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<p><em>As dictated to Jules Dressner in the summer of 2017.&nbsp;</em></p> <p><u><strong>The Beginnings:</strong></u></p> <p>The first time Joe and I went to France was in the winter of 1983/1984. It was very cold and we spent Christmas with my family. We got married that March of 1984 in New York, then in France on July 7th. We stayed a bit after the wedding, but not for very long. I think we left in early August. The following summer, 1985, we decided to spend the entire summer in&nbsp;<span class="zalup"><span><glossary term="Saint-Gengoux-de-Scissé" title="892">Saint-Gengoux</glossary><span>.</span></span></span> It was complicated because the small house was rented and the tenants were still there, so we actually stayed here (the current house) then moved in.&nbsp;</p> <p>During that summer (of 1985), we thought it would be nice to be able to come to France more often or even to live in France, and that we needed to come up with some sort of plan to do so. But what could we do? We both had a degree in journalism, and honestly neither of us was sure what we could do with it in this context. We were doing odd-jobs in NY; Joe did the catalog for his father&rsquo;s clothing supply store, and some writing gigs, I was working in an office that represented French textile and clothing brands.&nbsp;</p> <p>There were vines everywhere surrounding the village, so that gave us the idea to do something in wine. No one really cared about wine in my family. My paternal grandfather had a little <glossary term="Cellar" title="254">cellar</glossary> of <glossary term="Côtes du Rhône" title="372">C&ocirc;tes-du-Rh&ocirc;ne</glossary> and&nbsp;<span class="zalup"><span><glossary term="Burgundy" title="212">Burgundy</glossary><span>.</span></span></span> But my father was never interested, and because my whole family was associated with the <glossary term="Cave Cooperative" title="252">cave cooperative</glossary> in the village, we had access to cheap wine. My father would actually buy little <glossary term="Barrel" title="142">barrels</glossary> of <glossary term="Gamay" title="478">Gamay</glossary> and bottle it himself; that was fairly common.&nbsp;</p> <p>The following summer, right after you (Jules) were born, we returned for three months and decided the thing that would make the most sense was to work with the <a href="https://cave-lugny.com/en/">Cave de Lugny</a>, as they were close and had a lot of wine to sell. They of course had a big importer in the US, but still told us they would be open to work with &ldquo;our&rdquo;&nbsp;<span class="zalup"><span><glossary term="Cuvée" title="363">cuv&eacute;e</glossary><span>,</span></span></span> one called &quot;Saint-Gengoux de Sciss&eacute;&quot; from vines around the village. We agreed, and that fall we tried selling it in NY. They shipped us samples and we started showing them around. We called around, trying to find distributors. We had no idea that there were importers who were also distributing.&nbsp;</p> <p>It was a failure, because <glossary term="Mâcon" title="702">M&acirc;con</glossary> wines and specifically those from the <a href="https://cave-lugny.com/en/">Cave de Lugny</a> already had very good distribution. And since they were going through a big volume with their importer, the pricing and shipping costs were much lower. The usual questions we got from potential customers were why was it so expensive, was it the weight of the bottle, what made it different, did it have a nice wax top or was it aluminum? We did not sell a single bottle.&nbsp;</p> <p>It was not very encouraging, but this experience made us realize a lot, namely how complicated getting wine to the United States is and how distribution channels work. We also realized that to sell wine, we would need to distinguish ourselves somehow. The <glossary term="Mâconnais" title="1205">M&acirc;connais</glossary> is almost exclusively an area of&nbsp;<span class="zalup"><span><glossary term="Cave Cooperative" title="252">cooperatives</glossary><span>,</span></span></span> so Joe came up with the idea of seeking out independent&nbsp;<span class="zalup"><span><glossary term="Vigneron/Vignaiolo" title="1089">vignerons</glossary><span>:</span></span></span> those who tended their own land, made and sold their own wine.</p> <p>In 1987&nbsp;we met No&euml;l Perrin, almost as a joke. My great friend Solange would always spend part of her summer in Saint-Gengoux-le-National at her brother&rsquo;s.&nbsp;We jokingly started comparing the two Saint-Gengoux: who had the best saucisson (Mr M&eacute;tras vs Mr Chabridon), the best goat-cheese, etc&hellip; We&rsquo;d bought the Hachette guide, No&euml;l Perrin was written up and his postal code was in Saint-Gengoux-le-National. Joe said we absolutely HAD to meet a <glossary term="Vigneron/Vignaiolo" title="1089">vigneron</glossary> from there!</p> <p>We went to visit him in the&nbsp;<span class="zalup"><span><glossary term="Côte Chalonnaise" title="1300">C&ocirc;te Chalonnaise</glossary><span>,</span></span></span> and hit it off. This is where we first heard of Marc Ollivier (<a href="http://louisdressner.com/producers/domaine%20de%20la%20p%C3%A9pi%C3%A8re">Domaine de la P&eacute;pi&egrave;re</a>) and Jean-Luc Mader in Alsace. At that point we had visited a few local <glossary term="Vigneron/Vignaiolo" title="1089">vignerons</glossary> in the&nbsp;<span class="zalup"><span><glossary term="Mâconnais" title="1205">M&acirc;connais</glossary><span>,</span></span></span> but you (Jules) were still very young so we did not extend our travels.&nbsp;</p> <p>We came back to New York in the fall of 1987&nbsp;with a small list essentially defined by No&euml;l, who had put together a group of friends who would all help sell each other&rsquo;s wines from their respective regions. Those were Jean Luc Mader in&nbsp;<span class="zalup"><span><glossary term="Alsace" title="95">Alsace</glossary><span>,</span></span></span> <a href="http://louisdressner.com/producers/domaine%20de%20la%20p%C3%A9pi%C3%A8re">Marc Ollivier of la P&eacute;pi&egrave;re</a> (who made a single wine at the time), <a href="http://louisdressner.com/producers/ch%C3%A2teau%20d'oupia">Ch&acirc;teau d&rsquo;Oupia</a>, <glossary term="Blanquette de Limoux" title="1379">Blanquette de Limoux</glossary> from Phillipe Collin (Olivier Collin of <a href="http://louisdressner.com/producers/ulysse%20collin">Ulysse Collin</a>&rsquo;s uncle), <glossary term="Beaujolais-Villages" title="153">Beaujolais-Villages</glossary> and&nbsp;<span class="zalup"><span><glossary term="Beaujolais (Appellation)" title="1310">Beaujolais Blanc</glossary><span>,</span></span></span> a <glossary term="Roussillon" title="880">Roussillon</glossary> producer whose name I can&rsquo;t remember and an <glossary term="Estate" title="427">estate</glossary> in&nbsp;<span class="zalup"><span><glossary term="Barsac" title="1411">Barsac</glossary><span>.</span></span></span>&nbsp;</p> <p>But the summer of 1987 was also important because we had met Henri Goyard (<a href="http://louisdressner.com/producers/domaine%20de%20roally">Domaine de Roally</a>). We were looking for local, independent&nbsp;<span class="zalup"><span><glossary term="Vigneron/Vignaiolo" title="1089">vignerons</glossary><span>,</span></span></span> and there were not that many; in fact there still are not that many. It was a real shock to taste such an extraordinary wine from the region. It was a 1986, a very good <glossary term="Vintage" title="1109">vintage</glossary> for him. Henri invited us to the <glossary term="Bottling" title="185">bottling</glossary> of the wine, and this is when we met Jean Th&eacute;venet (<a href="http://louisdressner.com/producers/domaine%20de%20bongran">Bongran</a>); they shared their <glossary term="Bottling" title="185">bottling</glossary> equipment.</p> <p>Getting back to the small list of producers, this was also a failure. I don&rsquo;t believe we sold anything in 1987 or 1988. Joe had been working writing grant requests for non-profits, a part-time job, for a year, but he was terminated for going away to France for three months. Getting fired motivated him to persevere with wine.</p> <p>1988 was also the year your sister (Alyce) was born, and her arrival made us rethink our approach: we would probably need wines from more prestigious regions to attract customers. I wrote a ton of letters (real letters) to <glossary term="Vigneron/Vignaiolo" title="1089">vignerons</glossary> in the&nbsp;<span class="zalup"><span><glossary term="Côte d'Or" title="367">C&ocirc;te d&rsquo;Or</glossary><span>,</span></span></span> and many actually responded. A producer from <glossary term="Gevrey-Chambertin" title="489">Gevrey-Chambertin</glossary> agreed to have us be his agent, we added Michel Juillot in&nbsp;<span class="zalup"><span><glossary term="Mercurey" title="1412">Mercurey</glossary><span>,</span></span></span> his daughter who made <glossary term="Rully" title="1414">Rully</glossary> and&nbsp;<span class="zalup"><span><glossary term="Givry" title="1413">Givry</glossary><span>,</span></span></span> and <a href="http://louisdressner.com/producers/jean%20manciat">Jean Manciat</a> in the&nbsp;<span class="zalup"><span><glossary term="Mâconnais" title="1205">M&acirc;connais</glossary><span>.</span></span></span></p> <p>A distributor, Bernard Horstman, got interested.&nbsp; He was a really interesting guy who had grown up in China and we would always meet him in Chinatown, where he would order everything in Chinese. His partner was also Chinese. If I remember well, he sold mostly German wines, and this was his first foray into French wines.</p> <p>We did our first tasting with him as our distributor at the French Commercial Council&rsquo;s office with all the samples the growers had sent us. It was really complicated because they were not equipped to handle a wine tasting, for example cleaning the glasses and keeping the wines cool. Not very many people showed up, but there was another tasting happening nearby, so we got a few stragglers. Daniel Johnnes was there, but most importantly we met Kevin McKenna, who has been our partner since 1996. Kevin was the new buyer at <a href="https://www.astorwines.com/">Astor Wines</a>, his predecessor had never bought anything but had been very helpful with her advice.</p> <p>Horstman was clearing the wines, but his only sales were through contacts we&rsquo;d established ourselves, so we also started working with <a href="https://www.ackerwines.com/">Acker-Merrall</a>, who had an import license. They asked for exclusivity at the shop for the wines they brought in. We&rsquo;d also found Eric Fineman, who acted as an intermediary expediter. At the time we had no stock. We would purchase the wines based on US orders and collect a commission from the <glossary term="Vigneron/Vignaiolo" title="1089">vignerons</glossary> on the sales. We were just agents.</p> <p>Our first real distributor was <a href="https://slocumandsons.com/">Slocum &amp; Sons</a> in Connecticut. I believe that was 1989. We then met Silenus (now part of the <a href="https://www.martignetti.com/">Martignetti companies</a>) in Massachusetts. We were cold-calling anyone we thought would be interested, and it slowly paid-off. Kevin McKenna was our first real NY supporter: I remember very well he wanted to buy some&nbsp;<span class="zalup"><span><glossary term="Folle Blanche" title="1256">Gros Plant</glossary><span>,</span></span></span> but Marc Ollivier refused to sell us any because he said his was not a good wine. But Kevin was buying lots of other things.&nbsp;</p> <p>In 1989 we started traveling a bit more. We finally visited Marc Ollivier, where we met Andr&eacute; and Marie-Th&eacute;r&egrave;se Ich&eacute; of <a href="http://louisdressner.com/producers/ch%C3%A2teau%20d'oupia">Ch&acirc;teau d&rsquo;Oupia</a> and almost all the winemakers in the No&euml;l Perrin group. Then, during our first visit to <a href="http://louisdressner.com/producers/domaine%20de%20bongran">Jean Th&eacute;venet</a>, we met a Parisian <glossary term="Sommelier" title="969">sommelier</glossary> who was talking about all sorts of wines and&nbsp;<span class="zalup"><span><glossary term="Vigneron/Vignaiolo" title="1089">vignerons</glossary><span>.</span></span></span> He was a huge fan of the&nbsp;<span class="zalup"><span><glossary term="Beaujolais" title="151">Beaujolais</glossary><span>,</span></span></span> told us his favorite was <a href="https://www.chermette.fr/">Pierre-Marie Chermette</a>. We contacted him, but he was already in talks with a US importer and didn&rsquo;t think it could work. I asked if he knew anybody else who worked in a similar manner in his area. With a bit of hesitation, his wife recommended <a href="http://louisdressner.com/producers/domaine%20des%20terres%20dor%C3%A9es">Jean-Paul Brun</a> in&nbsp;<span class="zalup"><span><glossary term="Charnay-en-Beaujolais" title="273">Charnay</glossary><span>.</span></span></span> Jean-Paul had also been in touch with an importer, and he felt he had to honor them. He brought us to a friend of his in Saint-Jean-des-Vignes but we didn&rsquo;t like his wines at all. We had quickly developed an affinity for Jean-Paul and his wines. We really insisted he should work with us, and we won him over.&nbsp;</p> <p>In spring of 1989 we received a belated answer from Machard de Gramont in&nbsp;<span class="zalup"><span><glossary term="Nuits-Saint-Georges" title="1415">Nuits-Saint-Georges</glossary><span>.</span></span></span> We also heard back from Bernard Morey, whose wines were no longer allowed into the US because a product he was using in the vines had been banned. This had nothing to do with health, it was a commercial dispute. A shipment of his wines was stuck in the US. I can&rsquo;t really remember why, but he invited us to come visit him. This was the first time we were meeting an established <glossary term="Estate" title="427">estate</glossary>; the wines were already in the US and had a good reputation.&nbsp;</p> <p>That year we added a lot of wines to our list. We spent much time in the&nbsp;<span class="zalup"><span><glossary term="Côte d'Or" title="367">C&ocirc;te d&rsquo;Or</glossary><span>,</span></span></span> because I&rsquo;d continued to write letters to growers asking them if they&rsquo;d be willing to meet us. We were pulling names mostly from guide-books and magazines. I remember a book about <glossary term="Burgundy" title="212">Burgundy</glossary> written by Serena Suttcliffe, a British importer, that we used a lot. Of course, the majority of these <glossary term="Estate" title="427">estates</glossary> already had representation in the US. We visited <a href="https://www.kermitlynch.com/our-wines/jean-foillard/">Jean Foillard</a>, who agreed to work with us and also gave us a bottle of <glossary term="Bourgueil" title="191">Bourgueil</glossary> from <a href="https://www.kermitlynch.com/our-wines/catherine-et-pierre-breton/">Catherine and Pierre Breton</a>. I even think we started representing the wines before going to the <glossary term="Loire Valley" title="602">Loire</glossary> to meet them.&nbsp;</p> <p>In the winter, we went to the Salon des Vignerons Ind&eacute;pendants in Paris, where we made some new contacts, for example the Lign&egrave;res family of <a href="http://www.chateaulabaronne.com/">Ch&acirc;teau la Baronne</a> in the&nbsp;<span class="zalup"><span><glossary term="Corbières" title="334">Corbi&egrave;res</glossary><span>.</span></span></span> We tried wines from the South-West and decided we needed to work with those because we didn&rsquo;t see them often in New York. We started with a nice family from&nbsp;<span class="zalup"><span><glossary term="Gaillac" title="476">Gaillac</glossary><span>,</span></span></span> the Brun family. In 1990 we visited&nbsp;<span class="zalup"><span><glossary term="Cahors" title="219">Cahors</glossary><span>,</span></span></span>&nbsp;<span class="zalup"><span><glossary term="Fronton" title="1416">Fronton</glossary><span>,</span></span></span>&nbsp;<span class="zalup"><span><glossary term="Madiran" title="1417">Madiran</glossary><span>,</span></span></span>&nbsp;<span class="zalup"><span><glossary term="Côtes de Duras" title="1418">C&ocirc;tes de Duras</glossary><span>,</span></span></span> all wines we&rsquo;d tasted in Paris.&nbsp;</p> <p>Business had started picking up in NY. After Kevin at <a href="https://www.astorwines.com/">Astor</a>, <a href="https://www.garnetwine.com/">Garnet Wines</a> was one of our earliest big customers. The owner, JR Battipaglia, was responsible for the <glossary term="Burgundy" title="212">Burgundy</glossary> section, and he was a fan of our selections. David Lillie was working there as the <glossary term="Loire Valley" title="602">Loire</glossary> buyer, he became a big customer of <a href="https://www.kermitlynch.com/our-wines/catherine-et-pierre-breton/">Breton</a> and <a href="http://louisdressner.com/producers/domaine%20de%20la%20p%C3%A9pi%C3%A8re">P&eacute;pi&egrave;re</a>. He also pushed us to focus more on the&nbsp;<span class="zalup"><span><glossary term="Loire Valley" title="602">Loire</glossary><span>,</span></span></span> to bring in <glossary term="Estate" title="427">estates</glossary> he&rsquo;d enjoyed during his time in France.&nbsp;</p> <p>I can&rsquo;t remember the exact year, but we met <a href="https://www.skurnik.com/">Michael Skurnik</a> at the very beginnings of his company, and he immediately started distributing Michel Juillot. As soon as we started working with more&nbsp;<span class="zalup"><span><glossary term="Beaujolais" title="151">Beaujolais</glossary><span>,</span></span></span> he was on board. Michael distributed <a href="http://louisdressner.com/producers/clos%20de%20la%20roilette">Clos de la Roilette</a> and <a href="http://www.micheltete.com/en/">Michel T&ecirc;te</a>. <a href="https://www.winebow.com/">Martin Scott</a> was also interested in some of the <glossary term="Côte d'Or" title="367">C&ocirc;te d&rsquo;Or</glossary> we were representing, and started distributing those, along with <a href="http://louisdressner.com/producers/domaine%20de%20la%20p%C3%A9pi%C3%A8re">P&eacute;pi&egrave;re</a>.&nbsp;</p> <p>Going back to David Lillie, his role was essential to our evolution as a company. Very soon after we&rsquo;d met him, he and Joe went to the <glossary term="Loire Valley" title="602">Loire</glossary> to seek out new producers for him to sell at the shop. I think this was the winter of 1990. They went to the <glossary term="Salon des Vins de la Loire" title="904">Salon des Vins de Loire</glossary> together.&nbsp;David really organized the trip: he already knew a lot of the producers&rsquo; wines, like <a href="http://louisdressner.com/producers/fran%C3%A7ois%20et%20julien%20pinon">Fran&ccedil;ois Pinon</a>, <a href="http://louisdressner.com/producers/domaine%20olga%20raffault">Olga Raffault</a> (who was already with another importer not doing a good job), Pierre-Jacques Druet, and he convinced Joe they would likely discover new wines together. Going to the salon became a yearly excursion for the two of them.</p> <p>At that point we began specializing more in <glossary term="Loire Valley" title="602">Loire</glossary> wines. We have lost most of our <glossary term="Burgundy" title="212">Burgundy</glossary> producers along the way, but from our early years, the roots of the company remain in the&nbsp;<span class="zalup"><span><glossary term="Mâconnais" title="1205">M&acirc;connais</glossary><span>,</span></span></span> <glossary term="Beaujolais" title="151">Beaujolais</glossary> and the&nbsp;<span class="zalup"><span><glossary term="Loire Valley" title="602">Loire Valley</glossary><span>.</span></span></span></p> <p>I also must mention our friendship with Robert Callahan, who became a very important source of advice. Robert was an enthusiastic wine lover who was working part-time in a shop in Queens while also a PHD student and employed by law firms as a legal briefs&rsquo; writer.&nbsp;</p> <p>We became importers in 1996, when we started LDM Wines with Kevin.&nbsp;</p> <p><u><strong>The Philosophy:</strong></u></p> <p>At the beginning there was no philosophy. The idea was simply to spend more time in France. So that&rsquo;s why the <a href="https://cave-lugny.com/en/">Cave de Lugny</a> seemed like a good bet. It wasn&rsquo;t very ambitious, but we didn&rsquo;t know what we wanted to do or even what we could do. We had no idea of the myriad of legalities involved in getting wine to the US. We had everything to learn, and little by little, we got a clearer idea how everything worked.&nbsp;</p> <p>In the summer of 1987, when we met Henri Goyard in Vir&eacute;, we had never tasted a <glossary term="Chardonnay" title="271">Chardonnay</glossary> wine as good as his. We were ignorant of winemaking and <glossary term="Viticulture" title="1103">viticultural</glossary> practices, he explained how he worked. It was way above our heads, but things that stuck with us were <font color="#7b143e"><b><glossary term="Native Yeast" title="538">native-yeast</glossary> <glossary term="Fermentation" title="441">fermentations</glossary></b></font><span class="zalup"><span><span>,</span></span></span>&nbsp;<span class="zalup"><span><glossary term="Hand Harvesting" title="520">hand-harvesting</glossary><span>,</span></span></span> working the soils and using minimal <glossary term="Chemicals" title="279">chemical</glossary> products in the vines. These became the criteria we started seeking out without particularly understanding. We weren&rsquo;t explicitly asking growers if they worked this way, but we kept it in mind.</p> <p>1987 was also the summer we met No&euml;l Perrin. As I mentioned earlier, he put us in touch and gave us samples from his group of <glossary term="Vigneron/Vignaiolo" title="1089">vigneron</glossary> friends. We didn&rsquo;t have a real direction yet, but through No&euml;l we immediately knew we needed to focus on independent growers. The way the <a href="https://cave-lugny.com/en/">Cave de Lugny</a> had treated us was very generous, but we quickly realized this was not the right approach.&nbsp;</p> <p>In 1988, the letters I wrote to winemakers got many answers, even from some really famous&nbsp;<span class="zalup"><span><glossary term="Estate" title="427">estates</glossary><span>!</span></span></span> We were essentially cold-calling whomever we could because we had nothing to lose. Even growers with representation wrote back and very nicely let us know they were already working with someone. Others told us to come visit.&nbsp;</p> <p>This really leads us to our second &ldquo;philosophical&rdquo; point: nice people, growers we felt a personal connection with. We realized through extensive visits that we liked many of the wines we were tasting, but the people weren&rsquo;t always very friendly, or we didn&rsquo;t get good energy from them. Joe said right away: &ldquo;If we are going to work with people in the long term, I don&rsquo;t want to be in regular contact with them and dreading each visit.&rdquo; It didn&rsquo;t seem worth it.&nbsp;</p> <p>For example, if you know <a href="http://louisdressner.com/producers/domaine%20de%20la%20p%C3%A9pi%C3%A8re">Marc Ollivier</a>, you know he is an incredibly warm, wonderful person. <a href="https://www.kermitlynch.com/our-wines/catherine-et-pierre-breton/">Pierre Breton</a> was at the time very young, passionate and full of energy. <a href="http://louisdressner.com/producers/domaine%20olga%20raffault">Irma and Jeannot Raffault</a> were a little more intense&hellip;</p> <p>I think the major evolution in our way of approaching wine came from working with Catherine Roussel and Didier Barouillet from <a href="http://louisdressner.com/producers/clos%20roche%20blanche">Clos Roche Blanche</a>. At the time, they were working&nbsp;<span class="zalup"><span><glossary term="Biodynamic" title="160">biodynamically</glossary><span>.</span></span></span> We talked a lot with them about their ideas. They sent us in the direction of the <a href="http://louisdressner.com/producers/clos%20du%20tue-boeuf">Puzelat brothers</a>, and that was the beginning of the whole <glossary term="Loir-et-Cher" title="601">Loir-et-Cher</glossary> gang. Everyone was working <glossary term="Organic" title="746">organically</glossary> or&nbsp;<span class="zalup"><span><glossary term="Biodynamic" title="160">biodynamically</glossary><span>.</span></span></span> This spoke to us, but I&rsquo;m convinced it was the connection we had with Catherine and Didier, along with falling head over heels for their wines, that made us look for like-minded&nbsp;<span class="zalup"><span><glossary term="Vigneron/Vignaiolo" title="1089">vignerons</glossary><span>.</span></span></span></p> <p>Before starting with <a href="http://louisdressner.com/producers/clos%20roche%20blanche">Clos Roche Blanche</a>, we were already talking to our growers about how they worked in the vines and the&nbsp;<span class="zalup"><span><glossary term="Cellar" title="254">cellar</glossary><span>.</span></span></span> We discovered that many worked within the criteria that had enamored us when first tasting <a href="http://louisdressner.com/producers/domaine%20de%20roally">Domaine de Roally</a>. But it wasn&rsquo;t everyone. For example, Jean-Luc Mader in <glossary term="Alsace" title="95">Alsace</glossary>; when the conversation of yeasts came up, he told us he used <glossary term="Commercial Yeast" title="321">commercial yeasts</glossary> to start the&nbsp;<span class="zalup"><span><glossary term="Fermentation" title="441">fermentation</glossary><span>.</span></span></span> He did not have confidence in&nbsp;<span class="zalup"><span><glossary term="Native Yeast" title="538">native yeasts</glossary><span>,</span></span></span> and the idea felt too risky to him.&nbsp;</p> <p>These series of conversations with <glossary term="Vigneron/Vignaiolo" title="1089">vignerons</glossary> really led us to understand that we preferred wines from <glossary term="Native Yeast" title="538">native yeast</glossary> <span class="zalup"><span><glossary term="Fermentation" title="441">fermentations</glossary><span>.</span></span></span> One event that really marked me was a visit in the South. When we asked about&nbsp;<span class="zalup"><span><glossary term="Inoculation" title="542">yeasting</glossary><span>,</span></span></span> the grower told us that he used&nbsp;<span class="zalup"><span><glossary term="Commercial Yeast" title="321">commercial yeasts</glossary><span>.</span></span></span> When Joe mentioned that the vast majority of the growers we worked with used&nbsp;<span class="zalup"><span><glossary term="Native Yeast" title="538">native yeasts</glossary><span>,</span></span></span> he started making fun us, telling us that the growers were lying to us, that it was impossible to make wine that way.&nbsp;</p> <p>By the mid 90&rsquo;s, we were convinced that specific criteria gave more to the wines. They were more vivacious, more interesting. We now had an established roster of growers, and it was through word of mouth, asking them if they knew people who worked in a similar fashion, that we found more and more like-minded producers. We were of course working with many producers who we knew were not&nbsp;<span class="zalup"><span><glossary term="Organic" title="746">organic</glossary><span>,</span></span></span> and who we suspected <glossary term="Inoculation" title="542">yeasted</glossary> their wines.&nbsp;</p> <p>It was time to look back and make decisions. It could have made sense to drop anyone not working the way we wanted. But I&rsquo;ll use the example of <a href="http://louisdressner.com/producers/domaine%20de%20la%20p%C3%A9pi%C3%A8re">Marc Ollivier</a>, again, who was not working&nbsp;<span class="zalup"><span><glossary term="Organic" title="746">organically</glossary><span>.