fancy a bottle of fizz, without the extra baggage (and hefty price tag) of Champagne.  British drinkers have taken Italian Prosecco to their hearts in recent years.  Very different in style from Champagne, it’s all about fresh fruit, lightness and frothiness, allied to a little sweetness.  I’m all for a glass of it at the start of the evening, but one is usually plenty.

If you are craving the more restrained and dry style of Champagne, then the other French fizz – Crémant – could be for you.

And what is Crémant?  Very simply, it is sparkling wine made in the same way as Champagne, but from outside the Champagne area.

French wine law is based on the principle of guaranteeing the origin of what you are drinking – that the wine in the bottle is from the area designated on the label.  Champagne, for drinkers, may just be shorthand for any sparkling wine.  However, in legal terms, in order for Champagne to appear on the label, the contents must be sparkling wine from the Champagne region around Reims in northern France.

It also has to conform to a certain method of production – more of that in a moment.  So, if you are a winemaker in any other part of France, and wish to make a sparkling wine in the same way as Champagne, your product can be called Crémant.

How is wine made to sparkle?  In its simplest form, carbon dioxide can be forced into any still wine, resulting in a fizzy one.  Anyone with a SodaStream will be familiar with the process – and if you do have one, why not do a little experiment with any cheap bottle of wine and see the result?  I’m confident that a bottle of Gallo White Zinfandel could be immeasurably improved in this way.

The other, more classy way, to make a sparkling wine is to provoke a second fermentation in a still wine.  This is done by adding yeast, and sugar for it to feed on, to the wine.  Alcoholic fermentation produces carbon dioxide and, if not allowed to escape into the atmosphere, will become dissolved in the wine.  This second fermentation can take place either in the bottle, which is the only way permitted for Champagne, Crémant or anything labelled “traditional method” sparkling wine.  Or it can be carried out in a sealed tank, which is used for Prosecco and many other good quality sparkling wines around the world.

Sediment in the bottle

"pupitre" with hand-riddled bottles

Second fermentation in the bottle permits long ageing on the dead yeast cells (or lees) and the development of complex flavours and fine, long-lasting bubbles.  However, those dead yeast cells need to be extracted somehow, if the final wine is to be crystal clear and not murky with sediment.  This is achieved firstly by gradually tipping the bottles from a horizontal to a vertical position over a number of weeks (if done by hand) or days (if done in a specially designed machine named a gyropalette), a process known as riddling. 

a gyropallette

Then, to extract the sediment the process of disgorgement takes place.  The necks of the upturned bottles are dipped in a sub-zero temperature solution, creating a frozen plug of sediment.  This is then ejected by turning the bottles upright and removing the bottle cap.  The frozen sediment shoots out under pressure from the carbon dioxide-induced fizziness in the wine.  The bottle is then topped up with wine, plus some sugar solution (or dosage) to give the required sweetness level from ultra brut (no sugar) to demi sec (40grams per litre or so).  Cork on and voilà, the wine has completed its transformation into fizz and just needs to rest and recover from all the excitements of riddling and disgorgement.

Sediment in the neck of the bottle post-riddling

 Many French wine regions produce Crémants, some of which more or less resemble Champagne, especially if they use the traditional Champagne grapes, Pinot Noir and Chardonnay.  Crémant from the Loire will be dominated by Chenin Blanc, which is plentiful there, giving it a different flavour profile.  Alsace, which is the biggest Crémant producing region, tends to make its Crémant from the fruity and neutral Pinot Blanc.  Here are some that you might come across in this country.  But the best fun is to be had – and of course keenest prices - if you come across a crémant producer on your own travels in France.

Langlois-Château Crémant de Loire - £11.50 from www.thechampagneshop.com

Langlois is part of the Bollinger stable, so they know a thing or two about creating quality bubbles.  Chenin Blanc is complemented by Chardonnay, and lees ageing has given it bready aromas and flavours.

Pfister Crémant d’Alsace - £14.65 from www.slurp.co.uk

Unusually for Alsace, this is 50% Chardonnay, giving the wine elegance to complement the fruit of the Pinot Blanc.  Made by a young female winemaker who clearly knows what she’s doing.

Louis Bouillot Perle de Vigne Crémant de Bourgogne - £9.99 a bottle when you buy 2 at Majestic

Crémant de Bourgogne is geographically closest to Champagne and is the Crémant that we see most often in this country.  This one is a  reliable quality fizz from a big producer where noble Chardonnay and Pinot Noir rub shoulders with lowlier varieties Gamay and Aligoté.

Stop the (wine) world, I want to get off

Sometimes I wish the wine world would just stop for a bit, so that I can catch up. It seems every time I look, there's a new wine region in Spain, a handful of grape varieties from Italy that I've never heard of, and a whole new grape-growing valley in Chile. Is there a never-ending supply of these things?

