Puzelat’s Le Rouge et Mis

Welcome to the New Year. After persistent snow flurries Hampstead Heath which I can see from my study window is mantled in a prepossessing duvet of the white stuff. Snow also generally covers a multitude of architectural sins, softening the edges and smoothing the corners of our angular cities; it is the sugar dusting on the mince pie of life.

Having been hit by mild tummy bugs recently I still haven’t totally regained my sense of smell and my taste buds have gone for a burton. As a result I drank very little over the holiday period. Last night I broached a bottle of Thierry Puzelat’s Le Rouge et Mis (Vin de Table natch), but first a little background culled wholesale and verbatim from Bertrand Celce’s WineTerroirs:  http://www.wineterroirs.com.

This is a story about the few rows of vines that some farmers keep to make wine for themselves. The wine that is going to be made from these few rows will never land on the market and will never be sold. If I had to give my guess about the regions where they are the more widespread (I don’t have the statistics and these private harvests are not going into the official figures), I would say the Loire, the Beaujolais, the Languedoc, plus some parts of the southern Rhone (maybe Jura too). Many small farmers and older country folks still own a few rows of vineyards that they use to make their own wine. It is a survival from a bygone autarkic economic-model when there was no grower living exclusively from grape growing, winemaking being a side activity along with other crop growing. I have visited quite a few unrenovated old farms in the Loire and there is hardly one which doesn’t have an outbuilding with all the winemaking tools (even if often in beyond-repair condition), a press, cement vats, a few casks. These vineyards are often composed of a handful of rows, sometimes as little as 3 rows stuck between fields and/or near woods. Most of the time, these farmers don’t have the machinery for the harvest and rely on help from family and friends to harvest the grapes. If not with this enduring, self-sufficiency-minded tradition, these private rows would have been uprooted long ago, and that’s by the way what is going to happen to half of these particular private rows this winter : they have two such vineyard-planted plots a couple of hundred meters apart, each with 3 to 5 rows of vines, and one has to go because this is too much work to tend for the elderly retired farmer who is the official owner. It will be plowed and overlapped by the field nearby. Thierry Puzelat, in the Loire, initiated a special cuvée in 2007, made from a collection of tiny such private plots from which he bought the grapes through a non-profit group dedicated to save them : “le Rouge est Mis” is the name of this cuvée , a red Pinot Meunier, a beautiful, peppery wine made with a now minor variety. He made two casks of this wine. I hope he’ll repeat that operation because first, the wine is good, and second, because it helps prevent these tiny isolated plots from being uprooted and from melting into the fields nearby.

Amen to that!

Pinot Meunier is rather obscure to most wine drinkers and will rarely be seen on a wine label. The grape has been favoured by vine growers in northern France due to its ability to bud and ripen more reliably than Pinot noir. The vine’s tendency to bud later in the growing season and ripen earlier makes it less susceptible to developing coulure which can greatly reduce a prospective crop. For the last couple centuries, Pinot Meunier has been the most widely planted Champagne grape, accounting for more than 40% of the region’s entire plantings. It is most prevalent in the cooler, north facing vineyards of the Vallee de la Marne and in the Aisne department. It is also widely grown in the Aube region in vineyards where Pinot noir and Chardonnay would not fully ripen.

Compared to Pinot noir, Pinot Meunier produces lighter coloured wines with slightly higher acid levels but can maintain similar sugar and alcohol levels. As part of a standard champagne blend, Pinot Meunier contributes aromatics and fruity flavors to the wine. Champagnes with a substantial proportion of Pinot Meunier tend not to have as much significant ageing potential as champagnes that are composed primarily of Chardonnay or Pinot noir. It is therefore most commonly used for champagnes that are intended to be consumed young, when the oft, plushy fruit of the Pinot Meunier is at its peak. A notable exception is the Champagne house of Krug which makes liberal use of Pinot Meunier in its long-lived prestige cuvees.

During the 19th century, Pinot Meunier was widely planted throughout northern France, especially in the Paris basin. It was found across the northern half of country from the Loire Valley to Lorraine.
Puzelat’s version is bonny and fresh, a velvet crush of raspberries and summer strawberries with enough of a liquorice twist to give the winery a savoury dimension. The ripeness is just-so, suggestive rather than full throttle, and the lightness of alcohol (12%) makes this a breeze to drink.