</span></span></span> We liked the wines, we loved him as a person, we understood the economic challenges of being such a small independent <glossary term="Estate" title="427">estate</glossary> in the <glossary term="Muscadet" title="697">Muscadet</glossary> (seven&nbsp;<glossary term="Hectare" title="523">hectares</glossary> at the time). We would never have pushed him to work in another way. He chose this new path over the years, by meeting <glossary term="Vigneron/Vignaiolo" title="1089">vignerons</glossary> in New York, becoming their friends, talking about their work. Marc was completely isolated in his area. He had no one to talk to.&nbsp;</p> <p>Another example is <a href="http://louisdressner.com/producers/domaine%20olga%20raffault">Olga Raffault</a>. We loved their extremely complicated system of late-releasing wines. We never had any idea what was going on, but it amused us how they had created this hectic, indecipherable way of doing things. They weren&rsquo;t <glossary term="Organic" title="746">organic</glossary> at the time, but they were using&nbsp;<span class="zalup"><span><glossary term="Native Yeast" title="538">native yeasts</glossary><span>.</span></span></span> And now they are&nbsp;<span class="zalup"><span><glossary term="Organic Certification" title="260">certified organic</glossary><span>!</span></span></span>&nbsp;</p> <p>The other major development relates to&nbsp;<span class="zalup"><span><glossary term="Sulfites" title="993">sulfur</glossary><span>,</span></span></span> or rather too much&nbsp;<span class="zalup"><span><glossary term="Sulfites" title="993">sulfur</glossary><span>.</span></span></span> It was just really unappealing to open a bottle or taste a wine and get hit over the head with it. I would get an immediate headache. This became a regular conversation with our winemakers, particularly those making white wine. But we weren&rsquo;t seeking <glossary term="Sulfites" title="993">un-sulfured</glossary> wines either.&nbsp;</p> <p>We then starting meeting growers who weren&rsquo;t using it all, like <a href="http://louisdressner.com/producers/agn%C3%A8s%20et%20ren%C3%A9%20mosse">Ren&eacute; Mosse</a>, <a href="http://louisdressner.com/producers/olivier%20lemasson%20-%20les%20vins%20cont%C3%A9s">Olivier Lemasson</a>, <a href="http://louisdressner.com/producers/herv%C3%A9%20villemade">Herv&eacute; Villemade</a>, <a href="http://louisdressner.com/producers/domaine%20le%20briseau%7Cnana,%20vins%20et%20cie">Christian Chaussard</a>&hellip; A lot of wines were frankly all over the place. But we really liked the people, which again is something we place tremendous value in! We took a big risk bringing these wines in, and many did not travel well. Furthermore, there wasn&rsquo;t really a clientele for the wines, save a few die-hards who were already entrenched in what is now called the&nbsp;<span class="zalup"><span><glossary term="Natural WIne" title="708">natural wine movement</glossary><span>.</span></span></span> But we believed in these people, and we persevered with them.&nbsp;</p> <p>We met <a href="http://louisdressner.com/producers/emmanuel%20houillon%7Cmaison%20pierre%20overnoy">Pierre Overnoy</a> in the early 2000&rsquo;s, as well as <a href="http://louisdressner.com/producers/georges%20descombes">Georges Descombes</a>, two growers we often heard about working in a &ldquo;<glossary term="Jules Chauvet" title="558">Jules Chauvet</glossary> style&rdquo;. We knew there was a whole movement of <glossary term="Vigneron/Vignaiolo" title="1089">vignerons</glossary> working this way, but it was not a conscious decision to increase the import of these types of wines. We didn&rsquo;t consciously plan to create a market for this style of wine. And this was not in line with what our best customers were looking for.</p> <p>There was a paradigm shift at one point, where people started associating us with&nbsp;<span class="zalup"><span><glossary term="Natural WIne" title="708">natural wine</glossary><span>,</span></span></span> although it was never our intention. We were looking for authentic wines, wines from their area, made by <glossary term="Vigneron/Vignaiolo" title="1089">vignerons</glossary> who worked well with their local grape varieties and&nbsp;<span class="zalup"><span><glossary term="Terroir" title="1026">terroirs</glossary><span>.</span></span></span> The <glossary term="Loir-et-Cher" title="601">Loir-et-Cher</glossary> was very formative in this: there are so many different grape varieties in that sector, way more than anywhere else in France. Same with&nbsp;<span class="zalup"><span><glossary term="Gaillac" title="476">Gaillac</glossary><span>:</span></span></span> we were fascinated by all these forgotten grapes. It was such a contrast with the regions we were accustomed to:&nbsp;<span class="zalup"><span> <glossary term="Côte d'Or" title="367">C&ocirc;te d&rsquo;Or</glossary><span>,</span></span></span> the&nbsp;<span class="zalup"><span> <glossary term="Beaujolais" title="151">Beaujolais</glossary><span>,</span></span></span>&nbsp;<span class="zalup"><span><glossary term="Mâcon" title="702">M&acirc;con</glossary><span>.</span></span></span>&nbsp;</p> <p><u><strong>On Italian Wine:</strong></u></p> <p>Later on, thanks to Kevin and <a href="http://louisdressner.com/producers/vittorio%20bera%20&amp;%20figli">Alessandra Bera</a>, we started on a completely new adventure with Italian wines. Joe was upset that he could not pronounce, nor easily remember, most of the <glossary term="Estate" title="427">estates</glossary>&rsquo; names, grape varieties, etc&hellip;. It had been a big effort to learn French, which he spoke fluently, but Italian was too much of a challenge.</p> <p><a href="http://louisdressner.com/producers/vittorio%20bera%20&amp;%20figli">Alessandra Bera</a> was very close to many French growers we worked with, she was present at the very first <glossary term="Dive Bouteille" title="395">Dive</glossary> tastings, which were organized in <glossary term="Bourgueil" title="191">Bourgueil</glossary> by <a href="https://www.kermitlynch.com/our-wines/catherine-et-pierre-breton/">Catherine and Pierre Breton</a>. She approached Kevin and Joe at one&nbsp;<span class="zalup"><span><glossary term="Dive Bouteille" title="395">Dive</glossary><span>,</span></span></span> and asked them to work with her&nbsp;<span class="zalup"><span><glossary term="Estate" title="427">estate</glossary><span>.</span></span></span> Joe was very hesitant, Kevin also I think, because we were viewed as a strictly French wines company (with a <glossary term="Porto" title="744">Port</glossary> producer.) They worried that nobody would be interested in one Italian grower. So, we went to Italy in the fall and Alessandra organized appointments for us: we met <a href="http://louisdressner.com/producers/cascina%20degli%20ulivi">Stefano Bellotti</a>, <a href="http://louisdressner.com/producers/cascina%20%60tavijn">Nadia</a> I think&nbsp;(and others that Kevin will remember.)</p> <p>This foray into Italy would never have happened without Kevin. He spoke Italian fluently, knew Italian wines from all his years in the wine business and the year he has spent in Rome.&nbsp;Joe and I were&nbsp;total&nbsp;ignoramuses, we knew nothing about Italian wines.</p> <p>The guiding idea was to build an Italian portfolio which would reflect what we had found in France: good people we liked, good, honest wines which spoke of their regions.</p> <p>The list grew, quite slowly at first, but it turned out it was easier to grab great estates in Italy than it had been in France. We took several trips, went to shows around&nbsp;<span class="zalup"><span><glossary term="VinItaly" title="1105">Vinitaly</glossary><span>,</span></span></span> and we met more and more winemakers. The rest is history, with a special mention to <a href="http://louisdressner.com/producers/arianna%20occhipinti">Arianna Occhipinti</a>, a baby with her first <glossary term="Vintage" title="1109">vintage</glossary> when me first tasted with her. Love at first sight!</p>

article

<p><img src="http://louisdressner.com/uploads/images/article/2020_Aug_18//20/7f/207f11034cab8f6acc37422d16e9873c.jpeg" /></p> <p>On September 17th, 2011 -exactly a year ago- my father Joseph Mathew Dressner died of brain cancer. It&#39;s hard to believe 365 days have passed: I&#39;m not sure where the time went, undoubtedly because in that short period so much has happened, changed, shifted and evolved. Five trips to Europe, visits to a dozen states, moving from California back to New York... It&#39;s certainly been a busy year for me, but nothing has marked me more, or been more challenging than learning to live without the most important person in my life. Over the last two months, I&#39;ve compiled this collection of words (and in one case, a comic) from many people who were not only close to Joe, but also critical in Louis/Dressner Selections&#39; growth and evolution. Friends, vignerons, co-workers, distributors, retailers: Joe had the uncanny ability to blur these lines and, by following his example, I am proud to call all the contributors part of my family. Because that&#39;s what we are! Power in numbers!</p> <p>***</p> <p><img src="http://louisdressner.com/uploads/images/article/2020_Aug_18//9c/ba/9cbaa291c30da7c96f30c77262e98f23.jpeg" /></p> <p>***</p> <p>&quot;Unfortunately, at the moment I sit down to this write this for Joe, I found out the staggering news that Christian Chaussard has left us. And it brought back the memory of a meal we all shared together, on a summer night here at B&eacute;llivi&egrave;re. That night felt so natural. But as life&#39;s tragic cruelty is quick to remind us, you don&#39;t often get enough opportunities like that one...

Joe&#39;s attitude was sometimes unfathomable and enigmatic, because anyone trying to understand Nature, Culture and Man in this world will set forth a thousand propositions... But under that hard facade, Joe had constructed an infallible logic of open-mindedness, bridging the gap between viticultural worlds, unifying them by valuing nature and celebrating the diversity characterized by an infinite amount of different wines made by different people. Just like any civilization...

Yes, moments like that one, like that precious little meal spent with our families, there will never be enough of them. These are the types of meetings in life, for those of us like Desnos, that make you want to address each passerby on the street...&quot;
</p> <p><img src="http://louisdressner.com/uploads/images/article/2020_Aug_18//87/3e/873e53825249fe78637c4765a0fd1539.jpeg" /></p> <p><strong>-Eric Nicolas, vigneron in Lhomme</strong></p> <p><strong>***</strong></p> <p>&quot;The first thing I have to mention is that subversive and brilliant code that Joe often spoke, where two listeners would hear two completely different messages depending whether or not they understood the code. I never mentioned the existence of the code, nor did Joe, and I didn&#39;t really think about it until he was gone. But I recently mentioned it to Jules, who laughed and said &#39;yeah of course, that&#39;s the so and so (I forget what he called it)&#39;. Which confirmed its existence for me. I&#39;m sure that many of you know exactly what I&#39;m talking about. Sometimes Joe used this to insult people, and they weren&#39;t sure whether they were being insulted (they usually were). Sometimes it seemed like sport, but eventually I realized that Joe used this with great intention and seriousness, and he often used it in important communications. I guess the key to the code was just to understand Joe&#39;s irony. If you didn&#39;t get that then he wasn&#39;t going to explain it to you. It was marvelous to finish a meeting thinking that Joe had really been pertinent and insightful, while others wondered if he was of sound mind.</p> <p>The second thing I&#39;ll try to describe is the redirection of passion that Joe instilled in me. Of course we all generate our own passion, but Joe somehow tuned mine and helped point it in a more personal direction. He didn&#39;t do much, but he had a very sensitive and effective touch. Like a good shrink, I suppose, he helped me to believe in what I already knew, no matter what others around me thought about it. Joe&#39;s confidence in me really changed my life and I&#39;ll always be grateful for that. Together on road trips, Joe and David Lillie offered a solid example of how to do it: pragmatic, consistent, slow, humble, funny, engaged, appreciative. Their path wouldn&#39;t lead to big money, but they showed that it could lead to a decent living. I think about their example all the time.</p> <p>Thanks for everything Joe, I&#39;ll never forget you!&quot;</p> <p><img src="http://louisdressner.com/uploads/images/article/2020_Aug_18//1f/a2/1fa2ca1cc47c979cb3f9014504db408a.jpeg" /></p> <p><strong>-Keven Clancy, co-owner of Farm Wine Imports, San Francisco California</strong></p> <p><strong>***</strong></p> <p>&quot;There is so much to say, and words sometimes feel as if they aren&#39;t enough to express the great experience of knowing Joe. Didier likes to talk about how we almost never met, a story you must know&hellip; Every year at the Salons des Vins de la Loire, your father never forgot to go and thank Patricia Denis.</p> <p>There are so many memories, but my favorites are all the French expressions and words that made him laugh- everytime I hear the adjective &quot;ballon&eacute;&quot; (ballooned) or &quot;une petite demi-heure&quot; (a SMALL half hour), or &quot;un BON quart d&#39;heure (a GOOD 15 minutes), I hear him laughing like a little kid. It became a game between us, and every visit I tried to find a new word he didn&#39;t know.</p> <p>He loved and deeply respected his vignerons. We are lucky to have been friends.&quot;</p> <p><img src="http://louisdressner.com/uploads/images/article/2020_Aug_18//fc/80/fc806268e410ffaf4854bbcb0a90f40f.jpeg" /></p> <p><strong>-Catherine Roussel, vigneronne in Mareuil-sur-Cher</strong></p> <p><strong>***</strong></p> <p>&quot;What first comes to mind when I think of Joe was the intense delight he felt talking with vignerons - those he knew for years or those he had just met, who worked well in the vineyard and with no bullshit in the cellar, who had things to say, stories to tell and a sense of humor. Joe&#39;s face would light up with an infectious grin, with serious focus, with mock expressions of outrage or incredulity. It could go on for hours, especially if wine was flowing. Perhaps his basically dark and pessimistic world-view made him value these relationships with people who were doing beautiful work for no other reason than pride and who recognized consciously or not the importance of their contributions to the real beauty of life.</p> <p>Henri Goyard and Jean-Paul Brun - perhaps they were the first vignerons with whom Joe had this type of relationship. I remember a visit when a barrel was still working after a year and a half (or was it two and a half?), Goyard, unconcerned, having us listen to hear an occasional bubble, then sharing a glass of the 1989 Monbellet in the sunshine of a warm day in February. Marc Ollivier of course, who became a close friend. Joe&#39;s appreciation of Marc&#39;s intelligence and hard work was deep and satisfying for both of them. We would stay at Marc&#39;s house during the Salon des Vins de Loire and struggle to stay awake over long delicious meals of pot-au-feu and game. Joe loved to meet the older guys who worked well - after a particularly frustrating two days in Sancerre, we went to taste with Pierre Boullay, just to drink something good. Boullay and Joe immediately got friendly and a few hours later we were walking up the street in Chavignol, the sun was shining, the birds were singing, and Claude Thomas came down off Monts Damn&eacute;es to meet us. Claude was a bit taciturn and gruff, but here too a feeling of respect soon developed and many old bottles were opened. It was a great afternoon. Fernand Coudert - here was a man who enjoyed talking and tasting, it&#39;s fitting that a long bar is in the vat-room. Their mutual enjoyment during Joe&#39;s visits was obvious and great fun.</p> <p>Joe&#39;s deep, dark and sometimes difficult sense of humor was a key part in many of these relationships. Fortunately Joe could laugh at himself as well, and growers often enjoyed a laugh at his expense. Catherine Roussell discovered one day at the Salon that Joe, who prided himself on his deep knowledge of arcane French idioms didn&#39;t understand &quot;il y a du monde au balcon.&quot; The next day Catherine told Joe that he should taste with Jo Pithon as the wines were showing exceptionally well. As Joe approached their booth, Madame Pithon, who is very well-endowed and had worn a loose-fitting peasant blouse for the occasion, bent forward, loosened her blouse and said &quot;il y a du monde au balcon?&quot; Joe turned purple, and a good laugh was had by all.<br /> And then there was the year when I didn&#39;t travel to the Loire with Joe, as having three kids between the ages of 10 and 16 made it impossible. An agent who sold me wines from Baudry and Hureau met Joe at the salon and inquired as to my whereabouts. Joe assumed his best expression of shock and outrage and said &quot;Didn&#39;t you hear? They caught him stealing at Garnet and put him in jail!&quot; The agent cancelled my orders. Joe produced a letter of apology, but insisted that only a moron would have believed him...</p> <p>Joe was a very good driver, but could not or would not read maps, thus the beauty of our early relationship, as I love to navigate, despite the fact that he would occasionally fall asleep while driving. This encouraged me to pay attention and we rarely got lost. Finding Nady Foucault for the first time was a bit difficult however, as the great wine-maker has no sign on his house or indication of a winery on a long grey street in Chace. We were a bit nervous at that first appointment, as Nady rarely saw importers, especially Americans. Joe and Nady, of course, after a few hours of tasting and testing, each one feeling out the other, soon arrived at a sense of mutual respect. Things seemed to be going in the right direction, but then Charles Joguet walked in, waving a bottle of 1989 Clos Roche Blanche C&ocirc;t and all thoughts of business disappeared. During subsequent visits the after tasting repartee between Joe and Nady got longer and longer, Nady behind the bar in his mystic black mold-covered cave, as our feet slowly froze and the days schedule was hopelessly ruined.</p> <p>Of course the list of vignerons includes many, many more for whom Joe felt this deep friendship and appreciation and with whom he seemed totally happy. Laughing, arguing, gossiping, drinking and then doing his best to sell their wines, promote them and bring them to a wider audience - which he did so well and with a sense of irreverence and fun that enriched us all.</p> <p>Thank you, Joe.&quot;</p> <p><img src="http://louisdressner.com/uploads/images/article/2020_Aug_18//d0/2d/d02d81869a19efa36b17e401488a1dba.jpeg" /></p> <p><strong>-David Lillie, co-owner of Chambers Street Wines</strong></p> <p>***</p> <p><img src="http://louisdressner.com/uploads/images/article/2020_Aug_18//e1/a5/e1a5848b8dc4b2089732697f2caaecfa.jpeg" /></p> <p>***</p> <p>&quot;First and foremost, Joe was a friend. Our story begins in the early 90&#39;s, when Louis/Dressner was just starting. At first, I&#39;d see Joe and Denyse every summer with the kids, but as things progressed with the company, Joe started visiting us every February as well. He&#39;d always stay at my house, and we would use my car to visit other vignerons, which gave us a lot of time to get to know each other. It took Joe a while to get used to Lyon&#39;s cuisine, and I remember one night where ate a delicious &quot;Jesus&quot; (a large lyonnais saucisson). Joe spent the whole night riffing on a pun he came up with: Jesus-Cuit instead of Jesus-Christ (note: cuit and Christ are pronounced the same in French). We ate too much of it, and were both sick the next day.</p> <p>We always talked about wine a lot, about the industrial world and the peasant world. Joe truly appreciated France, and wanted to find the real wines, the ones closest to their terroir, wines that best represented the regions he loved so much. His journalistic talents really helped him dig up leads and objectively analyze people&#39;s work. The wine had to be good, but it also had to represent a state of mind, a philosophy, a story. Back then, &#39;offs&#39; didn&#39;t exist, and not every lead or idea was a good one. I remember a trip where we tasted many wines that our naive palates could not believe were industrial. I remember a meal on Merci&egrave;re street, where we both got caught up in a wine we were told was &#39;sans souffre&#39;. Somehow, the next morning Joe had arranged to meet the vigneron. He came back that night annoyed; too perceptive in his questioning, the vigneron had admitted: &#39;I don&#39;t sulfur the wine, but I put a bunch in the barrel right before racking&hellip;&#39;</p> <p>Joe&#39;s great force, something us vignerons can never thank him enough for, was his passion for our wines. Over on your side of the Atlantic, he was able to make people understand the qualities of peasant wine. In fact, he was the precursor to it all.</p> <p>Gloire &agrave; Joe.&quot;</p> <p><img src="http://louisdressner.com/uploads/images/article/2020_Aug_18//2e/fc/2efcb820fb0a061e33088a253774585b.jpg" /></p> <p><strong>-Jean Paul Brun, vigneron in Charnay</strong></p> <p><strong>***</strong></p> <p>&quot;It was September 2000. My employer, as he sometimes would do, called early to tell me I would be driving with a guest on my account calls that day - an importer. Soon afterward I met my boss in a suburban Detroit grocery plaza parking lot.</p> <p>After exchanging greetings, Joe turned and asked me, &quot;Do you have a blog?&quot;</p> <p>&quot;What&#39;s a &#39;blog&#39;?&quot; I said.</p> <p>He was sizing me up with the question. Then, charitably, he clued me in. &quot;In the future everyone will have one.&quot;</p> <p>I&#39;d like to write a tribute to Joe, but it&#39;s difficult. It was his written words after all that I miss the most tangibly. And this attempt enflames the absence.</p> <p>Writing is a method for discovering truth. Ordinary lies tend to wither in text form, and that is instrumental to the process of reducing them. In vino veritas, sure, butthe trade in vino chatter is particularly inundated with lies which Joe had the helpful and frustrating habit of pointing out. I don&#39;t think he could help it. He was more into the wine than the selling of it.</p> <p>Of course, upholding wine and truth is not possible without true wine. In 2001-2003, unwilling to submit my wine selection to the approval of numerical scorekeepers, I tasted more than 15 000 wines, with notes and even scores of my own. I publicized this in an attempt to assert my authority as a judge. And it &quot;worked.&quot; Business was active. And yet by 2004 I suddenly found that I loathed wine and drank almost none of it. I turned my attention instead to the beer department.</p> <p>For vulgar trade related reasons, Louis/Dressner had been absent from Michigan since 2001. Occasionally I would agitate for its return, calling Joe and leaving messages on internetdiscussion forums. Then one day in May 2005, Joe showed up at my store with eight samples. I tasted them analytically, noting their euclidean attributes and conceding that all were worthy of testing on my shelves.</p> <p>But something else had happened. By the next day I found myself helplessly craving 2004 Domaine Pepi&egrave;re Muscadet and 2002 Mar&eacute;chal Bourgogne. They couldn&#39;t arrive soon enough. When they did, the drought was over. I was drinking wine again. Not tasting, comparing and judging - though the capacity didn&#39;t abandon me - I was drinking wine, and alive.</p> <p>Another curious thing happened. By 2006 and after several large shipments of LDM wines, I noticed my clientele changing. I saw fewer needy, status-obsessed middle aged men. They were once a core constituent of our shop and almost certainly a reflection on me. But for every absent incrementalist trophy hunter, there were three new customers joining us. It was a visibly diverse new public: women, young people, people who had been to wine tastings and never enjoyed wine. Well we were all enjoying it now.</p> <p>For now I&#39;ve given up blogging and trading so directly in wine. I&#39;m learning the restaurant business. It&#39;s less organized and more public in its evasions and conjuring tricks. It&#39;s good exercise. Joe taught me to get out of the wine business, and live, by doing it right.I miss Joe. I&#39;m grateful to know his family, the vignerons, and their work, which carries on renewably.&quot;</p> <p><img src="http://louisdressner.com/uploads/images/article/2020_Aug_18//8d/79/8d79bca384393f7293f9c5c73211c871.jpeg" /></p> <p><strong>-Putnam Weekley, ambassador of great wine in Detroit.</strong></p> <p><strong>***</strong></p> <p>&nbsp;</p> <p>&quot;To Joe,</p> <p>Indigenous yeasts... It&#39;s spring 1999 and we&#39;re tasting 1998, which I believe is the first vintage you brought to the states&hellip; I still remember how much joy I felt seeing you appreciate my work!</p> <p>And then a tasting the next summer, with both our families eating wild mushroom omelets, ham and some local charcuterie. The ambiance is very casual, but of course the conversation always revolves around wine. You ask me about indigenous yeasts and if I&#39;ve ever tried making wine with them.</p> <p>&quot;Me, no, but my father Jean, of course. There was no other alternative.&quot;</p> <p>The conversation changes to another subject, but the decision is made the minute you leave: &quot;I will retry a spontaneous fermentation in 1999&hellip;&quot; 13 years later, working this way is so evident to me that I still wonder how I ever did anything else! So, of course I thank you for the &quot;yeast question&quot;, but mostly I thank you for making me reflect on my work -to escape from my shackles and the beaten path- by making a simple suggestion that was by no means an obligation. Well played, my &quot;guide&quot;!</p> <p>And that morning in San Francisco. We both find ourselves in front of the hotel... You&#39;re calmly smoking your cigarette and I&#39;m trying to digest the 4 breakfasts I just pounded down! As always, I&#39;m never sure if I should leave you alone or start a conversation. I must admit I talk a lot...even way too much! But today it&#39;s you who asks:</p> <p>-Do you know San Francisco?</p> <p>-Not at all. this is my first time here!</p> <p>-Do you want to take a cable car ride with me?</p> <p>-Super!</p> <p>It was a great visit, and I discover the city in a way I will always remember. But that&#39;s not what I remember the most of our morning walk: we talk about all types of things, about you, about me... And that morning, I want to keep it forever. That night, I realized that I actually knew something about you, and that I like you a lot! More than the wine, it&#39;s also the vigneron you appreciate. And with my wine, I feel like I let people see into my soul. Therefore, through my wine you now know me well... Alright, time to go back to the hotel, the rest of the family, YOUR vignerons are waiting for you. Thank you Joe!</p> <p>You know Joe, it&#39;s not easy writing to you... So I refuse to write in the past tense, because thankfully, you&#39;re still extremely present for me.&quot;</p> <p><img src="http://louisdressner.com/uploads/images/article/2020_Aug_18//40/c0/40c04dfb36f6343028479d18ffb3e4a0.jpeg" /></p> <p><strong>-Franck Peillot, vigneron in Montagnieu</strong></p> <p><strong>***</strong></p> <p>&quot;Joe had, and continues to have, a huge impact on my life and the way I&#39;ve come to value people and relationships. Sure I learned a lot about wine over the years, but I learned more about living from Joe. Joe was all in: loving, hating, creating. I can&#39;t say that there was one singular experience marked me, it&#39;s more the accumulation of them. Here are some of the times I think about when I think about Joe...