This latest yearning for a pause button on the wine world was prompted by a Chilean wine which hails from the Choapa Valley. Choapa? Choapa???

It's enough to make you hanker after the simplicity and stability of classic regions like...Burgundy. On the surface, it's all so straightforward: white wines are all Chardonnay, reds are Pinot Noir; the vineyard area has been minutely graded and differentiated over centuries and new bits do not spring up overnight like so many mushrooms; there is a strict hierarchy of quality, with generic Bourgogne at the bottom, going through village level, then Premier Cru and finally the pinnacle of Grand Cru.

Except it's not quite as simple as that....

Here's an illustration: Clos de Vougeot is a single walled vineyard in Burgundy's Côte de Nuits that is all classed as Grand Cru, hence it commands pretty astronomical prices. But it's big: 50 hectares (125 acres) of vineyard is enclosed within the walls, sub-divided between many growers (the average plot size is around 0.2 of a hectare).

The far-sighted Cistercian monks who decided to rip out the French beans, tomatoes and apple trees in favour of grape vines, would have made wine blended from the entire plot. Nowadays those monks are long-gone and each grower must try to wring the best quality possible from their few rows of vines.

The slopes at the middle and top of the Clos are generally agreed to make better wines than the plots on the flatter, damper ground at the bottom. And, let's be realistic, not all winemakers are created equal. Hence two equally eyewateringly expensive bottles of Grand Cru Clos de Vougeot may contain wine that varies considerably in terms of drinking pleasure. Caveat emptor!

So, to return to Chile, there they are at the other end of the wine adventure to Burgundy and most of the Old World. They are constantly exploring new territories within their long, thin string-bean of a country to see where grapes will flourish and which varieties best express the terroir. In vinous terms, Chile is a gigantic wine laboratory and, it must be said, the results are deliciously drinkable.

Chile, unlike any other major wine producing nation, does not have a long tradition of wine drinking. Up until recent years, grapes were grown primarily for distillation to make pisco – basis for the pisco sour cocktail. There were small winemaking concerns, based primarily in the Maipo Valley, close to the consumers and transport links of capital city, Santiago.

Over the years, Chile's winemakers have spread their wings and wineries to further flung and ever cooler regions, which would have initially been dismissed as too cold to ripen grapes – especially for such heat-loving varieties as Syrah (aka Shiraz).

This week's recommendations – Chile rather than Burgundy.

De Martino Legado Syrah 2010 - £10.49 from Caves de Pyrene (Artington, near Guildford)

The wine that prompted this column: from the Choapa Valley, which, I now know, is north of Santiago, roughly half-way between the Aconcagua and Limari Valleys. Chile is a long, narrow strip of land that flanks the Andes, but it is especially thin at this point, where the vines here are exposed to the cooling air of both the Andes mountains and the Pacific Ocean.

Having initially made their name with well-crafted, reliably gluggable Merlots, then taking up Carmenère as their signature red grape, Chileans are now showing the wine world that they are also pretty nifty when it comes to Syrah. Really, do they have to be so good at everything they do? The answer seems to be yes.

The fact that they choose to label the wine Syrah, rather than its New World synonym, Shiraz, tells you that in terms of style this is much closer to the peppery, herbal, cooler-climate Northern Rhone versions than the exuberantly fruity Australian ones. This has a definite tannic structure and an almost Old World restraint to the black-pepper tinged berry fruit.

Matetic Vineyards Corralillo Syrah 2009, San Antonio - £85.80 for a case of 6 from Armit, £15.95 from Sipp London

Matetic have had a real cachet about them and their wines since they burst onto the Chilean wine scene in 1999. The other Syrah made by Matetic, labelled simply Syrah, is undoubtedly a fine wine, but the price has gone up to a frankly ridiculous £37 a bottle. This little brother, Corallilo, however, still offers class in a glass at a much more reasonable price and has got better with each vintage I've tasted. Satisfyingly savoury, but with bumptious juicy fruit and great balance, this is also organic and biodynamic.

Maycas del Limari Quebrada Seca Chardonnay 2008, Limari - £18.95 from slurp.co.uk, £24.95 from Berry Bros (bbr.com)

Limari is yet another recently exploited wine region where you'll find deliciously fresh, juicy red wines – and this altogether very sophisticated Chardonnay.

If you know someone who has an expensive white Burgundy habit, but who struggles to afford to keep it going, then do them a favour and point them in the direction of this wine.

I was lucky enough to taste this wine with the man who makes it, Marcelo Papa, the man responsible for the phenomenally popular Casillero del Diablo wines. It combines the ripeness of fruit and mealy nuttiness of Meursault with the poise and linearity of Chablis. It's a truly lovely wine and incredibly moreish.