</p> <p>Me driving while Joe simultaneously operates two GPSes in an attempt to figure out which is smarter.</p> <p>The sound of Joe&#39;s voice when he would call to wake Denyse in the morning.</p> <p>Joe and me singing a karaoke duet version of &quot;I Got You Babe&quot; at a bar in Avignon.</p> <p>The time the cat flew off the wall in Venice and planted itself in the middle of Joe&#39;s chest.</p> <p>Joe calling me while riding his bike in NYC.</p> <p>Joe showing off his newest, greatest travel bag.</p> <p>Joe saying&quot;come on, this is great stuff.&quot;</p> <p>Denyse, Jules, Alyce, Buster, Zaggy.</p> <p>Hearing Joe tell his mother that his father is dead for the third day in a row.</p> <p>Joe checking in with me after an event and saying, &quot;Are you happy, I didn&#39;t offend anyone...&quot;</p> <p>And so many more...&quot;</p> <p><img src="http://louisdressner.com/uploads/images/article/2020_Aug_18//fe/9d/fe9d2f6fcc3c347c593732a2a41ed768.jpeg" /></p> <p><strong>-Shawn Mead, former Louis/Dressner employee, soon to be awesome restaurant owner in Seattle</strong></p> <p><strong>***</strong></p> <p><img src="http://louisdressner.com/uploads/images/article/2020_Aug_18//71/bf/71bf437f5ffc54a6a13d6010297573d1.jpeg" /></p> <p>***</p> <p>&quot;OMFG, Jesus, Mary and Joseph!</p> <p>Writing about Joe!<br /> Where and how do I start? Joe would have probably relished this kind of exercise - frustrated/talented writer that he was. Me not so much.</p> <p>Just who is this Louis Dressner?<br /> I first encountered Joe&#39;s label in the late 90&#39;s while working at La Goulue, which wasn&#39;t exactly a temple of natural wines. Mutual curiosity flickered as I purchased case after case for my bosses from someone who curiously imported all the stuff I wanted. Mine was further piqued when I realized that everything I bought at the local wine store (Garnet Wine &amp; Liquor, where the Grand Loire Wizard at the time happened to be David Lillie) for my own consumption bore the same label. But mutual curiosity notwithstanding, even when my offerings of Joe&#39;s wines had increased manifold through numerous establishments I managed, our relationship did not mature until...</p> <p>...The Arrival of the Little People (TM)<br /> Fran&ccedil;ois and Jenny&#39;s (Worldwide Wines) arrival on the scene vexed and pushed Joe into fighting back, taking greater risks on more far-out (0) wines and breaking free of the three-tier Schnook system (1). On the eve of opening 360, I was delighted at the ever expanding inventory, direct sales and bounty of P.M.G.&#39;s (2). Now we got to know each other better! We bonded over a firm conviction that wine should be drunk, not collected and a staunch resolve to put into practice this shared philosophy (3)-not anything so profane as balancing the inventory or diplomatic posturing at corporate tastings. Actually we got to cherish each others&#39; dislikes and likes alike. Joe, though, was luckier than me in that respect, as he had extraordinary partners, the L and M in LDM, to keep him in check.</p> <p>Joe&#39;s Restaurant<br /> 360&#39;s wine cellar became pretty much an LDM exclusive and I used to joke about how Joe was really the owner - against all regulations. Working more closely together, I shared and admired his uncompromising practices while keeping his business sustainable, before that even was a term. I also got to know him as a shrewd businessman, learned about his irritability with spoofulation (4) and his unwavering support of his friends in good or bad times. In support of me and my little place in the middle of nowhere, he would drag his wife, kids and aging parents all across town to eat, drink, be merry and wait for a taxi...</p> <p>Joe Married Me!<br /> After my wife and I had met over a glass of an LDM import (5), had gotten secretly married at City Hall and decided to do it again -this time for real with family and friends- it was clear from the start that only Joe could officiate. He accepted gracefully and took the job very seriously, preparing for a month, interviewing both candidates and unearthing an ancient Celtic ritual he decided was perfect for the union of a Frenchman to a German woman. He also denounced us as sentimental, but we forgave him. He did such a good job of it that we are still happily married and he received several requests from hopeful bridal couples. Seeing as he wasn&#39;t actually authorized to marry anyone, he had to decline.</p> <p>France<br /> After moving to Puerto Rico, we would see Joe on summer vacation in France and put dents into other people&#39;s wine cellars. One year at Denyse&#39;s family house (aka the Famous Ch&acirc;teau<br /> Dressner &agrave; Poil Rouge) I thought I noticed a limp. When I asked Joe about it, he brushed it aside, attributing it to askew vision due to overindulgence in miscellaneous fermented beverages and a known predilection for herbal remedies of the smokable kind. A few months later it unfortunately turned out to be early evidence of the brain tumor he would vindictively fight over the next three years.</p> <p>The big 4-0</p> <p><img src="http://louisdressner.com/uploads/images/article/2020_Aug_18//83/be/83be3833f3b6bc5a6924692c91608595.jpeg" /></p> <p>Dressner and I finally make the &quot;Big Times&quot; (6). After hard times going through chemotherapy and radiation, Joe made a point in 2010 to preside over my 40th birthday celebration. Again in France, among many vigneron friends and many, many bottles of wine with porcine interludes, I relished seeing Captain Tumor Man, whose acerbic (and hilarious) blog entries had become part of my daily routine. Back home, it took three emails from him to finally make me read what I assumed was just Joe spamming me about heavily discounted penis enlargements in Malaysia.</p> <p>The last Time until the next Time<br /> In June 2011 for Puzelat&#39;s wedding Joe was so well that he celebrated all night, enjoyed much laughter, boar and many a bottle and even buried the hatchet with Breton over some fine Cubans. After the three-day celebration he was clearly exhausted, and when we saw him a few days later to say good-bye before going back home, he was weak. So weak in fact that he asked for our help in getting from his bed to the lunch table. He was clearly embarrassed by his frailty, and we were touched that he would allow us to see him this way. It was the last time I saw him.</p> <p>I am very grateful to have known someone who agreed with me that the customer is not always right and who unlike me made a very successful business out of that philosophy, bringing mo&#39; better wine to America in due course. I bemoan the fact that now there is nobody left who outgeeks me with the newest gadget and latest flavor of Android. I miss his cantankerous rants against distant (or less so) relatives, Alice Feiring, fake posturing and the questionable practice of circumcising adult men. And I miss sharing a good bottle or two or three with my friend poking fun at some undeserving victim or just laughing together for no reason at all. &quot;Enjoying the lifestyle&quot; as Joe would have smirked, quoting some Portland hipsters&#39; reason for entering the wine business; as I have always suspected he did himself.&quot;</p> <p>0.Far-Out: marked by a considerable departure from the conventional or traditional.<br /> 1.The Three-Tier Schnook System<br /> 2. Pour Ma Gueule: bottle reserved for ones own consumption.<br /> 3. &quot;Humorless activism to promote wine is an oxymoron. Getting smashed, eating well and laughing with good friends are key to our movement. We also enjoy being contemptuous of other people around us, somewhat randomly, particularly when we&#39;re on our second or third bottle.&quot; - Joe Dressner<br /> 4. Point/Counterpoint on the History of the Term Spoofulation<br /> 5. Thierry Puzelat Pineau d&#39;Aunis 2003<br /> 6. Jancis Robinson &quot;Pure Pleasure?&quot;</p> <p><img src="http://louisdressner.com/uploads/images/article/2020_Aug_18//5e/e8/5ee8c9d1cb57bd71781807e08d7ce240.jpeg" /></p> <p><strong>-Arnaud Erhart, former New York City restauranteur, current scuba diving instructor in Puerto Rico</strong></p> <p><strong>***</strong></p> <p>&quot;Joe Dressner particularly marked the wine world, as well as the spirit of all those who met him along the way. Like Marcel Lapierre with us vignerons, in the wine business Joe distinguished himself as an independent, free spirit that changed people&#39;s minds and pushed thing forward in a positive, sustainable manner. His words, sometimes soft and well intentioned, other times bitter and without concession, remind me of the spontaneous fermentation of fresh grape juice.</p> <p>So to describe his bursts of anger, of joy , his moments of brilliance and even his mistakes, I will use the generic term: &quot;Dressner fermentation&quot;! The Dressner fermentation is a huge mess! It&#39;s a succession of truths and contradictions without the slightest hint of apparent logic, but when you take a step back, you realized his determination was exemplary! It&#39;s also important to mention that this fermentation would have no value without Denyse and Kevin there to control temperatures in the cellar. I don&#39;t think I can come up with a clear, concise definition of the Dressner fermentation, but I&#39;ve experienced it many times, and here are some examples:</p> <p>My first experience with Dressner fermentation was during Denyse and Joe&#39;s first visit to our cellar around 1996. They had been sent by the Baronne and Barbouillette (note: Catherine Roussel and Didier Barroullet from Clos Roche Blanche). We barely knew them at the time, but our shared &quot;customer&quot; marked the beginning of a great friendship!</p> <p>Next up, a huge argument between Joe and I, who had wrote on the internet that he bought Overnoy and Puzelat just to lose money. I doubt that he thought us &quot;country folk&quot; had access to the web back then!</p> <p>Though Jenny and Fran&ccedil;ois introduced me to Arnaud at 360 and Laurent at I&ccedil;i, the Dressner fermentation is what permitted me to get to know them and become friends! The perverse effect of this fermentation, Laurent ended up leaving New York and showing up with a backpack at my front door. Luckily, he quickly found a new house, a house where things are fermenting nicely...</p> <p>In the same way, the Dressner fermentation created my New York family: Jorge, Jos&eacute;, Chris Andrews, Chris Johnson, Bill, Arturo et Fifi: my American alter-egos!</p> <p>It also gave me an Italian family: Luca, Maulino, Arianna, Uncle Bera and Santa Fonterenza. Another perverse effect: one of my &quot;adopted sons&quot; left me for one of those Italian vigneronnes. Again, love because of Dressner fermentation.</p> <p>At one point, one of our interns (who was also a radio journalist), set up an interview with Joe at VitiValaire. First question: &quot;So, you specialize in natural wine?&quot; Joe answers: &quot;No. I specialize in good wine!&quot; End of interview, get outta here! Dressner fermentation.</p> <p>Also, Joe was one of the first to &quot;knight&quot; Pierre-O-Bonhomme as a worthy successor. After grilling him for a few hours, of course!</p> <p>In France, all of us are micro-categorized: if Houillon is identified as a natural wine producer, then Pinon is the organic wine producer, etc&hellip; Eric Texier isn&#39;t even allowed to be part of this circle at all! But the Dressner fermentation brought us all together, gave us the opportunity to listen to each other, to be attentive and to watch each other&#39;s backs. Finally, it made us realize that our goals, our experiments, our successes and our failures were so similar that these the categorizations have absolutely no reason to exist.</p> <p>Those were just some examples of what the Dressner fermentation represents: a combination of free spirit, humor, being super serious, bad faith, intellectual honesty, respect and provocation. Joe contributed greatly to all the agitation indigenous yeasts are causing everywhere in the wine world. And after hearing Jules&#39; speech last October during Joe&#39;s commemoration, oenologists should be worried: the Dressner fermentation is far from over!&quot;</p> <p><img src="http://louisdressner.com/uploads/images/article/2020_Aug_18//ba/08/ba087c288810f8af2e6a413e043a5024.jpeg" /></p> <p><strong>-Thierry Puzelat, vigneron in Les Montils</strong></p> <p><strong>***</strong></p> <p>&quot;I guess our first meeting kind of summed it up. I invited him to come lead a staff training at the four star restaurant where I was the buyer. We poured I think three Dressner wines by the glass at the time. He asked me if there was bike parking. I wasn&#39;t sure. He wouldn&#39;t come if there was no bike parking. I said I was sure we could find something in the building. He said he had been to the Time Warner Center before and hadn&#39;t been able to bring his bike inside. He said the guards had stopped him. I asked if it would be possible to take the subway over.He said he wasn&#39;t coming, and to call the whole thing off. I talked to several people in Building Operations, and we worked out special permission as well as a dedicated plan of bike entry and storage. I called Joe back and let me him know. I really wanted him to come. I showed up early the day of, ready to gofor Action Plan: Bike. Joe showed upa bit late onthe day of, with no bike. Decided not to ride the bike today, he said. Jesus.</p> <p>We go over to the tasting. It is a Japanese restaurant. Everything is hyperclean. Surgically clean. You could have made microchips on the sushi counter if you wanted to. Joe starts opening a bottle of what I can&#39;t remember but it had a wax capsule. Wax was flying everywhere. It was like he was somehow coaxing more wax onto the bottle top, as if by magic trick, and then brushing that wax on to the floor. I sort of dived on tothe floor trying to clean this stuff up before the owner came in. None of the dudes who worked there were really wine guys. And they would freak if you like didn&#39;t clean up ALL OF EVERY SPECK of the loose leaf tea from the counter if you made a pot. They were like that. It was a religious thing. A state of mind. The wax would have been a bad first date. Joe was completely oblivious to all of this. No idea what I might be going on about.</p> <p>We did the tasting. He had Larmandier-Bernier in the bookthen. He called Krug by way of contrast maybe the best made wine that he knew of, but still a made wine. That pretty much right there changed my whole conception of a lot of things wine related. The Japanese staff, most of whomwere women and most of whom were under 5&#39;5&#39;&#39;,really didn&#39;t know what to make of this, uhm, distinguished guestspeaker. I spoke to the staff about the need to serve customers wines that were better than they expected. Wines that might spark a realinterest in wine from people who previously had never noticed wine much. That this was a service we owed them whether we were asked for it or not.</p> <p>Joe showed me afew samples after the training. I remember there was a Roally. There was also an Overnoy that I was intrigued by. I realized that for the price asked, I couldofferthe Overnoyby the glass. And Joe said he could get me the quantity to go ahead with. But I lacked the balls, really. I didn&#39;t go for it. And that was definitely the last time anyone ever offered me an Overnoy pour.</p> <p>We finished up the tasting and went for coffee. We chatted a bit. He criticized the last restaurant I had worked in. He criticized most of my chosen career path, actually. Then he asked me what I had thought of the Roally from the tasting. I said it was the only wine that he had broughtwhich I didn&#39;t think delivered. The only wine which was uninteresting. And then he told me that Roally had been the wine that had sparked his own real wine interest in him.</p> <p>So it went.</p> <p>Probably theamusing short anecdote that stays with memost isthat ofJoe seeingJerry Seinfeld at Gray&#39;s Papaya.I chuckle overthe twofunniestJews in the world finding each other in the hot dogfactory of pork.</p> <p>And there was thebitabout putting on other people&#39;s nametags at the high school reunion. That was signature Joe, I think. I actually can&#39;t imagine himdoing anything else when presented with the opportunity.</p> <p>There was the story he told me one afternoon thatwas just so epically well done with the comic timing that it is hard to do justice in a retelling, although I did myself try.</p> <p>But I&#39;ll be honestandsay that I knew Joetowards theend of his life and from his blog (which I read over and over). As much as I wish I had spent more time with him. I feel like a faker when I overplaythe relationship that we had. But I deeply regret not going to the hospitalto see him. I was afraid of intruding onhis life. I was afraid ofjust assuming that he would want tosee me. I thought I might be out of line. I was afraid he wouldn&#39;t want to see me, really. I should have just gone.</p> <p>I held a party for Joe on my birthday awhile back.He attended.That was aterribly bad decision on my part.Not that we had the party, but that I choose that day to have it on. Each birthday is an anniversary now, and this last one was really lousy inside. But I am the one that is still alive, so what am I complaining about?</p> <p>I remember this email exchange I had withJoe once:</p> <p>Date: Fri, 5 Sep 2008 09:05:43 -0400<br /> From: dressner@louisdressner.com<br /> To: levidalton360@hotmail.com<br /> Subject: Re: thank ye</p> <p>It was my pleasure.</p> <p>I was drunk and did not pack.</p> <p>I&#39;m fucked.<br /> On Fri, Sep 5, 2008 at 1:26 AM, Levi Dalton &nbsp;wrote:<br /> Thank you, Gentlemen, for stopping by the restaurant. It was a great pleasure to see you both here.</p> <p>Thanks again,<br /> Levi</p> <p>It was hard to thank Joe, I think. I haven&#39;t stopped trying, though.</p> <p>I can tell you that after talking with Joe, or reading something Joe wrote, that I said smarter things and told funnier jokes than I normally do. He rubbed off on people that way. It&#39;s rare for folks to have that effect on others. I picked up some of his high mindedness too. And I suppose I&#39;ve pissed off a few more people than I strictly had to, because I wanted to be like Joe.</p> <p>I can still tell you exactly the last moment that I ever saw him. I suspect, however, that that moment wasn&#39;t such a big deal to him outside of the discomfort of the walking, so I won&#39;t go on about it.&quot;</p> <p><img src="http://louisdressner.com/uploads/images/article/2020_Aug_18//db/5e/db5ed66a894f8ea6837db0da045e8dc2.png" /></p> <p><strong>-Levi Dalton, sommelier extraordinaire, blogger extraordinaire, podcast kingpin</strong></p> <p><strong>***</strong></p> <p>&quot;A flow of memories come from the &quot;wine tour&quot; Joe started to do each Spring. After my third invitation, I accepted. Well actually, we accepted since I asked my son Julien to come with me. It was my first time really spending any time out of France. We were about to discover the the biggest ambassadors of our work: you, the New Yorkers who already appreciated our wines. Joe&#39;s collaborators, the buyers, retailers, the sales staff&hellip; So many &quot;professionals&quot;, yet so friendly and agreeable. And I can&#39;t forget the other French and Italian vignerons, all on our &quot;class trip&quot;. More than wine, Joe knew how to keep varied personalities around him, all authentic.&quot;</p> <p><img src="http://louisdressner.com/uploads/images/article/2020_Aug_18//c8/a5/c8a50e740ba8c4bfeaee7e7ca888219b.jpeg" /></p> <p><strong>-Fran&ccedil;ois Pinon, vigneron in Vouvray</strong></p> <p>***</p> <p>&quot;Joe left us and a year has passed, but his memory will always guide us. After almost 20 years working alongside the Dressner family and their collaborators, Joe managed to create a family of vignerons around him, and what a family! We all keep incredible memories of our trips to the United States. We will continue to move forward on the the path Joe created for us, with his passion for viticulture and wine, always so grateful of the vigneron&#39;s work. The incredible relationship he built with us, by visiting our vines and cellar so regularly; we will never forget Joe and Denyse&#39;s first visit to Petit Chambord, with the tasting lasting so long we forgot the roast in the oven!!!!</p> <p>And thank you Joe, the ambassador of ROMO in New York!!!</p> <p><img src="http://louisdressner.com/uploads/images/article/2020_Aug_18//f0/47/f04788be9f70cac278e3bcaf325bdee9.jpeg" /></p> <p><strong>-Fran&ccedil;ois et Claudie Cazin vignerons in Cheverny</strong></p> <p>***</p> <p>&quot;Dear Joe,</p> <p>Last year you left us and Christelle and I didn&#39;t get the chance to know you better. For the entire family, you were first and foremost a friend. You were also a lover of good wine, of wines that did not lie, of vigneron&#39;s wines. I still remember your quick visits to M&eacute;rignat, tasting Cerdon right when they were starting to re-ferment, taking notes on your super computer and partaking in the great conversations our tastings led to. Our tiny appellation, and especially our tiny vineyard was part of you. You were and always will be the importer who made Americans discover Cerdon. The moments we spent together in M&eacute;rignat and during our infamous trips with the whole team in the USA are unforgettable. Know that you will always stay in our hearts.&quot;</p> <p><img src="http://louisdressner.com/uploads/images/article/2020_Aug_18//a8/82/a882b161b9ac4f9cee15eee30a5f4869.jpg" /></p> <p><strong>-Elie and the entire RENARDAT-FACHE family, vignerons in M&eacute;rignat</strong></p> <p><strong>***</strong></p> <p><img src="http://louisdressner.com/uploads/images/article/2020_Aug_18//04/05/0405a77d9327c88d1006e44f4309b81d.jpeg" /></p> <p>***</p> <p>&quot;The memory of Joe I have is amazing. I remember him as a man of great character: his ideals lived in his thoughts (that were impossible to compromise on), ideas he was so proud of putting to action.</p> <p>We met many times. In the beginning, before the bastard cancer, two or three times a year, then less, and a last time in NY for a quick hello at the beginning of last year. I remember his first visit to the cellar with Denyse, Alyce and Buster. We spent an unforgettable day with my father Alfredo. We ended the evening in a small trattoria called Ostu Djdiu, drinking and telling life stories.</p> <p>Since 2007 up until last year, there was the annual &quot;Real Wine Attack&quot; and the tasting in the Loire. These trips are etched in my memory. I have to be grateful to Joe for making us feel part of a family and for introducing me to some people who I now consider my best friends. When traveling, Joe told pearls of his life, gave me advice... Joe was considered our Uncle, forever with a ready wit, sometimes unexpected, with its biting humor made us feel part of his project, part of this family.</p> <p>Thanks Joe,</p> <p>Luca.&quot;</p> <p><img src="http://louisdressner.com/uploads/images/article/2020_Aug_18//0a/49/0a494f0e9d35df7cf3b804cd01534a51.jpeg" /></p> <p><strong>-Luca Roagna, vigneron in Barbaresco</strong></p> <p>***</p> <p>&quot;I&#39;ll always remember the time we spent together during our several US tasting tours.</p> <p>I&#39;ll always rememberyour sweet and kind smile,your loud laughs, your strong american accent while speaking french and your mumbling when you weren&#39;t too happy with a wine!</p> <p>I&#39;ll always remember you, and you are in my heart!</p> <p>We miss you, JOE!&quot;</p> <p><img src="http://louisdressner.com/uploads/images/article/2020_Aug_18//89/b5/89b5eedfef5d255c07e51f400e12863a.jpeg" /></p> <p><strong>-Alessandra Bera, vigneronne in Canelli</strong></p> <p>***</p> <p>&quot;I have not had the time to experience Joe Dressner as I would have liked to; I first met him four years ago at the Ch&acirc;teau Moulin-Pey-Labrie and then saw him again in the summer of 2010 in the M&acirc;connais with Kevin and Denyse. I had joined them in their annual tasting tour to try to gain insights into those Gamay wines produced using cold semi-carbonic macerations. It was very hot, the sort of heat typical to the month of July that leaves you breathless. Joe, whom I noticed was not at his best, didn&#39;t miss out on a visit. He would sit, taste, speak with everyone present and then walk back to his car leaning heavily on his walking stick, close the car door and set off on the next leg of the tour to the next meeting and tasting. I remained silent in the sidelines, exchanged few words with him. I was slightly overawed by him and afraid of opening up to him, of saying the wrong things. I did not know him well but had a great respect for the incredible work he had carried out supporting traditional authentic wines made by farmers and assisting the many winegrowers he discovered and helped enter into &quot;the world&quot;. I listened and tried to understand the depths from which that strength was sourced, his serenity, his ability to listen to the people that were close to his essence, the enthusiasm he expressed in his work and in the wines he tasted, his inquisitiveness for life and his deep love for the men and women that work in the vineyards in a straightforward and open way. I saw a generous but stern man; behind that apparent reserve, there was infinite kindness. I will never forget that trip; it was also a journey within myself.&quot;</p> <p><img src="http://louisdressner.com/uploads/images/article/2020_Aug_18//86/ef/86ef5e109a4fa1a74f93de705da09f50.jpeg" /></p> <p><strong>-Elisabetta Foradori, vigneronne in Trentino</strong></p> <p>***</p> <p>&quot;It was probably in 2001, in Verona, that was one of the first times I met Joe. Kevin was part of the trip. I proposed to go and have dinner at &quot;La Ragnatela&quot; in Mirano. Not really around the corner but I thought it was worth it.</p> <p>Kevin asks Joe to get in my car, meanwhile I am thinking, &quot;That&#39;s great! Joe Dressner is in my car, I&#39;ll get the chance to talk to him, pick his brain, learn something, know him a little better, understand which wine likes etc etc...&quot; Well, so much for my expectations: Joe got in the car and fell sound asleep from that moment until the moment we arrived. Kevin then asked him &quot;you did not sleep did you ?&quot; Joe said he was not sure. Dinner was actually very good and we had a great time.</p> <p>Later on during one of our tours in the US, on the train from Boston to NYC, Joe and I sat together and had a very nice conversation. I still remember it as a great moment. Joe had a fantastic sense of humor and the capacity of looking at things in his own special way.&quot;</p> <p><img src="http://louisdressner.com/uploads/images/article/2020_Aug_18//57/cc/57cc003cea7cf61c8e1e964b1d42d7bb.jpeg" /></p> <p><strong>-Silvio Messana, vigneron in San Casciano</strong></p> <p>***</p> <p>&quot;I met Joe in 2006. It was like some kind of examination. I remember that we were at Villa Boschi in Verona. I was showing my first vintage, 2004. Kevin passed my table with Shawn and someone else. They were serious, but their faces were comforting. They tasted the wines. It was their first experience with Frappato and for me it was the first experience of a tasting. I saw their happy eyes: it looked like they had discovered something, but at that moment I did not really understand anything in their expressions, so I smiled, expecting them to say something. It seemed they liked it anyway. Then Kevin said, &quot;We&#39;ll be back in about an hour with the Boss.&quot;</p> <p>For us Italians, the word Boss, it means much more than the leader, it presages the imaginary Italian-American, in the typical crime film in which the &quot;boss&quot; and his followers hid in some warehouse in the Bronx, always at a long table handing out his commands, cigarette smoke saturating the room, the accents vaguely Sicilian, drug-trafficking and gunshots on the street. So that&#39;s what went through my head for the hour. In the meantime, I tasted the wine and was happy with it.</p> <p>At one point this same group was in front of me forming a barrier around the table that slowly parted and there in front of me there was the Boss, Joe, with his air of serious, infallible confidence, one of those people who are forever firmly grounded. We re-tasted the wine -those two minutes seemed endless- and then there was that smile, his head went up and down and only two words: VERY GOOD. And at that precise moment I entered the team. I did not yet well understand what it meant to be on a team, from a business point of view. I could play volleyball, but I also did athletics, so playing sports helps a lot, but at that moment I couldn&#39;t put the pieces together. That team was a family, a group in which the rule applies: I grow, you grow. The concept of TOGETHER, where things are not programmed but come spontaneously and everyone helps each other.</p> <p>Joe managed to create this. He had his own ways, his humor, sometimes obvious, at other time you had to think about it for two days. He had a great knowledge within and a knowledge on wines that I have seen in very few people; an intuition that the wine had it or didn&#39;t. He has contributed greatly to change the way we drink in the States by bringing in a surprising selection of wines over the years, always things that were so special, until the last moment of his life. The wine was all for him, and so was his family: Denyse, Jules, Alyce were his pure daily food.</p> <p>There was the summer I spent with them in France, far from the chaos of New York that he loved so much, and close to his producers. From there, producing ideas, creating the last great thing he has left us, his blog Captain Tumor Man. Only he could find the virtue in the absurdities of life. A great lesson: the meaning of life is to stay true to that which we give and do not lose hope until the end of life. Joe loved me and with the last hug came this sentence: &quot;I never thought that your wines could meet such success. I knew something, but it&#39;s way beyond expectation. I&#39;m proud of you.&quot; This alone is the true meaning of my work - The firm link with life, with other places and with other people.</p> <p>Thanks Joe.&quot;</p> <p><img src="http://louisdressner.com/uploads/images/article/2020_Aug_18//ff/1b/ff1b42c0996e90e4b08635521ab3fe0b.jpeg" /></p> <p><strong>-Arianna Occhipinti, vigneronne in Vittoria</strong></p> <p>***</p> <p><img src="http://louisdressner.com/uploads/images/article/2020_Aug_18//2d/bf/2dbf864432696b5a6ea6ad1813aa567e.jpeg" /></p> <p>***</p> <p>&quot;The very first time I met Joe in Chicago was also my very first tasting as a future employee of Maverick wines as a sales rep. He was presenting a selection of wines from the LDM portfolio along with Eric Texier who was showing all of his new releases. I respectfully went through the tasting the way Joe guided me through it and watched as he scolded others who wanted to taste wine on their own terms. Someone even walked away from the table and said to my boss, &#39;You know, that guy is a real asshole&quot;. Even as a newbie to the trade, I understood what he was trying to do and didn&#39;t understand why this customer felt as if he knew more than the importer.</p> <p>The very first bottle of wine I purchased using my employee discount was Clos Roche Blanche Sauvignon. I still wish I had some of that today but sadly, the 2001 is long gone.</p> <p>Several months later, on my very first day marvining with Joe, I was warned ahead of time that it may be challenging. The sales person who worked with him the day before said that he almost pulled over in the middle of a busy expressway out in the suburbs and make him get out of the car. I spent a day with Joe learning some of the most valuable lessons, not only in the trade but in life. That was the day that I learned to take the ego out of it, that it wasn&#39;t really about me or this famous wine importer sitting next to me; but about the men and women who tended the vines and made these lovely wines. At the end of that day with Joe, I also realized that I needed to divorce my husband. He had this uncanny ability to question you without it feeling as if you were being interrogated, yet was able to draw out answers that left you wondering &#39; holy shit - did I just tell him that?&#39; A day in my car with Joe was always like an extended psychotherapy session.</p> <p>I think that very first day was one he blogged about when he wrote of having to taste wine in glasses that had been rinsed out in the bathroom sink and left to dry on the toilet tank lid, a practice he and I both found to be disgusting.</p> <p>We connected that day and started a friendship that held up, despite my transgressions of moving on to different roles in management and representing spoofed and tricked out American wines. On my very first LDM trip in 2007, I was introduced to the group by Joe as the American Brand Manager in a tone that could only be described as &#39;with derision&#39;.</p> <p>He hated my boyfriend of the time and every time he would call, he would ask &quot;Are you still with that jerk?&quot; He was one of the first people I called when I told him we split up. He treated Mark as suspect when we first started dating but eventually warmed up to him when he felt that he treated me well. He had genuine concern for my mother as she was going through her own cancer treatment. He would call if he had not heard from me in a while and say &quot;you never call, you never write&quot; in his best Jewish mother tone and we would always pick up where we left off. In 2008, when he brought the growers to Chicago, he wanted to bring the growers to my mom&#39;s restaurant and we handled the logistical challenge of getting everyone out there efficiently and economically by hiring a school bus. It was an evening of great fun, food and laughter.</p> <p>I guess I can sum it up by saying that Joe was a giant influence on me professionally and personally at a time in my life when I was going through some huge changes. He helped change me for the better.&quot;</p> <p><img src="http://louisdressner.com/uploads/images/article/2020_Aug_18//16/90/1690843dae87080ca561c1df195c3abd.jpeg" /></p> <p><strong>-Josefa Concannon, American Brand Manager at Louis/Dressner Selections</strong></p> <p>***</p> <p>&quot;I have good memories of Joe. I met him at Villa Favorita in Italy, maybe 7-8 years ago. Then I&#39;d always bump into him at tasting events in France, and almost always at Haut les Vins, which he was very loyal too. It was always a good time to talk about the vines and the wines, but also about music; he was surprised that I regularly listen to ZZ Top, probably never imagining a rocker in this &quot;bonhomme&quot; frame. But what surprised and amused him the most was my april fools joke involving doses of St&eacute;via:</p> <p>http://www.vigneron-champagne.com/index.php/2011/04/01/459-nouveau-dosage-personnalis-sain-hyginique-et-naturel-stvia</p> <p>He actually put it up on the front page of his official website, claiming to be the owner and exclusive reseller of the product in the USA&hellip; all the while selling my natural champagnes and their Boulardienne dosages! This got us some attention with the press and some mettlesome sommeliers who found the whole thing scandalous. That&#39;s why I liked Joe so much: he was serious in his work, but always shared humor and conviviality with his friends.&quot;</p> <p><img src="http://louisdressner.com/uploads/images/article/2020_Aug_18//b2/55/b2556635eae2133680027e74b998fb09.jpeg" /></p> <p><strong>-Francis Boulard, vigneron in the Vall&eacute;e de la Marne</strong></p> <p>***</p> <p>&quot;I fondly remember my first meeting with Joe. Once basic niceties were done with -rapidly- he fixed me with a fairly gimlet eye and said &quot;It&#39;s louche&quot; and I replied something like &quot;Really? What&#39;s louche?&quot; And he switched completely to his Archie Bunker meets Woody Allen accented French saying &quot;C&#39;est louche, un vigneron qui parle comme toi, avec un tel accent&quot;! I think that 99% of people who meet me in France think the same thing but no-one else ever expressed it directly to me for fear of seeming politically incorrect no doubt.&quot;</p> <p>&quot;I only met Joe twice. He had told me about his two kids, and how everyone in France always asked what they did for a living. The French always expected something like lawyer or doctor. One day when asked the question, he saw a plumber&#39;s truck and decided to tell everyone his son was a plumber. I found that hilarious, and think about it often. It&#39;s good to relativize ourselves every so often.&quot;</p> <p><img src="http://louisdressner.com/uploads/images/article/2020_Aug_18//8d/dc/8ddc6f7e19961cf9ffe76a704af8d7a9.jpeg" /></p> <p><strong>-Tom and Natalie Lubbe, vignerons in Calce</strong></p> <p><strong>***</strong></p> <p>&quot;El Joe:</p> <p>Our story with Denyse, Joe and their children begins at the same time as Mas des Chim&egrave;res&#39;. 1rst vinification: 1993. First visit from Denyse, Joe &amp; Co: summer 1994. Everyone showed up at noon to taste, and there I was, alone with my kids. We had a big meal that centered around&hellip;tomato and gruyere pizzas, since Jules didn&#39;t eat anything else.</p> <p>And then we got our first order: Coteaux du Languedoc 1993. We were bottling to order at this point; the labels weren&#39;t always straight but at least the wine was there! And this was the beginning of a new rhythm. Every summer we waited for our Americans, usually to great pleasure and anecdotes: Alyce, Jules and Antonin coming back destroyed from the Salagou lake, Joe shattering a hotel bed, the &quot;black hole&quot; Joe slipped and fell into at another hotel, the winter when Denyse call us to say: &quot;Joe is at Vinisud. He&#39;s really bored, can you two hang out with him?&quot;, Palma picking him up, our &quot;special VIP&quot;, in her tiny old Citro&euml;n.</p> <p>And of course the last years, the illness, the remissions and the pleasure to still see each other despite all of his problems. And today, death, absence and the lives that continue&hellip;&quot;</p> <p><img src="http://louisdressner.com/uploads/images/article/2020_Aug_18//6a/f1/6af1764bbf5dffb557bb2df48642e07c.jpeg" /></p> <p><strong>-Guilhem Dard&eacute;, vigneron in Octon</strong></p> <p>***</p> <p>&quot;Joe, I&#39;ve told you many times that us meeting, that our friendship (which quickly replaced professionalism) was hugely influential in my life as a vigneron. Thanks to you and Denyse, I met some extraordinary people: vignerons who influenced the way I work, but also the wine shop owners and enthusiasts who opened my mind (and palate) to wines from the entire world.&quot;</p> <p><img src="http://louisdressner.com/uploads/images/article/2020_Aug_18//6b/d7/6bd7a2cb5daa1bf01c3a94a395a66bd3.jpeg" /></p> <p><strong>-Marc Ollivier, vigneron in P&eacute;pi&egrave;re</strong></p> <p>***</p> <p>&quot;Many moments and anecdotes with Joe and Denyse -most notably our trips to the U.S- will always stay in our memories.</p> <p>What I remember the most were Joe&#39;s little gadgets which he took notes with. Every year, (or at the very least every other year), he had a new gizmo.</p> <p>I also remember his incredible amount of responsibility he took in our first years working together. I&#39;ll never forget the time a customer refused to pay us money he owed. This was horrible for us, worst than hail even because the work had already been done. At the moment we thought all hope was lost, Joe decided to pay out of his own pocket.&quot;</p> <p><img src="http://louisdressner.com/uploads/images/article/2020_Aug_18//6e/db/6edb4915126bb52a391b781570870acc.jpeg" /></p> <p><strong>-Claude Mar&eacute;chal, vigneron in Bligny-les-Beaune</strong></p> <p>***</p> <p>&quot;Monday, February 23, 2009: the date is etched in my memory.</p> <p>It&#39;s our first time in New York for this particular tasting, of which this was the fifth edition. Everything is set up, the doors open and a large crowd forms! But the veterans whisper to me: &quot;Nothing important is going to happen as long as Joe Dressner isn&#39;t here.&quot;</p> <p>Who was Joe Dressner? The first thing I remember is a physical presence. Tall, proudly carrying a few admirably spread out pounds&hellip; A colossus! The only thing bigger than Joe himself was his reputation: that he had an incredible palate, that he was THE importer in the United States. Everyone hoped he&#39;d visit their table, secretly dreaming of convincing him to buy your wine&hellip;</p> <p>While waiting for him, Dominique Hauvette and I are walking arm in arm. All of a sudden, she says: &quot;There he is! Go introduce yourself!&quot;, and pushes me in front of him without warning. Here we are face to face, and I don&#39;t even have the time to panic that I&#39;ll say something stupid: &quot;Hello, I&#39;m domaine de Souch&hellip;&quot; His answer is a bit curt: &quot;I was looking for you. A lot of your friends here are speaking highly of you&hellip; I want to confirm what they are saying is true.&quot;</p> <p>Not another word from him as we walk over to our stand, where my son Jean Ren&eacute; was pouring.</p> <p>Joe: &quot;I&#39;m here to taste&quot;.</p> <p>Jean Ren&eacute;: &quot;Which one?&quot; (there were three wines, the 2007 sec and the 2 2005&#39;s)</p> <p>Joe: &quot;All three, of course&hellip;&quot;</p> <p>Perhaps he was slightly annoyed by us not being at ease. He tastes without saying a word. Looking him dead in the eye, we desperately search for a clue, a hope. Nothing!!</p> <p>Very concisely, he finally says: &quot;Come to my office Wednesday morning, we&#39;ll taste again in a calmer environment.&quot;</p> <p>Oh no! Our tickets are booked for Tuesday, but Jean Ren&eacute; immediately calls to change them.</p> <p>Wednesday morning. Here we are in front of Joe and Denyse, silent and worried. After a while, the men start talking about sports, particularly about the Tour de France that coming July. Joe reveals that he is he a passionate cyclist, and has always dreamed of following a full stage of the Toure in person. And then I hear Jean Ren&eacute; telling him he could organize that for him&hellip; My husband was a journalist, and had often covered these cyclists&#39; exploits. Through those connections, it would be possible to find room in a car following the race up the Pyr&eacute;n&eacute;es&hellip; After that conversation, the tension is gone and the ambiance is electric. Joe is full of joy! He buys the three wines from us (which he liked a lot!), and we left the office, happy and proud to be selling our wines in New York.</p> <p>You know the rest of the story. Joe was never able to visit us in France, and then he left us&hellip;But we still send you wine, and Denyse seems happy, and so are we!&quot;</p> <p><img src="http://louisdressner.com/uploads/images/article/2020_Aug_18//23/f3/23f3b2df72e84d8852031e59ac3276b3.jpeg" /></p> <p><strong>-Yvonne Hegoburu, vigneronne in Pau</strong></p> <p>***</p> <p><img src="http://louisdressner.com/uploads/images/article/2020_Aug_18//85/8b/858bb05553df9b6b7344c291e4e7ba4f.jpeg" /></p> <p>***</p> <p>&quot;Denyse and Joe arrived to my little estate a beautiful day in 1991 (the 13th of August, to be exact). Denyse had her arm in a cast and Joe gave me an empty bottle, asking me in French (but with a New York accent, which made it seem very serious and authentic) &quot;It&#39;s you who made this?&quot; I actually thought they were lost&hellip;</p> <p>What? Americans? Here? There must be some kind of error!!!! Well No! I wasn&#39;t dreaming!! I was in the presence of a real &quot;Uncle Sam&quot;-or in this case &quot;Uncle Joe&quot; - and he wanted my wine! You must really want it if you came all the way over to my parts! For a guy who had never left France, it was incredible to have an American buyer come all the way to see me. And I could never have guessed that this meeting would lead to a professional relationship that has lasted over 20 years and continues today. 20 years of loyalty is huge, especially when you live 8000 kilometers away from each other! At the time, international commerce experts were telling me &quot;You don&#39;t have the right structure to do this, it won&#39;t last, you need our help and and&hellip;&quot; And nothing! I wasn&#39;t having any of it; Denyse and Joe gave me this opportunity.</p> <p>In fact, I recently found the document they had brought with the bottle, and it said &quot;&hellip; our customers are looking to start solid relationships with their producers in order to create a loyal clientele.&quot; Often, these are great, convincing intentions, but the promises fall flat. But after 20 years of sharing this experience, things take another dimension and you can actually appreciate those values. This vision was the work of a lifetime, one where Joe was not only the author, but also the director.</p> <p>Like all relationships, there were &quot;up and downs&quot; that had to be overcome, and I&#39;ll spare you all the details because if I did, I&#39;d be writing a novel. So instead, I&#39;ll share two &quot;lows&quot; that marked me, and 2 &quot;ups&quot; that were a lot of fun to remember.</p> <p>Of the hard times, I remember a time when your parents and I were just starting to work together. Joe had found a customer in New York who I&#39;d sent wine too, and he was very late on his payment. Back then, I waited for customers to pay me in full, then I&#39;d send the commission to your parents. I&#39;d sent the order out in the Spring, it was late August and I was still waiting on a payment I should have received in May or June. During their visit in late August, I mention it. Joe tells me: &quot;I&#39;m taking care of this the minute I get back&quot;. Three weeks later, we&#39;re in the middle of harvest and I receive a long letter with a check explaining that the customer was unable to pay for the order, so they were paying me back with their own money, and would deal with getting it from this guy themselves. I couldn&#39;t believe it! This was unheard of in France! We were more used to &quot;we&#39;re really sorry about that, but rest assured that you can keep the commission!&quot;</p> <p>Another tough moment, mostly for me. It was February 2001; Joe shows up with a new customer from Oregon and I had no more 1999 left (the 2000 had not been bottled yet). This infuriated Joe, and my arguments did not convince him. He refused to even taste the 2000; instead, he stormed off to his car, slamming the door. Before driving off, he gave me a look through the side window, which I thought was going to be our last, and said (always with the New York accent!) &quot;How long have we been working together?&quot; The implication was that we HAD worked together, and that the future was compromised. A few days later, I was feeling horrible about the whole situation, and found the courage to call New York. I got Denyse, who was really nice. Joe was back, but he was still mad and we both conceded it would be best if I faded into the shadows for a while&hellip;</p> <p>But the thing with Joe was, you never got bored. After all the business talk, he would let his guard down to tell us the little stories that marked him, the countless anecdotes from his numerous trips that he would tell so well (always with the New York accent. That was the charm!) For example, this story is typically Burgundian. At the beginning of his career, Joe is tasting at an estate in Burgundy, and he likes the wine. After talking about the prices, he gets into the formalities and explains to this guy (who has probably never exported a single bottle in his life) that he needs to get a &quot;fax&quot; machine so they can easily be in touch. This was way before email. The vigneron, a little confused by this &quot;American&quot; word, asks Joe to repeat himself. He finally understands, but is very hesitant since it must be very complicated and probably very expensive! At some point, Joe had spotted the 2 Mercedes-Benz in the garage, so to reassure the guy, he says &quot;It&#39;s simpler than driving a Mercedes, it takes up a lot less room and more importantly, a fax could be very useful if you need to replace them or buy a third one&hellip;&quot; Not sure what the guy ended up doing, but you could tell he was thinking about it!</p> <p>Another time, Joe was with a distributor in France. To make things easier, Joe had rented a car. One day, they&#39;re on the road and M. is at the wheel. After a few kilometers on the autoroute, he was getting passed by a lot of other cars, and even trucks!</p> <p>&quot;M., you don&#39;t have to drive 60 kilometers an hour. We just got off the American highway. Here you can roll at 130.&quot;</p> <p>Thank you for your visit on August 13th, 1991. This one&#39;s for Joe, the man who made me discover America.&quot;</p> <p><img src="http://louisdressner.com/uploads/images/article/2020_Aug_18//c2/63/c263d49c9c5e57cb4c1e6c9845a15e0c.jpeg" /></p> <p><strong>-Jean Manciat, vigneron in Charnay-l&egrave;s-M&acirc;con</strong></p> <p>***</p> <p>&quot;So often when we think of Joe, we think of these moments which were beyond the pale. His very presence could often be counted upon for high-spiritedness, gregariousness and perhaps at the very least, a lively lesson in history or etymology (I&#39;m forever grateful for his educating me about Emma Goldman as well as introducing me to the term, &quot;that old chestnut.&quot;)<br /> And while I relished those times of outlandishness which continue even now to keep all of our tongues wagging, there was another side of Joe which I value equally. This was a side of quiet contemplation and great humility... a side which I suspect he called on greatly in the final chapter of his life. I recall an evening we spent together during the last year or so of his life. Denyse was out of town for a short while and he was on his own. Although he had been ailing, he was still well enough to stay alone with the help of close friends checking in. That evening, it was I who was checking in. Zaggy and I went for a walk, and when we returned, Joe asked if I was hungry, and of course, I was! So we browsed through a pile of takeout menus and he ordered our supper (online, of course). I sort of thought we might watch TV, but instead, we hung out in the dining room just shooting the shit. I don&#39;t really remember much of we talked about, I just remembered being completely cozy and glad. We were both feeling appreciative of the other. The thing about Joe was, whether there was a crisis at hand or it was just a rainy Friday night eating Chinese, he always seemed so pleased to be in your presence. He was really good at friendship.</p> <p>We ate noodles, and then I pulled books off of the shelf that we half-discussed. We looked at old family photo albums, and tried to drink some fancy Scotch because he said it was the only thing he could taste anymore. We pulled things out of Zaggy&#39;s mouth that she probably shouldn&#39;t have been gnawing upon, and talked shop a little. In other words, we didn&#39;t do much of anything. And we didn&#39;t eat or drink anything in particular. It was a mellow night.</p> <p>And I left after a few hours feeling totally full.&quot;</p> <p><img src="http://louisdressner.com/uploads/images/article/2020_Aug_18//c4/63/c463050f1fdca3b445d4ef40f19d222d.jpeg" /></p> <p><strong>-Lee Campbell, former Louis/Dressner sales boss, wine director for the Andrew Tarlow group</strong></p> <p>***</p> <p>&quot;A non conformist importer, irreverent, sarcastic and often of bad faith, Joe made me laugh. This is what I remember the most today. He was funny and we all miss his impertinence. Thank you Joe for all the laughs.&quot;</p> <p><img src="http://louisdressner.com/uploads/images/article/2020_Aug_18//c9/22/c92277f765acb3fc308b8555e2aef65c.jpeg" /></p> <p><strong>-Laurent Saillard, former restaurateur in New York City, vigneron in Touraine</strong></p> <p>***</p> <p>&quot;Joe had a contentious relationship with the physical world. All of us who knew him during his battle with cancer were watching closely the ups and downs of his treatments and therapy which were vainly working to stave off the ultimate villain&mdash;which he did for a good amount of time. Soon after Joe and I began to work together in 2010, I was invited to travel with him, Denyse, Kevin and Zaggy in France to visit many of his longtime winemakers. I jumped at the opportunity-- not only to meet the producers but also to travel in a single car, with LDM-Z. I knew it would be memorable and intimate and that&#39;s exactly how I wanted it. The trip was indescribably rewarding and funny. I had a few trepidations going into it; being in a small car together for several days in a row can be tricky, but it worked out with no problems. I was a welcome traveling companion (mostly because I bought the jambon sandwiches on the highway!). Joe wasn&#39;t really tasting much or eating much at this point but he clearly enjoyed his time with the growers.</p> <p>Midway through the trip Joe gets a spider bite on his hand. No big deal. Except it&#39;s Joe. He fixates on it. It gets bigger. He fixates more on it and now cannot stop talking about it. He knows it&#39;s only going to get worse and&mdash;it does! To the point where Joe has to leave Cazin and check into the local hospital. He was given some antibiotics and released the next day. It went away. Round two to Joe (and the drugs). We continued on our way and had the best time. We saw, we ate and we drank and I will never forget it. But Joe was restless. He was waiting for the next fight, for the next slick, bold, unsuspecting opponent who dared to cross his path.&quot;</p> <p><img src="http://louisdressner.com/uploads/images/article/2020_Aug_18//9f/6d/9f6db3715e754321dc154f90d15002e7.jpeg" /></p> <p><strong>-David Bowler, importer and distributor in New York City</strong></p> <p>***</p> <p>&quot;In the first days of knowing of Joe&#39;s diagnosis, Joe, Linus Kessler and I went to Trestle on Tenth to whom knows what words to use, I guess just deal with this news of our dear friend in a place we felt safe and comfortable. Off the list we had a stunning showing of the 2005 Breton Clos Senechal complimented by the tasty &quot;home-cooking&quot; that is the signature of Trestle.</p> <p>At some point during the long meal we went out for some fresh air. Trestle is across the street from a car wash. &quot;I have always wanted to drive through one of those in NYC and have never done it&quot; said Joe. Well whats a friend to do? I hail a cab, hand a twenty to the driver and say &quot;Take us round the block through the car wash please&quot;.</p> <p>Around bottle four Linus suggested to Joe to change his blog to The Cantankerous Captain Tumor Man, which Joe morphed into The Adventures of Captain Tumor Man. That night was one of our best ever together. It was full of the things Joe loved, real wine and food, honest conversation, a good argument, lots of laughs, and great friends sharing a NYC car wash together.&quot;</p> <p><img src="http://louisdressner.com/uploads/images/article/2020_Aug_18//1f/84/1f8455aa13c7574084f9749b1b01c6d9.jpeg" /></p> <p><strong>-Michael Wheeler, co-owner of PDX wines, Portland, Oregon</strong></p> <p>***</p> <p>&quot;He was a cantankerous, cynical and contrarian New Yorker. He was also one of the most honest, authentic and real people that I ever met in the wine business. We all know that Joe had unique skills. He was a very gifted writer. He was witty and smarter than everybody else. And he knew it. He had a bizarre sense of humor. Who can ever imagine the weird story and legacy of Cuvee Buster? You never really knew what would come out of his mouth next. Should you receive a rare compliment from Joe, you had to wait a few seconds to make sure that Joe just wasn&#39;t playing with your head. He usually was.</p> <p>I think that he found the industry simply preposterous. He didn&#39;t &quot;fit&quot; in. &quot;Fitting in&quot; would be the last thing that he would want. Some of the mundane industry activities gave Joe endless ammunition for his hilarious tales of &quot;a day in the life of a wine salesman&quot;. Very funny stuff and mostly because it was based on true stories. He antagonized the wine media for years and took endless potshots at &quot;the 100 point scoring system&quot; which drives the industries insecure buyers.</p> <p>Of course, the great irony becomes that this larger than life outrageous contrarian ended up being the visionary. Those weird &quot;real&quot;, natural wines ended up becoming the fashion. No, they will never be mainstream but clearly Joe had it right from the beginning. Joe&#39;s wine discoveries were based on real people making real wine from real places. The wine writers had no choice but to start following Joe&#39;s discoveries. Joe became a go-to guy for everyone serious about fine wines. He never bent his principles. He was ahead of the market.</p> <p>There won&#39;t be another Joe Dressner. We all benefitted from knowing Joe and we all learned a lot about wine and more importantly, authenticity.</p> <p>Miss you, Joe.&quot;</p> <p><strong>-Brian Keeping</strong></p> <p>***</p> <p><img src="http://louisdressner.com/uploads/images/article/2020_Aug_18//2d/38/2d38ffc57f0978311d82972d5b0a98c6.jpg" /></p> <p>***</p> <p>&quot;It&#39;s true, that I can&#39;t remember the first time I met Joe. We live with this narrative idea about life, that it begins and and that it ends. But this cartography doesn&#39;t do justice to the way we know people, the way we respect and appreciate, the way we live with each other. My friendship with Joe Dressner feels, in that way, timeless. I remember seven years ago he came to Diner for lunch with a salesman. They ate at the bar and I tasted wine with them. They were not super interested in selling which I felt was a relief, equally for them as for me. We talked a bit about Mondovino, a movie that had recently came out. An interview with Neal Rosenthall had been filmed inside the Diner. Joe told me all the growers he worked with liked the movie. That first visit was full of quick banter. Later, in France, Joe introduced me as the star of Mondovino.</p> <p>The first time I met up with Joe in France it felt as oddly as though I&#39;d come home. I felt secure in his presence, he immediately felt like family to me. Joe was speaking french, but he was doing it with a cadence that was specific to him. As an english speaker I could almost understand everything he said just by his gestures. His character, his language, his spirit seemed boundless, tremendous.</p> <p>The friends and vignerons he introduced me to also felt like family. It felt like the right place, a community of people joined by ideals and certain way of working. Ideals and virtues came first, then came business.</p> <p>Joe surrounded himself with the most original, charming and mischievous characters to ever grace a vineyard row. They are farmers who work the fields and are committed to leaving the land and the planet in equal, if not better condition than they found it. These vignerons counted on him to represent them and sell their wine and pay them for the bottles. Joe became the natural if somewhat reluctant leader of this community. He was able to bring people together vegnerons and other, all more or less like minded, trying to do something ethical, something authentic. Wine just happened to be the vehicle for these values.</p> <p>I have never known anyone who passed away that has lingered in my thoughts the way he has. I spend many of my interactions with people wondering how Joe would do it, or what would Joe say. The odd thing is he mostly never did things the conventional way. Brash and super opinionated, generally pretty right, intensely funny and biting, super sharp and fast. The intensity he took to the world sometimes made me feel like I was talking to someone who was smarter than the rest of us.. He was a radical communist in college. For the people with the people but maybe smarter than people. Movement, not a movement.</p> <p>It&#39;s a been a couple of months since Joe died now and I can&#39;t stop thinking about him. I asked my wife and she talked about how perhaps our minds cannot philosophically comprehend the notion of death, that our minds struggle to understand the loss of another human being. I feel lucky to have spent time with Joe. To sit at a table with him, and share in his jokes, to be on the inside of his jokes. To spend time in the warm glow of the life Joe created.<br /> I want to say, Joe, goodbye and thank you for bringing this community together, for caring so much and holding on to your ideals, and not being quiet or polite about it, for trying to make it better and totally being a personality about it. Such important lessons.</p> <p><img src="http://louisdressner.com/uploads/images/article/2020_Aug_18//26/4f/264f8c29082a7ac162a79314395dffd0.jpeg" /></p> <p><strong>-Andrew Tarlow, restauranteur in New York City</strong></p> <p>***</p> <p><img src="http://louisdressner.com/uploads/images/article/2020_Aug_18//60/c8/60c88f8a5b5f2132fef564004a6dca59.jpg" /></p> <p><img src="http://louisdressner.com/uploads/images/article/2020_Aug_18//be/50/be5092a6be632b5768b1935012111dbb.jpg" /></p> <p><img src="http://louisdressner.com/uploads/images/article/2020_Aug_18//fb/e9/fbe91bff75138195b49dcdaa78eb16f6.jpg" /></p> <p><img src="http://louisdressner.com/uploads/images/article/2020_Aug_18//1b/67/1b6792388ab8bca67493390917ecf08b.jpg" /><img src="http://louisdressner.com/uploads/images/article/2020_Aug_18//b8/08/b808f10078a76a57d27a74d4d6e30ce5.jpg" /></p> <p>and:</p> <p><img src="http://louisdressner.com/uploads/images/article/2020_Aug_18//be/63/be63e2bad5da9ab4b7aff5b21c5ed20a.jpg" /></p> <p><img src="http://louisdressner.com/uploads/images/article/2020_Aug_18//39/b5/39b5dcd805070eac05b7ab4bd46065ed.jpg" /><img src="http://louisdressner.com/uploads/images/article/2020_Aug_18//4b/fc/4bfcf9cb48d97d467fc6d4250173c3be.jpeg" /></p> <p><strong>-Jo&atilde;o Roseira, vigneron in Pinh&atilde;o</strong></p> <p>***</p> <p>I want to thank everyone who contributed. Reading, translating and editing your words brought me inestimable amounts of joy, laughter and tears. I know some key voices are missing, so if anyone wants to write something, whether I&#39;ve contacted you already or not, please mail your entry to jules@louisdressner.com. It seems probable, inevitable even, that a part deux be in the works. I also need to thank Bertrand Celce for giving me permission to use many of the incredible pictures you can find on his even more incredible blog, wineterroirs. Additional photo credits: Alex Finberg, David Lillie, David Mcduff, Levi Dalton, Josefa Concannon, Maya Perdersen, Jarred Gild and Luca Roagna.</p> <p>A year ago, the only thing I knew for certain was that the Louis/Dressner story had to continue, and that I wanted to be a part of it. Over the last three years, I&#39;ve come to realize the significance of what Joe, Denyse and Kevin have accomplished, and it created new levels of pride and love in my heart for the man I already respected most. My grandfather told me when I was very young that when a person dies, you mourn for a year then let them go, both for your sake and theirs. In part because I&#39;m a pretty bad Jew, I don&#39;t know if I&#39;ll ever be able to &quot;let go&quot;, but as time passes, the bad memories of the last four years are slowly fading and getting replaced by the good ones. Not that it makes it any easier...</p> <p>But I take comfort in the fact that Denyse Louis, Kevin Mckenna, Sheila Doherty, Josefa Concannon, Maya Pederson and David Norris are the most incredible team I&#39;ve ever had the pleasure to work, let alone co-exist with. I take comfort in the inestimable amount of support and kind words I&#39;ve heard from so many of you in Europe and in the U.S. this past year. And most of all, I take comfort that Joe&#39;s vision continues! 2012 was a true year of pushing things forward: adding Z&eacute;lige Caravent, Domaine du Possible and La Stoppa confirms our continued commitment to seeking out France and Italy&#39;s best producers, and starting with Louis-Antoine Luyt in Chile, as well as our four new German estates -Knebel, Immich-Batterieberg, Clemens Busch and Koehler-Ruprecht- reaffirms our dedication to seeking out and representing the most outstanding examples of viticulture and winemaking in the world.</p> <p>Thanks to the admirable and constant work of our vignerons in Europe (and Chile!), the continued support of our distributors and the dedication of retailers and restaurants in an ever-increasing amount of establishments all over the country, we honor and celebrate Joe&#39;s life by sharing and drinking some of the best bottles both man and nature have to offer. So raise your glass, and CHEERS!</p> <p><img src="http://louisdressner.com/uploads/images/article/2020_Aug_18//64/60/6460c48425de9ad7dc3e0b99c41d935c.jpeg" /></p>

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<p><img src="http://louisdressner.com/uploads/images/article/2020_Aug_19//b9/ff/b9ffbd80b9204ac8cd17c407e097f560.jpeg" /></p> <p>Yesterday afternoon I received the shocking news that Joe Dougherty is no longer of this world. I say shocked because Joe was one of those people I never imagined wouldn&#39;t be around; as both a friend to us but also to a staggering amount of the growers we work with, Joe seamlessly interweaved himself into both our personal and professional lives on such a profound level that it&#39;s impossible to envision who we are today without him.</p> <p>I really wish my father was here to detail the early days of SFJoe&#39;s rise to prominence in our lives, as I don&#39;t have much insight on the matter. I have however been around Joe my whole life and have plenty to say.</p> <p>I&#39;m sure my dad met Joe Dougherty through wine. I know I met Joe Dougherty because of wine. And yes, SFJoe had an insane cellar, was the most knowledgable person about wine I&#39;ve ever met and was always ready to open a bottle that most people would never dream of having the opportunity to try. But when I think about Joe, I never think about wine. Joe was one of the most fascinating human beings I&#39;ve had the pleasure of knowing; I often joked that he knew everything about everything.</p> <p>But unlike a smartphone or Google search, Joe wasn&#39;t just a scripted fact-sheet; he knew how to pull you in with the details. This could range from casual observations to humorous anecdotes and sometimes get as precise as the molecular composition or chemical reactions in food, wine or anything with molecular composition or chemical reactions, which is basically everything. No matter what you were talking about, you would learn something while laughing about another, all while drinking some Vouvray.</p> <p><img src="http://louisdressner.com/uploads/images/article/2020_Aug_19//5c/f2/5cf212f71e6f1eb7da17d6eb6af99410.jpeg" /></p> <p>What was great was that you never felt intimidated by his intelligence or knowledge. Instead you felt welcome, invited to a world you had no idea was as interesting as it is, a world of details you constantly overlooked until Joe brought them to your attention. For example, I once opened a bottle of (surprise!) old Huet that Joe had brought to Terroir in San Francisco. I was convinced it was corked, but Joe busted out some empirical research he&#39;d done because he&#39;d often noticed that old Chenin Blanc tends to get fungal aromas and flavors with age that many associate with cork taint, and that it blows off after about an hour or so. He also went into some next-level chemical reasons behind this that went way over my head, but that I appreciated anyway. As the hour passed, my skepticism subsided when lo and behold, a wine I found undrinkable was now showing beautifully!</p> <p>For years, there has been a running joke of introducing Joe to growers as the &quot;Average American Consumer&quot;. This gag has its origins in Joe joining us annually on our trip to the Loire valley every winter. Because Joe never had a professional stake in in wine industry, he was always the only consumer on the trip, so Joe (Dressner) and Kevin settled on &quot;Average American Consumer&quot; when introducing him. It was of course tongue-in-cheek, since most average consumers didn&#39;t have libraries of back vintage Huet or could guess blind that the moelleux Fran&ccedil;ois Pinon just poured us was a 1954 just off one sniff (a truly remarkable moment I&#39;ll never forget, especially Fran&ccedil;ois&#39; face lighting up in surprise and delight). The &quot;Average American Consumer&quot; also didn&#39;t have to step out for 2 hour international phone meetings in his car out in the dead of winter and didn&#39;t understand the chemical structure of a wine more than the person who had made it. But hey...</p> <p><img src="http://louisdressner.com/uploads/images/article/2020_Aug_19//03/6c/036c13d8c8b0cf1a498a68d2ece7dc27.jpeg" /></p> <p>In so many ways, Joe was the embodiment of all my favorite wine lovers and affianados. I think Joe&#39;s profound love of wine, besides the geeky scientist stuff, was that he had a firm grasp of how important it is in this world. Wine was an excuse to bring people together, to share stories, to excite the senses, to laugh, eat, drink and be merry. To live and to celebrate life. It&#39;s no surprise that his love for lively wines led him to lively people, be it my father, Eric Texier or David Lillie. Everything intertwined so perfectly.<br /> <br /> Joe, you&#39;ll always be family. You will be sorely missed and I&#39;ll be drinking some Vouvray tonight for ya!</p> <p><img src="http://louisdressner.com/uploads/images/article/2020_Aug_19//e9/c0/e9c08b015e005a08b395e9531f96544a.jpeg" /></p>

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<p><img src="http://louisdressner.com/uploads/images/article/2020_Aug_19//23/a6/23a6eabf7657dc919f641b5d69b9e695.jpg" /><strong>by Kevin McKenna</strong></p> <p>Those of you who know me know that I don&#39;t like griping in public too much, let alone putting it down in writing and publishing it on our company blog. So the mere fact that I&#39;m writing this is evidence that something (or some things) must really be bugging me... Let&#39;s call them a series of incidents, coincidences, etc. that have made me think a lot about what I (and by that I also mean &#39;we&#39; at Louis/Dressner) do as a wine importer, what it used to mean, what it means now, what it continues to mean to me (us) and how these values seem to be irreversibly changing in the current context of specialized wine importation.</p> <p><img src="http://louisdressner.com/uploads/images/article/2020_Aug_19//18/83/1883c254eca668be4b0d0fa47c6c34d5.jpg" /></p> <p>When I started working solely in the commerce of wine and finding bliss in a tireless interest for good wine and learning more and more, the wine &quot;industry&quot; was called the wine trade. It was full of people who were doing it as a job, but it was really as a vocation. Most were barely making a living. They were well-educated, had good manners and, for the majority, were eloquent or at least well spoken. They were individuals. There were only a few quality independent importers and the press had little influence on wineries or their winemaking. People trusted their local wine merchant, (of which there were relatively few quality stores).</p> <p><img src="http://louisdressner.com/uploads/images/article/2020_Aug_19//a4/fa/a4fa7b8279f60ddc68d568332704c534.jpeg" /></p> <p>So before I go on, let me say that I am not an old-skooler ruminating on the past and bemoaning the present, (about which, in fact, there is a whole lot to like!) But it seems to me there was an approach back then among the folks doing innovative importation to do one&#39;s work based on real research, with a personal point of view, finding a deeper understanding of the work involved in making a bottle of wine; this meant having an approach, or at least a basic thought, of what your imported wines represented vis-a-vis everything else out there. And most importantly, in the context of this writing, there was with little exception, a respect for other people&#39;s work, which meant putting in real efforts to not step on each other&#39;s toes. The wine trade played by Marquess of Queensbury rules, if you will. Because, after all, the British practically invented the commerce of wine.</p> <p><img src="http://louisdressner.com/uploads/images/article/2020_Aug_19//a4/86/a4860fe16e6310fe9e1c64e62c981fb5.jpg" /></p> <p>And sure, maybe I idealize the past or perhaps was a bit wide-eyed and na&iuml;ve. Or perhaps I was not in a position to see the uglier side of things, which I am sure existed. But I still believe that for the most part, there was guiding principle to work with integrity, manners and mutual respect (unless the other guy/gal was really a bastard or, importantly in those days and still important, a serial substance abuser.) You paid your growers and if you did not, you would have a Scarlet W, for W-E-L-S-H-E-R tattooed on your forehead.</p> <p><img src="http://louisdressner.com/uploads/images/article/2020_Aug_19//36/d3/36d3ae4ff95af7806f55a28b0d87223c.jpg" /></p> <p>Apart from the miracle of The Cloud, there is a downside to the internet. The rise of internet &quot;journalism&quot; and social media marketing allows for any creep to say anything they want (hey, look at me here) without any accountability for their words, mistakes, innuendo or near libel. And furthermore, there is an almost built-in incentive to be as exploitative of the lack of rules as possible to rise above the sea of self-involved open diaries posing as constructive critical thinking.</p> <p><img src="http://louisdressner.com/uploads/images/article/2020_Aug_19//d4/b9/d4b9315dee07aa125c934a0a3a27362d.jpg" /></p> <p>So here is what has passed over our desks in recent weeks:</p> <p>Firstly, someone who has recently established his own business based on the idea that he&#39;s eliminating the outrageous importer and distributor mark-ups by buying directly from winemakers&#39; cellars and selling retail, by power of his mutant abilities, directly to the consumer -thus somehow getting them &quot;Better for Less&quot;, a motto I think was popularly chiseled in Latin on a stone in 1st century AD- recently offered a wine from Olga Raffault, a producer we have been working with for 22 years. This same &quot;selector&quot; professes undying fondness for our company, for us as people, for our work, for our winemakers and their work, etc. on each and every occasion we see him. His newsletter to private wine customers made an offering on an Olga Raffault bottling &quot;La Singulaire&quot; (not to poke too much fun at the obvious, but the wine is actually called &quot;La Singuli&egrave;re&quot;, which could easily have been double checked with a simple web search), touting it as the first time offered in the United States and continuing with pithily slick schnook-speak and name-dropping comparisons (&quot;Better than Baudry, Rougeard!&quot;). Not to mention the few outright bloated boasts only someone-trying-to-sell-you-something would employ. Frankly, the whole tone of the piece smacks of smarminess.</p> <p><img src="http://louisdressner.com/uploads/images/article/2020_Aug_19//e0/c1/e0c1dafb15248af87c06c22fc426be97.jpg" /></p> <p>We received calls from customers and colleagues who were understandably confused. The news perpetuated itself and people immediately started jumping to further conclusions, like Raffault was now working with another importer. You can see how this then goes on and on in a never ending cycle.</p> <p>Here are the points of that email we would like to categorically shoot down and further illuminate:</p> <p>This &quot;selector&quot; all but states that the reason we have left the wine for European clients and carelessly deprived the US Market of this, THE most amazing cuv&eacute;e of the cellar, is that we have deemed the price too high to pass through the 3-tier system. Uhmmm, what can I say? Relative to the cuv&eacute;es we bring from other producers, this wine is not even CLOSE to being too expensive. I can&#39;t give him the benefit of thinking that folks could read between the lines of his statement and see that perhaps we did not see that the price:quality ratio represented in the wine&#39;s price. That would negate the entire point of his email.</p> <p>The reason we don&#39;t bring this in is simple; this is a tiny cuv&eacute;e that Eric de la Vigerie, who took over from his father-in-law Jean Raffault in the 00&#39;s, makes for a niche French clientele who are in fact searching for the more modern, extracted and oaked versions of Chinon found in some of the bigger, venerated commercial estates in the region. We were certainly always aware of this cuv&eacute;e, and have tasted it every year with the same wan smiles. It&#39;s just not for us or for our clients. It&#39;s concentrated, marked by oak treatment and has little Chinon identity. Eric never cared much whether we liked it or not, bought it or not. He knows how well we do with the other wines in his cellar, all of which are much more important to sell.</p> <p><img src="http://louisdressner.com/uploads/images/article/2020_Aug_19//4a/f4/4af409927b904e8a5b46dd0754ba2bbd.jpg" /></p> <p>The gall in this is the man who shall be further known as Selector L, the man who professes to know us for years, would think that in the 22 years of importing Raffault we would not buy their BEST EVER Chinon. And that in all the years of LDM&#39;s work, all our intelligent distributors, hardworking retailers and conscious restauranteurs who have helped back the reputation of the estate and have tasted with Eric many times wouldn&#39;t ask for it if they wanted it.</p> <p>Furthermore, the wine is not a direct purchase from the domaine&#39;s cellar. We are assured by the Raffault that it was not sold directly to Selector L&#39;s company, meaning he must have bought it from one of their other distributors or retailers in Europe. I think that counts as a &quot;tier&quot;...</p> <p>One also has to ask, would this wine be offered by Selector L if it did not have the imprimatur of the Raffault estate and their wonderful reputation based on releases of excellent old cellared wines? And what about our company spending over 20 years getting the word out with so much expense and heart? It would seems the sale of &quot;La Singuli&egrave;re&quot; is pretty much a no-brainer relative to some unheard-of producer in Chinon like, for example, the imaginary Bertrand Onager&#39;s imaginary top level cuv&eacute;e &quot;Les Portes du Bain&quot; which no one would realistically ever compare to Clos Rougeard&#39;s Saumur wines or Bernard Baudry&#39;s Chinon Croix Boiss&eacute;e.</p> <p><img src="http://louisdressner.com/uploads/images/article/2020_Aug_19//6d/a8/6da8c910f2dd5d794a554e336718de52.jpg" /></p> <p>And alright, alright, he is just some schmo, albeit one who garnered a reputation in New York for an expressive, investigative palate which he could manage to elucidate well in written form, and which was followed with some avidity by the mysterious wine cognoscenti underground. He is just trying to make a business he can call his own and we really do not see him as a threat or feel his sale of a small quantity of this wine is going to hurt ours or Raffault&#39;s sales or reputations. On the other hand, I certainly do not feel it is going to bring a whole new set of customers either.</p> <p>One just wishes that the sale of the wine, and the structure and wording of the written sale offering weren&#39;t both built on the foundation that Louis/Dressner and Raffault have made. I hope some day he can find the confidence to start laying his own bricks. I also wished he had had the general professional courtesy to call/email/text us to inform us of his intended sale of a wine from one of our most high-profile producers. He should also have given full disclosure that the wine was not acquired directly from that producer to his mailing list. And it would also be all right if this were the first time that pejorative comparisons and ever-so-slight mudslinging were used as a tool to hawk the latest selection, but it isn&#39;t. We kept our mouths shut and took the high road the first few times, but now I feel a need to address this.</p> <p><img src="http://louisdressner.com/uploads/images/article/2020_Aug_19//ce/14/ce14b4a4e179e381c06b655c82f29aed.png" /></p> <p>Moving on, I felt impelled to say something when I received an email from Monte dall&#39;Ora in the Veneto, who we have worked with for the last seven years. Prior to our partnership, they sold mostly a special cuv&eacute;e to the importer who worked with them before us: the style was more extracted, higher alcohol and it spent some time in (partially new) wood. Needless to say, it was not among our favorite wines at the estate. Well-made but modern-ish. We much preferred the racier, fresher and elegant wines that seemed to be evident vintage after vintage. Eventually, the production of this cuv&eacute;e was ended.</p> <p>Around the same time as Monte Dall&#39; Ora&#39;s email, we got another email announcing that a famed &quot;newsletter retailer&quot; had just bought old bottles of Monte dall&#39;Ora in the previous importer&#39;s warehouse, all that was available there to sell as his latest offering. The retailer is based in Seattle and ships to at least the 16 reciprocal state that allow sales across their borders, if not more. Their subscriptions reach a good number of people and I believe their business is good, if not brisk.</p> <p><img src="http://louisdressner.com/uploads/images/article/2020_Aug_19//79/49/7949dc213614751a060856f634af3f13.jpg" /></p> <p>But the thing that caught my eye was the name of a certain person listed with the title of Buying Director of Italian Wines for said retailer. Turns out, this Wine Director had disappeared for a number of years from the wine trade and had reportedly moved on to another field, was once a maverick Italian importer who worked with about 5 Italian estates we now represent (not Monte dall&#39;Ora though) More importantly, from what I last heard from these same growers, this guy burned each of them and owes them A LOT of money. I&#39;ve noticed in the past that to most people working with wine, this is a &quot;so what&quot; moment and they are happy to buy wines that &quot;fell off a truck&quot; at a bargain price, never once asking themselves if the winemaker was paid. I think that too often, when there is an unclear ethics situation, people avoid thinking about said ethics or go into a state of denial. For me it&#39;s a craw-sticker: I am friends with the growers that lost that money (a situation that happens much too often, especially for Italian wine) and I know what personal, financial and emotional upset they went through. Some had resolved to not sell to the US ever again. We were lucky to be able to convince them to let us bring in the wines on very short terms.</p> <p>I think in business we have to have some sense of right and wrong and draw the line somewhere. I will have real trouble doing any business with this Seattle based retailer unless his Buying Director of Italian Wines is no longer there or makes some reparations to the growers he stiffed... I am not requiring the Scarlet W. but don&#39;t tempt me!</p> <p><img src="http://louisdressner.com/uploads/images/article/2020_Aug_19//f3/3e/f33ea72d6bf32304e6ad95bf7cea5607.jpg" /></p> <p>The next incident, two weeks ago, really put us in a difficult place. In February at the hipster Natural Wine fairs in and around Angers (Dive Bouteile, etc...), there were many little wilding packs of New Selectors (Selecteurs Nouveaux?) and their coterie of customers. One of these guys avoided eye contact with me because, at a wine fair this past November in Italy, I had threatened to take him outside after calling him out as a brazen liar and a hack. This California based &quot;selector&quot; was targeting producers we have, through our own work and reputation, successfully established in the US market. His schtick involved (involves?) telling the growers the wines could not be found in the Bay Area and Southern California through our distributor -which in a vast majority of cases is a blatant lie- and that they should work with him.</p> <p>When I confronted him in person, the guy denied he even knew whom we worked with. Subsequently, I found out from Ernesto Cattel of Costadil&agrave; that he was going around telling our growers he was somehow affiliated with Louis/Dressner. Then I found the emails sent to our growers. Another prominent &quot;natural wine&quot;importer (who works nationally and is based in New York like us) told me that all his growers had systematically received contact from the guy with offers to work with him in the California import market as their distributor.</p> <p><img src="http://louisdressner.com/uploads/images/article/2020_Aug_19//55/27/5527dcf16a9b703c486d8d97aacc1978.jpg" /></p> <p>It&#39;s not that we do not like competition, as this guy retorted when I told him to back off. In fact (as you shall see later) we in fact DO like competition and a good deal of our competitors. More good wine, more good winemakers getting represented in the market = everybody wins. But we don&#39;t like laziness, unoriginality, disrespect and deceit. Build a unique, personal portfolio.</p> <p>Okay, if you are still with me, here&#39;s where the camel&#39;s back snaps. Another one of these new Selectors of California (whose &quot;portfolio&quot; is almost all wines already discovered and brought directly into the US by Chambers Street Wines in NYC and national importer Zev Rovine) convinced one of our producers, despite our strong arguments against it, to sell to them in California. There are really several sides to this story: between us, the domaine and the New California Selector it&#39;s a total Rashomon. In any event, the domaine went ahead and shipped wine to the New California Selector. We had many back and forths with the producer (whom we consider a long time friend) explaining why it was not in her best interest to go forward with this decision, but she insisted and we acquiesced for the good of her business. Still, the whole thing left a bad taste, which we hope to clear with the producer face-to-face the next time we see her.</p> <p><img src="http://louisdressner.com/uploads/images/article/2020_Aug_19//78/ef/78ef9a7291d816e0e12c1521533cfeff.jpg" /></p> <p>In the meantime, the wine for California is arriving and it turns out the New California Selector has not done any of the required paperwork that the US government and customs require for entry of alcoholic beverages, putting him at risk for delayed container entry and the hefty charges that go with that. First he asks an old friend of mine in San Francisco to beg the favor from me in giving them permission to use our paperwork (which takes hours of work on our end) for their goods, without the chutzpah to contact me himself. That was a no go. He then contacted me by email with apologies for being new and not understanding what was needed to be done; and a vague reference that perhaps he was breaking some &quot;importer orthodoxy&quot;. Okay, now we are getting into a left-handed swipe at a gentleperson&#39;s code of conduct being somehow wrapped in an impregnable secret Masonic code to which only a chosen few have access.<br /> <br /> To me this is the height of self-serving disrespect and a turn of the tables, a rationalization for laziness and lack of preparation or due diligence, a marked inability to follow any rules, (no matter how petty, we are in a regulated industry and you cannot make the rules go away by just ignoring them) and a marked disrespect for the work it actually does take to represent a group of first rate wine estates.<br /> <br /> On a much happier note, last Sunday Louis/Dressner got together with Zev Rovine, Selection Massale, Fifi and PM Spirits to do a tasting together under the same roof. The energy was incredible, the crowd was great and the festivities went well into the night. Nothing was poached, no one insulted or undermined their competition: it was truly a moment of working together towards the same goals and ideals. There is room in this world for everybody to get along, play nicely and act with responsibility, decorum and respect. We&#39;re just not sure why it&#39;s so difficult for some people to understand that.<br /> <br /> Do your work, Y-O-U-R W-O-R-K, don&#39;t use someone else&#39;s. It&#39;s fundamental.</p>

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<p><img src="http://louisdressner.com/uploads/images/article/2020_Aug_19//6d/02/6d0206a7cfab961ffad667dc6788b172.jpeg" /></p> <p>&quot;We should drink more and speak less!&quot; -Arianna Occhipinti</p> <p>It&#39;s the phenomenon that&#39;s sweeping the nation. People are drinking large quantities of delicious wine and they can&#39;t stop. Back in early November, I&#39;d reported on the Tennessean Beaujolais Craze, but it&#39;s happening everywhere: New York, California, Michigan, Wisconsin&hellip;</p> <p>&quot;It&#39;s just so good!&quot; exclaims Jody Witchencron, a Kalamazoo, Michigan native. &quot;Every sip makes me want another!&quot;</p> <p>&quot;It&#39;s such a sheer pleasure to drink that I don&#39;t have time to read how many points anyone gave it!&quot; mused Don Hickleberry of Houston, Texas.</p> <p>&quot;It&#39;s more than just drinking. It&#39;s a lifestyle.&quot; said some bearded hipster.</p> <p>All across the nation, it seems that a new generation of wine consumers are quickly taking rise. These are men and women who actually enjoy drinking wine because it tastes good, because it pairs well with food, because they can drink a lot of it and not be completely hungover the next morning.</p> <p>Glou-Glou, the evocative term on everyone&#39;s tongue, is simply the culmination of these qualities in wine. Roughly translated, Glou-Glou means &quot;glug-glug&quot;, the sound your throat makes while rapidly consuming a liquid beverage. The implication, of course, is that the wine is so good that one cannot help but drinking it. In France, they are referred to as Vin de Soif, or wines of thirst. More often than not, these wines tend to be lighter in alcohol, tannins (for reds) and body, but still have pronounced acidity, minerality and a real sense of terroir. Heavy , and especially new oak, are arguably deal breakers.</p> <p>The geographical origins of the term are still somewhat unclear, but expert Gulpologists like Thierry Puzelat and Olivier Lemasson invariably trace it back to wines of the Beaujolais:</p> <p>&quot;I visit Ville-Morgon every year the way some go to Lourdes; there aren&#39;t any miracles, but there&#39;s certainly joy for me!&quot;- Thierry Puzelat</p> <p>&quot;I love the Beaujolais. My formative years in winemaking were at Marcel Lapierre&#39;s, and this whole vin de soif thing stems from the Beaujolais style. Even though his Morgon was very complex, beautiful wine, it was also very easy to drink!&quot;- Olivier Lemasson</p> <p>By most accounts, the Loire has comfortably become the second Glou-Glou capitol of France, where cooler northern climates produce light, crisp and easy wines that are incredibly versatile with food but are just as easy to enjoy on their own.</p> <p>&quot;...the wines that really made me start to believe I could make wine in this style were Thierry Puzelat&#39;s. Marcel (Lapierre)&#39;s wines were the spark, but he lived 450 kilometers away from me and was working with very different terroirs; having a neighbor pull it off right next door was the inspiration and motivation to follow in his footsteps.&quot;-Herv&eacute; Villemade, based out of Cheverny and Cour-Cheverny.</p> <p>This light, fruity style has spread like wildfire in the natural winemaking world, and it is now possible to find whole-cluster, semi carbonic -aka &quot;Beaujolais Style&quot;- , or even fully carbonic macerated wines from all over the world. In many ways, carbonic maceration has come to define the Glou-Glou style, but many feel that fixating on how wine should taste or is made would be missing the larger point. A recent excerpt from Stefano Belloti&#39;s interview on the recently relaunched louisdressner.com website sums up what many believe the movement to be about:</p> <p>&quot;The vocation of my vines has always been, in my mind, to make wines that can be aged for a long time. Serious wine...</p> <p>So I decided, instead of making serious wine, I just wanted to make wine. Wine to drink. I make a red and a white. It worked out really well because instead of making wines that you have to intellectualize, I&#39;ve also produced ones that just win you over, a wine you don&#39;t think about, that you take great pleasure in drinking. You don&#39;t need to worry what about the region or the varietal or the nose or whatever. When you do this you are intellectualizing wine, and wine doesn&#39;t give a shit about being intellectual. So it&#39;s &quot;Simply&quot; red or white: you bring them to the table and you don&#39;t think about it, you just drink it. That&#39;s it.&quot;</p> <p>Some worry that by broadening the term to any wine that is easy to drink, you run the risk of the consumer confusing &quot;easy to drink&quot; with &quot;simple&quot; or &quot;one dimensional&quot;. Gulpologist Lemasson elaborates:</p> <p>&quot;When I say vin de soif, I&#39;m not claiming these wines are simple; they can be complex in their own right. What I mean by that is they are easy to drink on their own.&quot;</p> <p>Though the movement is still relatively young, one thing is certain: people are celebrating life by drinking good wine and eating good food with good people. Bottoms up!</p>

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<p><strong>From a post on joedressner.com originally titled &quot;A Christmas Spooftide Carol!&quot;</strong></p> <p>Spoofulation is a form of manipulation which takes wine away from nature and into the technological world of fake extraction, fake aromatics, fake flavors, fake density, fake acidity, fake tannin levels, fake color and fake sugar levels.</p> <p>Basically, fake wines.</p> <p>Unfortunately, much of the debate in the wine world is over &quot;new world&quot; vs &quot;old world&quot; wines, pitting &quot;traditionalists&quot; against &quot;innovators.&quot; This is simply not a productive juxtaposition as the bulk of wine in the old world which aspires to go beyond plonk, much as in the new world, is being made for marketers rather than wine lovers. We&#39;re stuck in a vicious cycle where new consumers expect wine to be spoofed, buy spoof and spoof dominates what is available. Oenologists, consultants and winemakers, who are running businesses after all, have no choice but to spoofulate or they go out of business.</p> <p>Spoof or die.</p> <p>Wine is becoming less a natural product and more a manufactured beverage. McSpoof. This is as true in Burgundy as it is in Oregon as it is true in Napa as it is true in Australia as it is true in the Priorat.</p> <p>Those who enjoy spoof often create a straw man argument that anti-spoofers are intellectuals who don&#39;t enjoy fruit driven and hedonistic wines. Whenever I taste these &quot;fruit driven, hedonistic&quot; wines that I read about in the wine press, I always have to wonder which fruits people have in mind. Certainly, nothing that grows in nature, nothing that comes from the ground. Most of these fruit bombs taste more like cherry cough syrup than any fruit I&#39;ve put in my mouth. I never find it hedonistic to drink wines made in this style, a style that reminds me of the type of flavored medications my mother used to make me take when I was a child with assurances that &quot;its good for you.&quot; Snapple based on fermented grapes is not my notion of wine hedonism.</p> <p>Hedonism is about pleasure and what makes wine pleasurable and fabulous for me is when there is the balance, minerality, the fruit, the acidity, the structure, the sense of place and time that makes me want to empty my glass. I find it hedonistic when wine enlarges my senses, rather than when it is molded by someone else for their notion of market utility.</p> <p>It ain&#39;t old world vs. new world. It ain&#39;t intellectuals vs. hedonists. It is real wine vs. spoof.</p> <p>Granted, with some regretable simplification.</p> <p>So, that&#39;s why I blog, to the embarassment of my loved ones and colleagues. Since the press does not have this view of wine, I have been active on my blog and in some of the wine boards for the past five or six years and have tried to talk up and popularize this notion of wine. Blogging and wine boards have given me a forum to present these ideas.</p> <p>Thank goodness.</p> <p>All this being said, I have nothing against people enjoying wine I find anti-hedonistic and anti-nature. I don&#39;t stop people in the street and rip the Coca-Cola or Snapples out of their hands. Some of my best friends like manufactured &quot;fruit bombs.&quot;</p> <p>So, honestly, I don&#39;t see why the self-proclaimed hedonists are so keen to condemn wines made naturally for another sensibility. I always enjoy looking into the Robert Parker wine board, where you get the impression that Parker is a isolated voice in the wilderness being bludgeoned by powerful British wine critics. For Christ&#39;s sake (and this is the Christmas season, after all), the man wields incredible power and wants to present himself as a persecuted crusader. Similarly, many lovers of new world spoof feel they have to lash out at people who like harmonious, natural wines.</p> <p>Blogging has been a way for me to get my message out there about another style of wine than what the industry, press and trade are pushing. As it turns out, there are quite a number of you out there.</p> <p>Thanks for all your support and a Merry Christmas to you and all your loved ones.</p> <p>And don&#39;t forget our Jewish friends out there.</p> <p>Happy Chanukah!</p> <p>Joe Dressner</p>

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<p>There was one theme that came up at every vigneron I visited this past summer.</p> <p>L&#39;Agr&eacute;ment.</p> <p>L&#39; Agr&eacute;ment is literally the granting of the Appellation d&#39;Origine Contr&ocirc;l&eacute;e to a wine. Every year, in every region, there is a process by which the producers of each AOC judge the work of their peers and decide if it merits the name of the AOC. The origins of this system date back centuries in spirit, although legally it was formulated in the 1930s. The idea was that system defends the consumer -- it guarantees that the wine bought by the consumer actually comes from the region, village or vineyard on the label. It also guarantees that the wine is not flawed and most importantly that the wine is typique.</p> <p>Typique means literally that the wine is typical. Typical in the sense that the wine expresses a terroir and typical in the sense that it conforms to the norms of the appellation. What exactly defines normative is the gray area that is being discussed all over France. Because, essentially, the aromatic and taste norms are being defined all over France by the majority in each AOC.</p> <p>And here is where we get into a dangerous zone, the tyranny of the majority. If the bulk of Touraine&#39;s Sauvignons Blancs are overcropped, lean, acidic and bitter, then something richer and more interesting is automatically atypical and outside the norms of the AOC.</p> <p>French vignerons tend to be a conservative bunch and intolerant of marginal characters. They also tend to be a close-knit and jealous lot. The Didier Dagueneaus who get four to five times the price of their neighbors by producing a wine that is perceived by the majority to be eccentric and made by eccentric viticultural and oenological practices quickly find that some of their wines are not accepted as typique and are declassified by the majority into Vins de Table. Same for Eloi Durbach, Jean Th&eacute;venet and so many more well-known vignerons.</p> <p>Of course, these are the celebrities. Below them are a movement of vignerons who are working hard in their vineyards, who are harvesting by hand, producing low yields, working with wild yeasts, not concentrating, not enzyming and not spoofulating. They are simply making real wines, that in a better world would be the models for their terroir. Instead they have become pariahs.</p> <p>Their wines are often eliminated from the AOC, or grudgingly accepted after several appeals, because, in the current context of mediocrity, they are aberrant.</p> <p>Unfortunately for these vignerons, those who do not have the reputations of a Durbach or Dagueneau, a declassification into Table Wine or Vin de Pays can often have disastrous financial results. When Jean-Paul Brun is told that his beautiful Beaujolais Rouges are atypique and have to be declassified into table wine -- without vintage, without the name of the grape variety, without the name of the estate (restrictions that are obligatory for Table Wine) -- which of his customers are going to buy the wine?</p> <p>The French vineyards have grown exponentially since the war and various AOCs have doubled, tripled or quadrupled in size. Many of them use high-producing clonal selections and mechanical agricultural work that, by definition, make a different product than the &quot;mavericks&quot; who are still making real wine based on the raw materials that defined that terroir in the first place. As sales go bad all over France, the tendency is for the majority to get even more intolerant and to apply more pressure to the marginals.</p> <p>Perhaps the best thing would be to go the route of Italian wines and start declaring wines as Table Wines as an alternative to the AOC system. Because it is apparent that it is the producer and not the AOC that makes the difference. A Vouvray from B&amp;G and a Vouvray from Domaine Huet are both from the same AOC but the regional indicator tells us nothing about the actual quality in the bottle.</p> <p>As an American, it always amazes me that any real estate mogul can hire a consultant, buy grapes, start a winery in California and fetch $50.00 a bottle. But a Muscadet is a Muscadet is a Muscadet and no matter how good the work is, no matter how good the wine, a Muscadet ought to cost under $10.00. Maybe a top cuv&eacute;e can go for $12.00. And, if you lose the AOC Muscadet because the wine is judged as being too rich, you are in VDP which has to cost $5.99 retail. Or less.</p> <p>Each AOC in France has a range of acceptable prices that goes with the range of acceptable flavors and aromatics. Whether it be Gevrey-Chambertin Village or Cairanne. Occasionally, there is the Dagueneau and other wine celebrities who can transcend the built-in barriers. Sometimes, a rave review from Robert Parker or The Wine Spectator can also aid a producer to transcend their regional limits. But, on the whole, the wine trade and wine public are delighted to see normative price restraints hold sway. Even though the real estate mogul in California can get $50.00 a bottle for his first effort.</p> <p>This sounds like a good system. Everybody is supposed to like lower prices and lower prices are to the advantage of the consumer. The problem is that costs are not equal -- the maverick vigneron who works at low yields and takes every expense to ensure the best possible grapes come into his cuverie and the best possible wine goes into the bottle has another level of expense than the neighbor who machine harvests and uses industrial winemaking techniques. There are no migrant laborers in France and labor is extremely expensive. Somewhere along the line, there has to be a financial incentive for vignerons to work harder and better.</p> <p>In the current market, the vigneron who works well is harassed by his peers in the AOC and then forced to sell his wine at about the same prices as his neighbors who sell average, mediocre or horrible wine. Isn&#39;t it time that we in the wine trade try to motivate the public and motivate our customers to understand that there is a relationship between what the consumer pays and what the consumer gets in the bottle?</p> <p>In touring around America, I notice that many of the younger people in the trade respect a meritocracy and not an appellation hierarchy. People new to the trade have been trained in California wine, not in French wines, and judge the producer, not the region. If a C&ocirc;tes-du-Rh&ocirc;ne is delicious, then it doesn&#39;t matter that it is not going to cost $9.99 retail. Hopefully, this trend will continue.</p> <p>In France, they are still a long way off. The French drinking public still views their wines through the prism of the AOC and expects a certain fourchette of prices, often beginning at rock bottom. Enormous supermarket chains, selling at low mark-ups, dominate the French wine trade and encourage this tendency.</p> <p>Let&#39;s be reasonable. We have a three tier system here. A wine that costs $9.99 retail usually leaves the vigneron&#39;s cellar at $3.00 to $3.50. A producer wants to make $5.00 and everyone in the American trade considers him a thief! So the inclination in the trade is to buy from the cheapest sourcing out there to keep the prices low in the market and to turnover inventory. OK, wine distribution is not a non-profit business and we are looking to make money. But isn&#39;t part of our responsibility to explain to our customers and to the public why it is worth paying something extra for good and great wine?</p> <p>Hopefully, the time will come when the buying public buys a wine for the quality of the wine and not for the perceived reputation of the AOC. Until that time, the abuse of the majority will dominate the vineyards of France and restrict what we are able to get into the hands of consumers. Let&#39;s work together to try to turn this situation around.</p>

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<p><u><strong>Day 1: Settling In</strong></u></p> <p>It&#39;s that time of the year again. Louis/Dressner and twenty or so of our best customers are running amok in France, ready to taste, chat and laugh our way through two weeks of events, <glossary term="Estate" title="427">estate</glossary> visits and, as it&#39;s shaping up, wacky hi-jinks.<br /> <br /> The entire LDM staff, with the exception of Josefa Concannon, took a flight over from New York City, where I decided to to pass the time by watching Cowboys &amp; Aliens, one of the worst movies I&#39;ve ever seen in my life. I have this thing where I watch really bad movies on the airplane, because I feel that it&#39;s the only time I can justify subjecting myself to cinematic gold like this:</p> <p><iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="360" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/9IzZsjED07A" width="640"></iframe></p> <p>It was then a three hour drive from Paris to&nbsp;<span class="zalup"><span><glossary term="Saumur" title="919">Saumur</glossary><span>,</span></span></span> where Josefa and I introduced some of our greener group members to the wonders of chicken flavored chips. They were universally well received and revered as quite delicious, albeit a bit artificial tasting. It&#39;s our goal to try the cheeseburger chips before the trip ends.</p> <p>In&nbsp;<span class="zalup"><span><glossary term="Saumur" title="919">Saumur</glossary><span>,</span></span></span> people visited the town while I slept through the afternoon (and evening). I was woken up by the hotel phone ringing; it was one of those weird times when you have no idea where you are and what&#39;s happening because of intensive travel/jet lag, but Kevin&#39;s &quot;Dinner time&quot; reminder rebooted my mind and I was ready to eat at L&#39;Alchimiste. The meal was great, especially for vegetarian John Ritchie (of Chambers Street Wines), who ate a whole lot of bread. The French are not the most accommodating towards non carnivores, and we&#39;ll see just how much (or little) John gets to eat on the trip. Fortunately, the bread was delicious, and will probably continue to be...</p> <p>We then went to a pool hall where it was karaoke night. As we walked in, three girls were butchering Bad Romance by NYC hometown hero Lady Gaga (444 million views! Damn!). This inspired Eben Lillie and I to rock the house down, which we promptly did with a stirring rendition of Ghostbusters by Ray Parker Jr.</p> <p><iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="360" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/Fe93CLbHjxQ" width="640"></iframe></p> <p>Someone filmed it, and I&#39;ll post it at some point. We finished the night with an intense New York vs. Chicago foozball tournament (John from Marlow &amp; Sons and I versus Jeremy from Telegraph and Jamie from Rootstock) where New York won. We weren&#39;t allowed to play right away because of an extremely competitive pool tournament that was going down, but after Les Pheonix reigned supreme, they removed their (home brought) pool cues from the table and we were able to play.</p> <p>Today, we begin actually working by visiting the Grenier St-Jean in <glossary term="Angers" title="104">Angers</glossary> for&nbsp;<span class="zalup"><span><glossary term="Renaissance des Appellations" title="1399">Renaissance des Appellations</glossary><span>.</span></span></span> Stay tuned!</p> <p><u><strong>Day 2 and 3: Renaissance des Appellations, Dive Bouteille, etc...</strong></u></p> <p>After a day off, it was right to work. We began our trip at&nbsp;<span class="zalup"><span><glossary term="Renaissance des Appellations" title="1399">Renaissance des Appellations</glossary><span>,</span></span></span> an event that brings an eclectic group of <glossary term="Biodynamic" title="160">biodynamic</glossary> <glossary term="Vigneron/Vignaiolo" title="1089">vignerons</glossary> from all over Europe under the same roof. The association was created by Nicholas Joly, but Mark Angeli of Domaine de la Sansonni&egrave;re organizes the January tasting in <glossary term="Angers" title="104">Angers</glossary> each year. They&#39;re actually about to take the show to the to U.S for the first time and will be in New York in February; you should check that out if you can. I wore a <glossary term="Rudolph Steiner" title="882">Steiner</glossary> sweater to show my <glossary term="Biodynamic" title="160">biodynamic</glossary> pride.</p> <p>Pumped from the last night&#39;s karaoke and heavy consumption of Desperados (a tequila infused beer that John from Marlow &amp; Sons thought was blended with Sprite), we were ready to taste some wine! Highlights included the de Moor 2010&#39;s, a <glossary term="Gamay" title="478">Gamay</glossary> <glossary term="Pétillant Naturel" title="778">p&eacute;tillant naturel</glossary> from Les Maisons Br&ucirc;l&eacute;es and a <glossary term="Mauzac" title="642">Mauzac</glossary> <glossary term="Sous-Voile" title="971">sous-voile</glossary> (a la <glossary term="Vin Jaune" title="1096">Vin Jaune</glossary> of the <glossary term="Jura" title="560">Jura</glossary>) from Causse Marines.</p> <p>Dinner was at Les Canons, a wine-centric restaurant in the heart of&nbsp;<span class="zalup"><span><glossary term="Saumur" title="919">Saumur</glossary><span>.</span></span></span> Average American Consumer (A.A.C) Joe Dougherty ended up ordering three bottles of Ganevat, because Joe Dougherty loves Ganevat. The Chicagans (is that how you call them?) wanted a foozball rematch, but for some reason the bar was closed at 10:30 on a Saturday night (we stayed till 2 on Friday). We settled for hanging out in the hotel and drinking two bottles of Vergano&nbsp;<span class="zalup"><span> <glossary term="Chinato" title="287">Chinato</glossary><span>.</span></span></span> Strangely enough, when Dan of Cordon Selections decided to go on his morning run at 7 am the next morning, the bar was open... Stange hours to say the least, and unfortunately no one was enthusiastic enough to drink Desperados and play table soccer before a full day of tasting.</p> <p>Instead, we all agreed it was best to head over to the Chateau de Br&eacute;z&eacute; for the 13th annual&nbsp;<span class="zalup"><span><glossary term="Dive Bouteille" title="395">Dive Bouteille</glossary><span>.</span></span></span> The <glossary term="Dive Bouteille" title="395">Dive</glossary> takes place in the depths of the&nbsp;<span class="zalup"><span><glossary term="Château" title="292">ch&acirc;teau</glossary><span>,</span></span></span> which makes for a spectacular backdrop for a tasting. But as anyone who has ever been knows, a <glossary term="Château" title="292">ch&acirc;teau</glossary> is not a great edifice for containing heat on frigid winter days, and the last three years had been insanely cold. I&#39;m talking frostbite on your fingers and nose cold, and the idea of tasting red wine at 0&ordm;C was waning on everyone. We warned our group to dress as heavily as possible: two pairs of socks, long johns, glove and hats as a bare minimum!</p> <p>Much to our surprise (and delight), the organizers had done a great job with the heating this year, choosing to add a heater behind each vigneron. To top it all off, it was a mild winter day, so it was actually quite warm in there! This meant that layers had to be peeled off, and that we the wines could actually be tasted at a normal temperature. It ended up being a great tasting!</p> <p>A ton of highlights, including Vincent Thomas&#39; 2010 <glossary term="Carbonic Maceration" title="236">carbonic</glossary> <span class="zalup"><span><glossary term="Pinot Noir" title="805">Pinot Noir</glossary><span>,</span></span></span> Yannick Pelletier&#39;s soon to be <glossary term="Bottling" title="185">bottled</glossary> 2010&#39;s, Luca Roagna showing up only four hours late, Pascal Potaire&#39;s <glossary term="Menu Pineau/Orbois" title="648">Menu Pineau</glossary>/<glossary term="Chenin Blanc" title="281">Chenin</glossary> <glossary term="Pétillant Naturel" title="778">p&eacute;tillant naturel</glossary> (keep your eyes peeled for that one), a <glossary term="Sauvignon Blanc" title="927">Sauvignon</glossary> from Olivier Lemasson rich in&nbsp;<span class="zalup"><span><glossary term="Residual Sugar" title="853">RS</glossary><span>,</span></span></span> an Alexandre Bain <glossary term="Vin de France" title="1092">VdF</glossary> <glossary term="Gamay" title="478">Gamay</glossary> and the Georges Descombes 2011&#39;s.</p> <p>One producer I&#39;d like to talk about in a little more detail is Louis-Antoine Luyt, who makes wine in Chile. Some of you may remember us bringing in his Clos Ouvert wines a couple of years ago. Unfortunately, the 2010 earthquake completely destroyed most of the wine already&nbsp;<span class="zalup"><span><glossary term="Bottling" title="185">bottled</glossary><span>,</span></span></span> as well as his vines. In the aftermath, his partners decided to bail out on the Clos Ouvert project, but Louis-Antoine has decided to continue, for the time being with rented <glossary term="Parcel" title="760">parcels</glossary> from all over Chile&#39;s wine country. He is also making and <glossary term="Bottling" title="185">bottling</glossary> wine under his name as a separate entity.</p> <p>Everything is <glossary term="Dry Farming" title="406">dry-farmed</glossary> (the vast majority of South American wine is <glossary term="Irrigation" title="549">irrigated</glossary>) and it&#39;s cool stuff: a <glossary term="Paìs" title="768">Pa&iacute;s</glossary>&nbsp;(local grape originally brought over by Spanish conquistadors) from 350 year old vines really impressed me, as well as his <glossary term="Carignan" title="237">Carignan</glossary> and <glossary term="Cinsault" title="1188">Cinsault</glossary> from 80 year old vines (Louis-Antoine explained that these varieties were planted because the area has a nearly identical climate to <glossary term="Corbières" title="334">Corbi&egrave;res</glossary>). I&#39;ve yet to taste South American wines as elegant, full of depth and <glossary term="Minerality" title="662">minerality</glossary> (not to mention the lighter alcohol...) We&#39;re starting fresh with Louis-Antoine, and look forward to getting these in the U.S as soon as possible.</p> <p>Days 4, 5 and 6:</p> <p>Monday was our final day of tasting at organized events, and we went to two: Salon des Vins Bio de la Loire and Les P&eacute;nitentes, a tasting organized by Thierry Puzelat, Ren&eacute; Mosse, Herv&eacute; Villemade and Christian Chaussard. This is the first year this event took place, and it served as as &quot;off&quot; of the&nbsp;<span class="zalup"><span><glossary term="Dive Bouteille" title="395">Dive Bouteille</glossary><span>,</span></span></span> which in itself is an off of the&nbsp;<span class="zalup"><span><glossary term="Salon des Vins de la Loire" title="904">Salon des Vins de la Loire</glossary><span>.</span></span></span> So yes, we went to the off of an off. That&#39;s how underground we are...</p> <p>It was good to catch up with the guys in a more intimate setting and to taste a whole bunch of 2011&#39;s. The skinny with the <glossary term="Loire Valley" title="602">Loire</glossary> for this new <glossary term="Vintage" title="1109">vintage</glossary> is simple: if you liked 2010 (which you did, because it was a great <glossary term="Loire Valley" title="602">Loire</glossary> <glossary term="Vintage" title="1109">vintage</glossary>), you&#39;ll be happy to know that 2011 will be quite similar in style. The Tue-Boeuf and Puzelat <glossary term="Négociant" title="729">n&eacute;goce</glossary> wines are killer this year, as well as those of Briseau and Nana Vins et Companie. Villemade had some great stuff as well, and while we only tasted one Mosse 2011, it was quite promising. Everything should be getting <glossary term="Bottling" title="185">bottled</glossary> in March.</p> <p>It was snowing pretty hard all day, and while it wasn&#39;t too bad in&nbsp;<span class="zalup"><span><glossary term="Angers" title="104">Angers</glossary><span>,</span></span></span> once we hit the road things started getting ugly. Ken Rosati, who left a good hour before anyone else, ended up driving from <glossary term="Angers" title="104">Angers</glossary> to Chitenay on a completely unplowed highway, which took him five hours (the drive usually takes two). Josefa, our Designated Driver while Abroad (D.D.A), got stuck behind two snow plowing trucks going 40 km an hour for a while and it took her about four&nbsp;hours. I was in a car with international wine personality Maya Pedersen at the wheel, and let me tell you that it was quite as intense drive. The road was icy and the snow was coming down super hard, with the wind blowing right at us. Pretty much the whole drive looked like when the Millennium Falcon goes into warp speed.</p> <p><iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="360" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/USLTQVt8QyA" width="640"></iframe></p> <p>Maya said she started having vertigo at one point.</p> <p>Finally, we got to l&#39;Auberge du Centre in Chitenay. It&#39;s a beautiful hotel that is usually closed this time of year, but Puzelat is friends with the owner and every year we take the place over. This year, it was unofficially dubbed the Louis/Dressner Party Palace. We were all exhausted, and after the first of three great dinners at&nbsp;<span class="zalup"><span><glossary term="L'Herbe Rouge" title="568">L&#39;Herbe Rouge</glossary><span>,</span></span></span> it was time to call it a night and get ready for Day 1 of our private tasting, henceforth dubbed Viti Valaire International.&nbsp;</p> <p>Day 1 featured mostly Italians (as well as our two Spanish producers), and we got to taste with Chiara Vigo, Cascina degli Ulivi, Alessandra Bera, Cascina Tavijn, Francesco Maule, Francesca Padovani, Olivier Rivi&egrave;re, Fernando Garcia, Silvio Messana, Elisabetta Foradori, Mauro Vergano and Dominique Hauvette. Louis Antoine Luyt made a cameo appearance, and you can you can expect interviews from the Spanish guys, Chiara and Louis-Antoine on the site in the coming weeks. It was a great tasting, with everyone&#39;s wines tasting well across the board.</p> <p>I had dinner at the kid&#39;s table (aka anyone under 40) and the conversation touched on many important issues, namely what the best Arnold Schwarzenegger quote ever was.</p> <p><iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="360" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/pDxn0Xfqkgw" width="640"></iframe></p> <p>Some favorites included:</p> <p>&quot;Get to the chopper!&quot; -Predator</p> <p>&quot;It&#39;s not a tumor!&quot; -Kindergarten Cop</p> <p>&quot;Who is your daddy, and what does he do?&quot; -Kindergarten Cop</p> <p>&quot;See you at the party, Richter!&quot; -Total Recall</p> <p>&quot;Chill out!&quot;-Batman and Robin (as Mr. Freeze)</p> <p>&quot;You&#39;re fired&quot;- True Lies</p> <p>After a loud and festive dinner, we returned to the Party Palace, where Jamie from Rootstock used his newly acquired <glossary term="Disgorgement" title="393">disgorgement</glossary> saber to pop open bottles out the window (video at some point). Fernando Garcia tried to join us but thought that Kevin had said Sydney instead of Chitenay, so he got super lost. Francesco Maule and his girlfriend Erica eventually showed up, and I ended up in bed around 4:30.</p> <p>Day 2 was a France-centric day and featured Jean Paul Brun, Franck Peillot, Alain Coudert, Emmanuelle Desvignes, Julie Balagny, Marie-Pierre Ich&eacute;, Guilhem and Palma Dard&eacute;, Michel T&ecirc;te, Eric Texier, Laurent Barth, Tom Lubbe and Claude Mar&eacute;chal. 2011 might have been a weird <glossary term="Vintage" title="1109">vintage</glossary> weather wise, but it&#39;s really shaping up to be something great in the bottle.</p> <p><u><strong>Day 7: Fran&ccedil;ois Cazin and Clos Roche Blanche</strong></u></p> <p>After five days of tasting events, we were ready to visit some of our&nbsp;<span class="zalup"><span><glossary term="Vigneron/Vignaiolo" title="1089">vignerons</glossary><span>.</span></span></span> Our first stop was Fran&ccedil;ois Cazin.</p> <p>We started the visit with a quick tour of the vines by the house and&nbsp;<span class="zalup"><span><glossary term="Cellar" title="254">cellar</glossary><span>.</span></span></span> Fran&ccedil;ois explained that he is the fifth generation to farm his family&#39;s land, but the first to work only the vines; up until very recently, the farm had always been in <glossary term="Polyculture" title="815">polyculture</glossary> (mostly livestock and vines), but Fran&ccedil;ois chose to focus only on wine while his brother decided to work with the lambs and chickens. Catherine Roussel has expressed many times that Cazin chickens are among some of the best in France;&nbsp;after consuming one this summer I can confirm.</p> <p>The first <glossary term="Parcel" title="760">parcel</glossary> we visited consisted of <glossary term="Pinot Noir" title="805">Pinot Noir</glossary> planted in the 70&#39;s. Planted in 1928 by Fran&ccedil;ois&#39; grandfather, it&#39;s the second the oldest <glossary term="Parcel" title="760">parcel</glossary> of <glossary term="Romorantin" title="867">Romorantin</glossary> in all of&nbsp;<span class="zalup"><span><glossary term="Cour-Cheverny" title="352">Cour-Cheverny</glossary><span>.</span></span></span> Fran&ccedil;ois had a lot to say about this relatively unknown grape.</p> <p>It is believed to originate from <glossary term="Burgundy" title="212">Burgundy</glossary> as the ancestor of <span class="zalup"><span><glossary term="Pinot Noir" title="805">Pinot Noir</glossary><span>,</span></span></span> and has always been very low&nbsp;<span class="zalup"><span><glossary term="Yield" title="1129">yielding</glossary><span>.</span></span></span> From a production standpoint, what I found the most interesting was the following statement:</p> <p><em>&quot;50% of making a good </em><glossary term="Romorantin" title="867"><em>Romorantin</em></glossary><em> depends on when you </em><glossary term="Harvest" title="521"><em>harvest</em></glossary><em> it.&quot;</em></p> <p>This is far from an exact science, and every year is different. <glossary term="Romorantin" title="867">Romorantin</glossary> (or Romo, for those who absolutely feel the need to abbreviate the name of every grape <glossary term="Varietal" title="1071">varietal</glossary>), is a tricky grape to work with: it&#39;s naturally very high in <glossary term="Acidity" title="71">acidity</glossary> and has very thin skins, so if it is <glossary term="Harvest" title="521">harvested</glossary> too early it shows no fruit or <glossary term="Minerality" title="662">minerality</glossary> (think of sucking on a lemon) and if it it <glossary term="Harvest" title="521">harvested</glossary> too late, the pulp of the berry becomes mushy (&quot;It&#39;s like jam instead of grapes&quot;), the skins tend to burst and it becomes very susceptible to&nbsp;<span class="zalup"><span><glossary term="Grey Rot" title="182">gray rot</glossary><span>.</span></span></span> This means one must <glossary term="Harvest" title="521">harvest</glossary> during a very specific window to make anything worthwhile. Like Goldilocks&#39;&nbsp;porridge, it has to be be just right.</p> <p>Fran&ccedil;ois also explained why you&#39;ll only find this grape grown in the 80 or so <glossary term="Hectare" title="523">hectares</glossary> of the <glossary term="Cour-Cheverny" title="352">Cour-Cheverny</glossary> <span class="zalup"><span><glossary term="Appellation" title="113">appellation</glossary><span>.</span></span></span> Like many other forgotten varieties, <glossary term="Romorantin" title="867">Romorantin</glossary> was way more widespread in the <glossary term="Loire Valley" title="602">Loire</glossary> valley until very recently. With the increasing popularity of <glossary term="Sancerre" title="908">Sancerre</glossary> in the 70&#39;s, 80&#39;s and 90&#39;s, the demand for <glossary term="Loire Valley" title="602">Loire</glossary> <glossary term="Sauvignon Blanc" title="927">Sauvignon Blanc</glossary> skyrocketed. <glossary term="Sauvignon Blanc" title="927">Sauvignon</glossary> has always been planted in <glossary term="Cheverny" title="283">Cheverny</glossary> (which at the time was still a&nbsp;<glossary term="VDQS" title="1073">VDQS</glossary>), and most growers decided to tear out their low <glossary term="Yield" title="1129">yielding</glossary> <glossary term="Romorantin" title="867">Romorantin</glossary> vines in order to replant the more productive and popular&nbsp;<span class="zalup"><span><glossary term="Sauvignon Blanc" title="927">Sauvignon</glossary><span>.</span></span></span> But a small number of <glossary term="Vigneron/Vignaiolo" title="1089">vignerons</glossary> decided to keep their <glossary term="Romorantin" title="867">Romorantin</glossary> vines, which is why it is still around today.</p> <p>When it was time to create the <glossary term="Cheverny" title="283">Cheverny</glossary> <glossary term="AOC" title="108">AOC</glossary> in 1993, these same <glossary term="Vigneron/Vignaiolo" title="1089">vignerons</glossary> (including Fran&ccedil;ois and Herv&eacute; Villemade&#39;s fathers) fought hard so that <glossary term="Romorantin" title="867">Romorantin</glossary> -which they felt could produce great wine on its own- not be a prerequisite in the&nbsp;<glossary term="Cheverny" title="283">Cheverny</glossary>&nbsp;<glossary term="Blend" title="168">blend</glossary> (which currently consists of <glossary term="Sauvignon Blanc" title="927">Sauvignon</glossary> and <glossary term="Chardonnay" title="271">Chardonnay</glossary>). This led to multiple disputes;&nbsp;the only solution the panel could find was to create an <glossary term="AOC" title="108">AOC</glossary> dedicated exclusively to&nbsp;<span class="zalup"><span><glossary term="Romorantin" title="867">Romorantin</glossary><span>,</span></span></span>&nbsp; culminating in the creation of <glossary term="Cour-Cheverny" title="352">Cour-Cheverny</glossary> in 1997.</p> <p>We then did a flight of <glossary term="Cour-Cheverny" title="352">Cour-Cheverny</glossary> and &quot;Cuv&eacute;e Renaissance&quot; from 2010 to 1990 (skipping a few <glossary term="Vintage" title="1109">vintages</glossary>) and let me tell you, <glossary term="Romorantin" title="867">Romorantin</glossary> ages beautifully. Certain <glossary term="Vintage" title="1109">vintages</glossary> remain crisp and fresh while others take on a&nbsp;<span class="zalup"><span><glossary term="Riesling" title="858">Riesling</glossary><span>-</span></span></span>like petrol quality on the nose and a rich, honeyed mouth feel. Two things recurred in each bottle: striking <glossary term="Acidity" title="71">acidity</glossary> and seemingly never ending&nbsp;<span class="zalup"><span><glossary term="Finish" title="450">finishes</glossary><span>.</span></span></span> I know they taste great young, but you all need to start <glossary term="Aging" title="74">aging</glossary> them now!</p> <p>Lunch was pretty crazy, simply because Claudie started us off with a ten pound bowl of rillettes (I&#39;m not kidding, pictures coming very soon) and a pork terrine bigger than my head. Even though we barely dented either dish, people were in a feeding frenzy; I warned them to slow down because more food was coming, but they did not heed my warning. As a follow up, we had delicious wild boar in a mushroom sauce. As scrumptulenscent as it was, many people got way too full.</p> <p>After lunch, we went to check out the legendary Clos Roche Blanche. While touring the vines, Didier pointed out the 117 year old <glossary term="Malbec" title="366">C&ocirc;t</glossary> vines, as well as which vines No&euml;lla Morantin rents. Speaking of No&euml;lla, we did a quick visit to her <glossary term="Cellar" title="254">cellars</glossary> to taste the 2011&#39;s; it was her first year with no major problems and after three&nbsp;<span class="zalup"><span><glossary term="Vintage" title="1109">vintages</glossary><span>.</span></span></span> On top of the six <glossary term="Hectare" title="523">hectares</glossary> she rents from CRB, she has just acquired four&nbsp;<glossary term="Hectare" title="523">hectares</glossary> of vines from Bois Lucas (where she previously worked, and which in itself used to be Clos Roche Blanche vines before Catherine and Didier sold them), so as of 2012 she is officially a&nbsp;<span class="zalup"><span><glossary term="Vigneron/Vignaiolo" title="1089">vigneronne</glossary><span>!</span></span></span></p> <p>The vineyards were stunning as always, and the <glossary term="Cellar" title="254">cellar</glossary> visit proved to be very educational, as Didier elaborated on his work in the vines and soil (much of which he touches on in great detail in his LDM interview). We got to taste the 2011&#39;s which are great. The one big scoop is that there will be no <glossary term="Pineau d'Aunis" title="799">Pineau d&#39;Aunis</glossary> red this year; while this is very sad, everyone knows that no red can mean only one thing&hellip;</p> <p>More <glossary term="Pineau d'Aunis" title="799">Pineau d&#39;Aunis</glossary> rose in 2011!</p> <p>Our visit ended with Catherine pulling out a 1964 <glossary term="Romorantin" title="867">Romorantin</glossary> (made illegal to use in the <glossary term="Touraine" title="1036">Touraine</glossary> <glossary term="AOC" title="108">AOC</glossary> once <glossary term="Cheverny" title="283">Cheverny</glossary> became a <glossary term="VDQS" title="1073">VDQS</glossary> in the 70&#39;s), which used to grow on CRB soils. It was a little tired, but still vibrant and alive. What a treat.</p> <p>If that wasn&#39;t good enough, Catherine reappeared with an unlabeled bottle and started pouring a deep brown liquid into our glasses. Everyone eagerly asked what it was, and we were in for a surprise: a 1911 <glossary term="Pinot Gris/Pinot Grigio" title="803">Pinot Gris</glossary> grown by Catherine&#39;s grandfather! Didier exclaimed: &quot;It&#39;s not disgusting!&quot;, and most agreed. The color was a golden, dark caramel and I enjoyed it very much.</p> <p>We then went to another big dinner where everyone over ate and over drank. Fortunately, we were all overeating dishes rich in the goat cheeses made right there on the farm and over-drinking back <glossary term="Vintage" title="1109">vintages</glossary> of Clos Roche Blanche!</p> <p><u><strong>Day 8: Domaine de l&#39;Oubli&eacute;e and Luneau-Papin</strong></u></p> <p>After spending four days in the&nbsp;<span class="zalup"><span><glossary term="Touraine" title="1036">Touraine</glossary><span>,</span></span></span> it was off to <glossary term="Bourgueil" title="191">Bourgueil</glossary> to visit Xavier Courrant at Domaine de L&#39;Oubli&eacute;e. If you haven&#39;t already, check out his interview.</p> <p>Before touring the vines, Xavier explained the short history of his&nbsp;<span class="zalup"><span><glossary term="Estate" title="427">estate</glossary><span>.</span></span></span> Domaine de L&#39;Oubli&eacute;e consists of six&nbsp;<glossary term="Hectare" title="523">hectares</glossary> spread through multiple <glossary term="Parcel" title="760">parcels</glossary> on three different sites (each with distinct soil types) in the <glossary term="Commune" title="322">commune</glossary> of Saint-Patrice. He also owns a 0.74<glossary term="Hectare" title="523">h</glossary> parcel of&nbsp;<span class="zalup"><span><glossary term="Chenin Blanc" title="281">Chenin Blanc</glossary><span>.</span></span></span> Xavier&#39;s only criteria when starting was to work with his beloved&nbsp;<span class="zalup"><span><glossary term="Cabernet Franc" title="216">Cabernet Franc</glossary><span>.</span></span></span> After shopping around in <glossary term="Chinon" title="288">Chinon</glossary> and&nbsp;<span class="zalup"><span><glossary term="Bourgueil" title="191">Bourgueil</glossary><span>,</span></span></span> he found what he was looking for.</p> <p>The vines were formerly a part of Christophe Chasle&#39;s 18 <glossary term="Hectare" title="523">hectare</glossary>&nbsp;<span class="zalup"><span><glossary term="Estate" title="427">estate</glossary><span>.</span></span></span> Because his means were and still are limited, Xavier -who does 100% of the vineyard work himself- decided to start small; six&nbsp;<glossary term="Hectare" title="523">hectares</glossary> initially seemed like too much to handle, but he quickly realized that the opportunity was too good to pass up. As mentioned earlier, that all the land&nbsp;was in the same <glossary term="Commune" title="322">commune</glossary> and simultaneously offering three unique soil types (<glossary term="Sand" title="909">sandy</glossary> <span class="zalup"><span><glossary term="Gravel" title="504">gravel</glossary><span>,</span></span></span> <glossary term="Calcareous" title="222">calcareous</glossary> <span class="zalup"><span><glossary term="Clay" title="301">clay</glossary><span>,</span></span></span> <glossary term="Flint/Silex" title="455">flinty</glossary> <glossary term="Clay" title="301">clay</glossary>) was the clincher. The <glossary term="Chenin Blanc" title="281">Chenin</glossary> <glossary term="Parcel" title="760">parcel</glossary> was also a perk.</p> <p>Another huge advantage for Xavier is that he has very few neighbors, so most of his vines are completely isolated. Most <glossary term="Parcel" title="760">parcels</glossary> co-exist with woods, wild grass, flowers, plants and animals, and Xavier plans on taking full advantage of his land&#39;s <glossary term="Biodiversity" title="1162">biodiversity</glossary> to create self sustained&nbsp;<span class="zalup"><span><glossary term="Ecosystem" title="414">eco-systems</glossary><span>.</span></span></span> The vines are in their third year of <glossary term="Conversion" title="332">conversion</glossary> to <glossary term="Organic" title="746">organic</glossary> <glossary term="Viticulture" title="1103">viticulture</glossary> (with a long term goal of working <glossary term="Biodynamic" title="160">biodynamically</glossary>), and Xavier will be <glossary term="Organic Certification" title="260">certified</glossary> as of the 2012&nbsp;<span class="zalup"><span><glossary term="Vintage" title="1109">vintage</glossary><span>.</span></span></span></p> <p>We started our visit to the vines with a tour of the <glossary term="Parcel" title="760">parcels</glossary> that go into &quot;Notre Histoire&quot;. The soils consist of <glossary term="Calcareous" title="222">calcareous</glossary> <glossary term="Clay" title="301">clay</glossary> and the entire site borders the village cemetery. Only one row is shared with a neighbor, who is apparently &quot;very nice&quot;. Walking from <glossary term="Parcel" title="760">parcel</glossary> to <glossary term="Parcel" title="760">parcel</glossary> in the snow, Xavier began explaining how vines used to dominate the <glossary term="Agriculture" title="78">agricultural</glossary> landscape of <glossary term="Bourgueil" title="191">Bourgueil</glossary> before World War 2. In the aftermath, a lot of vines were destroyed and instead or replanting, people favored plain <glossary term="Agriculture" title="78">agriculture</glossary> (cereal, corn, sunflowers, etc...); anything that could provide a productive crop farmers could turn over and see quick returns on. Pointing to the woods surrounding us, he described how these used to be densely planted (about 50/50 <glossary term="Cabernet Franc" title="216">Cabernet Franc</glossary> and <glossary term="Chenin Blanc" title="281">Chenin Blanc</glossary>) but now trees have been growing wild since the early 50&#39;s.</p> <p>Moving along, we walked by an empty <glossary term="Parcel" title="760">parcel</glossary>; right before Xavier took over this&nbsp;<span class="zalup"><span><glossary term="Plot" title="1133">plot</glossary><span>,</span></span></span> the prior owner had torn out some very old vines. Xavier&#39;s plan is to grow plants and vegetables (as well as wild grass) for three years to help the soil &quot;detox&quot;, then replant selection&nbsp;<span class="zalup"><span> <glossary term="Selection Massale" title="941">massales</glossary><span>.</span></span></span> He&#39;s still on the fence on whether to planted <glossary term="Grolleau" title="513">Grolleau</glossary> or&nbsp;<span class="zalup"><span> <glossary term="Chenin Blanc" title="281">Chenin Blanc</glossary><span>.</span></span></span></p> <p>Speaking of&nbsp;<span class="zalup"><span> <glossary term="Chenin Blanc" title="281">Chenin</glossary><span>,</span></span></span> the next part of the tour was a short car ride away; after getting off one of the village&#39;s main roads, we were whisked in the woods where the <glossary term="Parcel" title="760">parcel</glossary> is located. The 0.74 <glossary term="Hectare" title="523">hectares</glossary> are completely surrounded by trees and shrubs;&nbsp;with the exception of a few <glossary term="Vigneron/Vignaiolo" title="1089">vignerons</glossary> who have replanted <glossary term="Chenin Blanc" title="281">Chenin</glossary> in the last year or two, it&#39;s the only white grapes being grown in the area. Xavier uses a fence to protect the vines from wild animals hungry for ripe grapes.</p> <p>Because Xavier and his wife Stephanie are awesome, they actually hired their buddy who owns a woodfire pizza truck to prepare us fresh flat-breads to spread our rillettes and cheese on. A homemade soup was very much appreciated as well. The 2010&#39;s were tasting great, as were the 2011&#39;s. The real suprise was an &#39;09 <glossary term="Pétillant Naturel" title="778">p&eacute;tillant naturel</glossary> from&nbsp;<span class="zalup"><span><glossary term="Cabernet Franc" title="216">Cabernet Franc</glossary><span>.</span></span></span> It tasted like ros&eacute;&nbsp;<span class="zalup"><span><glossary term="Champagne" title="267">Champagne</glossary><span>!</span></span></span> I&#39;m very happy about everybody making a <glossary term="Pétillant Naturel" title="778">p&eacute;tillant naturel</glossary> these days; they are so easy to drink and almost always cheaper than other bubbles.</p> <p>After another meal consisting 90% of pork products, cheese and bread, it was time to visit the Luneau! Our car&#39;s built in GPS got us super lost (if you rent an Audi while in France and use its GPS, you will hate every moment of your car ride because of its absurd design and complete lack of functionality), which ended up being ok because we took a really scenic route full of inspiring winter sights. Ken was sitting in the backseat with me, and we got to talking about it being his first time to France. He felt funny because he&#39;d been working mostly with French wine his entire career, and it was really great for him to put a place and a context to the wines he&#39;s been enjoying for so long.</p> <p>Our visit at Luneau-Papin was quite epic. Our first stop was at the incredible Butte de La Roche&nbsp;<span class="zalup"><span> <glossary term="Plot" title="1133">plot</glossary><span>.</span></span></span> The vines are all on <glossary term="Coteau" title="345">coteaux</glossary> with South-West <glossary term="Exposition" title="430">exposition</glossary> and the view from the top of the hill is magnificent. You can see all of <glossary term="Muscadet" title="697">Muscadet</glossary> from up there, and Pierre-Marie had fun by pointing out where other <glossary term="Vigneron/Vignaiolo" title="1089">vignerons</glossary> live:</p> <p><em>&quot;Just past that river is Marc Ollivier&#39;s. And Jo Landron lives by that water tower!&quot;</em></p> <p>The one incredible particularity of the Butte de La Roche is its soil. The site is actually a geological landmark because it is the only place in the world where deep, deep <glossary term="Serpentine" title="943">serpentine</glossary> <glossary term="Subsoil" title="991">subsoil</glossary> has erupted to to the surface after a series of underground earthquakes. Huge chunks of <glossary term="Serpentine" title="943">serpentine</glossary> can be found throughout the vineyard site and the soil is very tough to work because of how rocky it is. This type of <glossary term="Serpentine" title="943">serpentine</glossary> is a <glossary term="Subsoil" title="991">subsoil</glossary> that no root could normally reach, and gives the &quot;Terre de Pierre&quot; <glossary term="Cuvée" title="363">cuv&eacute;e</glossary> a richness and <glossary term="Minerality" title="662">minerality</glossary> unique to the site.</p> <p>The <glossary term="Cellar" title="254">cellar</glossary> visit was a lot of fun; we tasted the soon to be released 2010&#39;s (you&#39;re in for a treat) and 2011&#39;s from a range of different&nbsp;<span class="zalup"><span><glossary term="Cuvée" title="363">cuv&eacute;es</glossary><span>,</span></span></span> and Pierre pulled out the huge batons used to stir the&nbsp;<span class="zalup"><span><glossary term="Lees" title="590">lees</glossary><span>.</span></span></span> We were then offered to taste a range of back <glossary term="Vintage" title="1109">vintages</glossary> with dinner. The oldest were 1995&#39;s and proved what everyone needs to realize immediately: good <glossary term="Muscadet" title="697">Muscadet</glossary> ages really well. Anyone will tell you otherwise, but when you&#39;re working with <glossary term="Lees" title="590">lees</glossary> (in the Luneau&#39;s case two or three years at a time for certain <glossary term="Cuvée" title="363">cuv&eacute;es</glossary>), it gives the wine a richer texture that lets it evolve in bottle.</p> <p>After another great dinner, it was time to say goodbye. Hands were shook, glasses were cheered, embraces were exchanged: everything was set and we were ready to go. Or so we thought...</p> <p>We had just gotten in the Maya Mobile, aka Brown Betty, when the car in front us drove head first into the large ditch on the side of the road (to save them from the embarrassment, the driver will remain anonymous)! The front tires weren&#39;t touching ground and the car was at a 45% angle. We tried lifting it out manually while the driver backed up, but the car was too heavy for us. Pierre then decided to get the forklift and, you guessed it, attempt to FORKLIFT the car to level ground. This initial strategy proved impossible because of the angle of the car, and things only got worst when the very forklift that was supposed to salvage the vehicle from the fiery depths of the ditch got its wheels stuck in the ice! So now we had two stranded vehicles in the cold <glossary term="Muscadet" title="697">Muscadet</glossary> night! David Mcduff insisted we call a tow-truck, but Pierre-Marie refused:</p> <p><em>&quot;This happens all the time! I&#39;ll go get the truck.&quot;</em></p> <p>Five minutes later he was back with the truck. Pierre attached a strap to the axle of the trapped car, and we all got ready to push our hearts out in a classic push-pull-pump the accelerator in reverse scenario. This was it, our last ditch effort (get it? Ditch!). I was convinced this was going to be a terrible failure, that the truck was going to rip the back axle straight off. But after counting to 1, 2, 3... everyone played their part and we were able to get the car out! David Sink, in one of the most hilarious hilarious moments of the trip, yelled &quot;We did it! By the power of Excelsior! Excelsior!&quot; For those of you who don&#39;t get it:</p> <p><img src="http://louisdressner.com/uploads/images/article/2020_Sep_23//12/e3/12e3637b2532b10944f6ab26706a85be.jpeg" /></p> <p>We did drink a bunch of it that night...</p> <p>We were able to drive the car to the hotel but the heater was completely destroyed so it had to be returned the next day. That&#39;s what insurance is for, kiddos!</p> <p><strong>Day 9: Muscadet-a-thon:</strong></p> <p>Before I start this post, I must address a very serious issue. It was brought to my attention that there&#39;s been a a huge spike in demand for the Clos Roche Blanche <glossary term="Pineau d'Aunis" title="799">Pineau d&#39;Aunis</glossary> ros&eacute; since my blog post about our recent visit, and how there would be more than last year. Our distributors&#39; phones have been ringing off the hook with people trying to get palettes on pre-sale. But the unfortunate truth: their isn&#39;t that much to go around. As much as I&#39;d like to tell you all that it was some genius marketing ploy (after all, I am LDM&#39;s Director of Viral Marketing (D.V.M)) and this was the best viral ad campaign since Bros Icing Bros, the truth is I was only objectively making a general statement as to the quantity, not the availability&nbsp;of the wine. Yes, there is more ros&eacute;&nbsp;in 2011 than in 2010, and more means more for everybody: more for the US, more for France, more for Belgium, more for Germany and more for Japan. In other words, you might get a case more than last year.</p> <p>Anyway...</p> <p>Muscadet-a-thon is a Louis/Dressner institution. Going 15 years strong, this annual visit to Marc Ollivier&#39;s abode has brought joy to those participating since its inception. The concept is simple: visit the vines, taste the current&nbsp;<span class="zalup"><span><glossary term="Vintage" title="1109">vintage</glossary><span>,</span></span></span> then eat a ton of oysters and home-made p&acirc;t&eacute; while doing a flight of P&eacute;pi&egrave;re <glossary term="Muscadet" title="697">Muscadet</glossary> dating back to Marc&#39;s first <glossary term="Vintage" title="1109">vintage</glossary> (1983). If you guys don&#39;t know the back story, Joe and Denyse met Marc in 1989, and the first <glossary term="Vintage" title="1109">vintage</glossary> they brought in was 1991; it was their first <glossary term="Loire Valley" title="602">Loire</glossary> wine. Joe adored Marc and adored <glossary term="Muscadet" title="697">Muscadet</glossary> (seriously, our <glossary term="Cellar" title="254">cellar</glossary> in France is 50% old P&eacute;pi&egrave;re and Luneau-Papin), a wine that he felt was often overlooked for how well it can age. Marc had an old collection of wine dating back to his grandfather, so the idea of trying back <glossary term="Vintage" title="1109">vintages</glossary> to prove <glossary term="Muscadet" title="697">Muscadet</glossary> ages gracefully was a no-brainer. Muscadet-a-thon was born.</p> <p>Our visit started in the vines. We began in the Clisson&nbsp;<span class="zalup"><span><glossary term="Parcel" title="760">parcels</glossary><span>,</span></span></span> where Marc talked about his <glossary term="Viticulture" title="1103">viticultural</glossary> practices. It&#39;s taken a long time, but the 33 <glossary term="Hectare" title="523">hectares</glossary> of vines are finally eligible for <glossary term="Organic" title="746">organic</glossary> <glossary term="Organic Certification" title="260">certification</glossary>; the soils are worked superficially and everything is&nbsp;<span class="zalup"><span><glossary term="Hand Harvesting" title="520">hand-harvested</glossary><span>.</span></span></span> <glossary term="Muscadet" title="697">Muscadet</glossary> is one of the only regions in France (along with the <glossary term="Beaujolais" title="151">Beaujolais</glossary>) where the vines are trained in&nbsp;<span class="zalup"><span><glossary term="Guyot" title="518">Guyot</glossary><span>,</span></span></span> but with only one <glossary term="Palissage" title="757">palissage</glossary> line per row. Typically, there are two, which permits the plant&#39;s vegetation to grow more, resulting in spaced out&nbsp;<span class="zalup"><span><glossary term="Cluster/Bunch" title="1138">bunches</glossary><span>.</span></span></span> Doing this leads to greater aeration of the grapes, which in turn leads to greater&nbsp;<span class="zalup"><span><glossary term="Concentration" title="324">concentration</glossary><span>.</span></span></span> Marc is one of few <glossary term="Vigneron/Vignaiolo" title="1089">vignerons</glossary> who intentionally chooses to use two <glossary term="Palissage" title="757">palissage</glossary> lines for these very reasons. Every time he acquires a new&nbsp;<span class="zalup"><span><glossary term="Parcel" title="760">parcel</glossary><span>,</span></span></span> he tears out each rows&#39; posts to reinstall new ones; it&#39;s a lot of effort, but he feels it&#39;s an essential factor in the quality of the vine work.</p> <p>Marc also intentionally limits the number of <glossary term="Flowering" title="1179">flowering</glossary> <glossary term="Bud" title="206">buds</glossary> each year to three or four per vine. This technique results in much lower&nbsp;<span class="zalup"><span><glossary term="Yield" title="1129">yields</glossary><span>,</span></span></span> which means fewer grapes but more <glossary term="Concentration" title="324">concentration</glossary> and optimal&nbsp;<span class="zalup"><span><glossary term="Maturation" title="639">maturity</glossary><span>.</span></span></span> Marc walked one row over to his neighbor&#39;s to count out how many <glossary term="Bud" title="206">buds</glossary> were left on his: 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8!</p> <p><em>&quot;I get about 40</em><glossary term="hl/ha" title="528"><em>hl/ha</em></glossary><em>&nbsp;from these vines. My neighbor here, whose vines are the same age and on an identical </em><glossary term="Terroir" title="1026"><em>terroir</em></glossary><em>, produces about 70.&quot;</em></p> <p>After Clisson, it was time to check out the Chateau-Th&eacute;baud vines. These were acquired in late 2010, when Marc joined forces with his (relatively) new partner, R&eacute;mi Branger. R&eacute;mi is 26 years old, and has been working for Marc since 2006; prior to that he&#39;d worked with his dad. In R&eacute;mi&#39;s own words:</p> <p><em>&quot;My father was a passionate </em><glossary term="Vigneron/Vignaiolo" title="1089"><em>vigneron</em></glossary><em>. He loved the work in the vines, but had no desire to deal with the commercial element of </em><glossary term="Bottling" title="185"><em>bottling</em></glossary><em> and selling independently. Therefore everything was sourced out to </em><glossary term="Négociant" title="729"><em>n&eacute;gociants</em></glossary><em>. When he retired in 2010, I was already working for Marc and really admired what he was doing (making </em><glossary term="Single Vineyard Bottling" title="959"><em>single parcel</em></glossary><em> </em><glossary term="Cuvée" title="363"><em>cuv&eacute;es</em></glossary><em>, highlighting specific </em><glossary term="Terroir" title="1026"><em>terroirs</em></glossary><em>...), so when he asked me if I wanted to be partners, I didn&#39;t hesitate.&quot;</em></p> <p>The two are currently renting the vines from R&eacute;mi&#39;s father, with the possibility to buy at some point. Most of the vines were planted in the 70&#39; by Mr. Branger Senior, and the oldest are about 60 years old. A new&nbsp;<span class="zalup"><span><glossary term="Cuvée" title="363">cuv&eacute;e</glossary><span>,</span></span></span> the &quot;Chateau-Th&eacute;baud&quot;, was produced in 2010 and is about to be released.</p> <p>Our last stop was in the <glossary term="Plot" title="1133">plot</glossary> of Gras Moutons. Marc and R&eacute;mi agree that these are their &quot;<glossary term="Grand Cru" title="501">grand cru</glossary>&quot; vines: they&#39;re <glossary term="Exposition" title="430">exposed</glossary> full South on a <glossary term="Coteau" title="345">coteau</glossary>&nbsp;(that ends by the <glossary term="Maine" title="620">Maine</glossary> river) and the site is marked by a particular <glossary term="Microclimate" title="656">micro-climate</glossary> where a North to South wind constantly sweeps through the vines. This leads to greater&nbsp;<span class="zalup"><span><glossary term="Concentration" title="324">concentration</glossary><span>,</span></span></span> which manifests itself through longer periods of&nbsp;<span class="zalup"><span><glossary term="Maturation" title="639">maturation</glossary><span>,</span></span></span> both in the vineyard and&nbsp;<span class="zalup"><span> <glossary term="Cellar" title="254">cellar</glossary><span>.</span></span></span> As R&eacute;mi explained:</p> <p><em>&quot;The wind is great for aerating the vines, and you always get great complexity with these grapes. But they take a long time to reach their full potential. Even with my father, we would always </em><glossary term="Harvest" title="521"><em>harvest</em></glossary><em> the grapes from here last. And though we didn&#39;t make </em><glossary term="Single Vineyard Bottling" title="959"><em>parcel specific</em></glossary><em> </em><glossary term="Cuvée" title="363"><em>cuv&eacute;es</em></glossary><em>, we would still </em><glossary term="Vinification" title="1104"><em>vinify</em></glossary><em> each day of the </em><glossary term="Harvest" title="521"><em>harvest</em></glossary><em> separately -which essentially meant </em><glossary term="Vinification" title="1104"><em>vinifying</em></glossary><em> by individual or identical </em><glossary term="Parcel" title="760"><em>parcels</em></glossary><em>- before </em><glossary term="Blending" title="1146"><em>blending</em></glossary><em> it all together. The Gras Mouton juice always needed more time.&quot;</em></p> <p>Marc interjected that &quot;more time&quot; can sometimes be up to two or three years of <glossary term="Aging" title="74">aging</glossary> in the <glossary term="Cellar" title="254">cellar</glossary> and then even longer in&nbsp;<span class="zalup"><span><glossary term="Bottling" title="185">bottling</glossary><span>!</span></span></span></p> <p>After the vines, it was time to taste the 2011&#39;s. For those who didn&#39;t read it yet, check out Eben Lillie&#39;s P&eacute;pi&egrave;re <glossary term="Harvest" title="521">harvest</glossary> reports and pictures. To briefly reiterate,&nbsp;<span class="zalup"><span><glossary term="Muscadet" title="697">Muscadet</glossary><span>,</span></span></span> like most of France, had a very strange <glossary term="Vintage" title="1109">vintage</glossary> weather wise: an extremely dry winter and spring led <glossary term="Vigneron/Vignaiolo" title="1089">vignerons</glossary> to believe they would be harvesting the most precocious <glossary term="Vintage" title="1109">vintage</glossary> of the last century, but a wet and cold summer slowed vegetation/<glossary term="Maturation" title="639">maturation</glossary> down. On average most people started harvesting a week earlier than usual, though many were initially planning to start up to three weeks early!</p> <p>For most, nature more or less balanced itself out, and teams of harvesters picked their hearts away in warm, sunny weather. <glossary term="Muscadet" title="697">Muscadet</glossary> was not so lucky... A lot of rain and cold right before <glossary term="Harvest" title="521">harvest</glossary> led to a tremendous amount of <glossary term="Grey Rot" title="182">gray rot</glossary> this year. Marc estimates that, depending on the&nbsp;<span class="zalup"><span><glossary term="Parcel" title="760">parcel</glossary><span>,</span></span></span> 75%% to 25% of the grapes were unusable; about 30% of their total production was lost. The <glossary term="Parcel" title="760">parcels</glossary> that were struck the hardest were the Briords vines; it sucks to say it, but there will be VERY LITTLE Briords in 2011.</p> <p>Marc used 2011 as a perfect example why <glossary term="Hand Harvesting" title="520">hand-harvesting</glossary> is so important:</p> <p><em>&quot;I literally had my team splitting hairs with the </em><glossary term="Cluster/Bunch" title="1138"><em>bunches</em></glossary><em>. If some of the </em><glossary term="Cluster/Bunch" title="1138"><em>clusters</em></glossary><em> were partly rotten but the rest was usable, be it a half or one fifth, they meticulously salvaged the quality grapes. I cringe at imagining what a </em><glossary term="Machine Harvesting" title="611"><em>machine harvested</em></glossary><em> </em><glossary term="Muscadet" title="697"><em>Muscadet</em></glossary><em> will taste like in 2011; if they had as much rot as me -and I know a lot did!- it all went into the production...&quot;</em></p> <p>The good news is that the grapes that DID make to the <glossary term="Cellar" title="254">cellar</glossary> were of excellent quality, and have produced a balanced and elegant&nbsp;<span class="zalup"><span><glossary term="Vintage" title="1109">vintage</glossary><span>.</span></span></span> As Marc pointed out, the wine&#39;s brine quality, notably absent in 2010, is back in full force. Alcohol is low, <glossary term="Acidity" title="71">acidity</glossary> is balanced and <glossary term="Minerality" title="662">minerality</glossary> is king. The first <glossary term="Bottling" title="185">bottling</glossary> of the base P&eacute;pi&egrave;re&#39; will be available very soon.</p> <p>It was then the moment we&#39;d all been waiting for: oysters, p&acirc;t&eacute; and old <span class="zalup"><span><glossary term="Muscadet" title="697">Muscadet</glossary><span>!</span></span></span> Much to my delight, there was NO pork at this meal. In fact there was even an abundance of vegetables (John Ritchie did a vegetarian victory dance)! But who cares about local, organic fresh produce? Let&#39;s talk about the meat! The oysters were from Brittany and delicious. There were three p&acirc;t&eacute;s to choose from, all hunted, butchered and made by Marc himself: pheasant, rabbit and woodcock! They were all delicious, but the woodcock once again reigned supreme. The secret? About 25% foie gras blended in. Genius!</p> <p>Funny anecdote about the Woodcock p&acirc;t&eacute;. Last year, Jason from Marlow and Sons was on the trip. When John Connelly, who was on the trip this year, asked him about it, about all the sights he&#39;d seen, the wines he&#39;d tasted, the people he&#39;d met, all Jason could talk about was the woodcock p&acirc;t&eacute;.</p> <p><em>&quot;He didn&#39;t mention anything else about the trip, not even the flight of back </em><glossary term="Vintage" title="1109"><em>vintages</em></glossary><em> that day. He was obsessed with that p&acirc;t&eacute; months after coming back.&quot;</em></p> <p>It was also John&#39;s favorite, and after a year of anticipation I&#39;m glad it lived up to his expectations. We also had a wild boar Shepard&#39;s pie which was off the chain. It continued the new trend of me eating wild board hunted by&nbsp;<span class="zalup"><span><glossary term="Vigneron/Vignaiolo" title="1089">vignerons</glossary><span>:</span></span></span> the night before Pierre-Marie Luneau served us a terrine made from a boar he&#39;d hunted and who could forget the Chingali stew prepared by Dora Forsoni last November! Ob&eacute;lix would be proud...</p> <p>Note to anglophone <glossary term="Vigneron/Vignaiolo" title="1089">vignerons</glossary> who read this blog: I&#39;m a fan of this trend and hope to keep it going.</p> <p>Let&#39;s talk about the back&nbsp;<span class="zalup"><span><glossary term="Vintage" title="1109">vintages</glossary><span>.</span></span></span> We tasted pretty much straight through 1985, and not one bottle was tired. Some, for example 95, were so fresh, vibrant and full of <glossary term="Acidity" title="71">acidity</glossary> that they tasted like a current release.&nbsp;Others, like 97, darkened in color and gained a richer texture. In some cases the <glossary term="Minerality" title="662">minerality</glossary> still ran the show, while others started expressing the fruit we all knew was buried somewhere in there. I insisted we open a 1986 (my birth year), and Marc pretty much said: &quot;Meh. It wasn&#39;t a great&nbsp;<span class="zalup"><span><glossary term="Vintage" title="1109">vintage</glossary><span>.</span></span></span>..&quot;</p> <p>But he found one and did it anyway. We all agreed that it wasn&#39;t the most interesting wine of the flight, but it was still in great shape. I think the best part of the 1986 vintage was that it featured an amazing &quot;Serve Fresh&quot; label which inspired a lot of bad 80&#39;s hip-hop jokes:</p> <p><img src="http://louisdressner.com/uploads/images/article/2020_Sep_23//b6/96/b69629ad5ee54ffbd75c70781ed87e1f.jpg" /></p> <p><img src="http://louisdressner.com/uploads/images/article/2020_Sep_23//3e/d4/3ed419b6f4818949ad72a2e92945b7ed.jpg" /><img src="http://louisdressner.com/uploads/images/article/2020_Sep_23//29/35/2935e0b209487a6bf40f2d36ccd10b29.jpg" /></p> <p>If I was more tech savvy I would have made an animated gif. out of that.</p> <p><u><strong>Day 10: End Game</strong></u></p> <p>Sunday was our &quot;optional&quot; visit to Closel that everyone was forced to attend. The snow from the last few days had settled, and our walk took us from the <glossary term="Château" title="292">ch&acirc;teau</glossary> to the vines and through the village. <glossary term="Savennières" title="930">Savenni&egrave;res</glossary> is a truly charming place, and I really wish I had pictures from that day because it was one of those visits meant more to capture a sense of place rather than absorbing factoids to write for the blog. One cool thing I did retain was Evelyne talking to the group about their future experiments with (less)&nbsp;<span class="zalup"><span><glossary term="Sulfites" title="993">sulfur</glossary><span>.</span></span></span> The inspiration came from her fellow <glossary term="Vigneron/Vignaiolo" title="1089">vignerons</glossary> in <glossary term="Savennières" title="930">Savenni&egrave;res</glossary> (Evelyne is the president of the <glossary term="AOC" title="108">AOC</glossary>), a majority of which work <glossary term="Organic" title="746">organically</glossary> or <glossary term="Biodynamic" title="160">biodynamically</glossary> in the vines and with <glossary term="Native Yeast" title="538">native yeasts</glossary>/low <glossary term="Sulfites" title="993">sulfur</glossary> in the&nbsp;<span class="zalup"><span> <glossary term="Cellar" title="254">cellar</glossary><span>.</span></span></span> After tasting many of these low <glossary term="Sulfites" title="993">sulfur</glossary> wines and seeing that they don&#39;t fall apart and can age well, Evelyne is reevaluating the doses she uses and plans to run a number of experiments to figure out how to use the least amount possible in her wine. At lunch, Denyse pointed out that since Evelyne took over in 2000, their has been a formidable change in the work both in the vines and in the winery; she is the one who pushed for <glossary term="Organic" title="746">organic</glossary> <glossary term="Organic Certification" title="260">certification</glossary> and <glossary term="Biodynamic" title="160">biodynamic</glossary> practices (though the work had always more or less <glossary term="Organic" title="746">organic</glossary> in the past), and that <glossary term="Sulfites" title="993">sulfur</glossary> levels have been drastically reduced in the last decade. It&#39;s great to know Evelyne is committed to an evolution in her <glossary term="Cellar" title="254">cellar</glossary> practices and I hope the experiments turn out well!</p> <p>After the visit we hung out at this terrible place called &quot;Le Pub&quot; in <glossary term="Angers" title="104">Angers</glossary> and had dinner at Autour d&#39;un Cep, a fabulous restaurant ran by Jo Landron&#39;s son. When we got there, guess who was having dinner? Jo Landron! Duh! Fran&ccedil;ois Cazin was also there. They sat our group of 16 in &quot;the annex&quot;. &quot;The annex&quot; is the unused storefront next to the restaurant; they&#39;d asked the owner if they could use it as a pop up with a prix-fixe for <glossary term="Renaissance des Appellations" title="1399">Renaissance</glossary>/<glossary term="Dive Bouteille" title="395">Dive</glossary> and&nbsp;<span class="zalup"><span><glossary term="Salon des Vins de la Loire" title="904">Salons des Vins de Loire</glossary><span>.</span></span></span> We were basically eating in a bare room that was still getting remodeled: their were power tools everywhere, a boombox (<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dLhFDYQHDQY&amp;ob=av2e">this song played at one point</a>) and the waiters had to bring the food from the kitchen through the back yard in the cold winter night. It was a lot of fun.</p> <p>The next morning we were ready for the&nbsp;<span class="zalup"><span><glossary term="Salon des Vins de la Loire" title="904">Salons des Vins de la Loire</glossary><span>.</span></span></span> Because many of the <glossary term="Vigneron/Vignaiolo" title="1089">vignerons</glossary> we work with prefer doing&nbsp;<span class="zalup"><span><glossary term="Renaissance des Appellations" title="1399">Renaissance</glossary><span>,</span></span></span> the <glossary term="Dive Bouteille" title="395">Dive</glossary> or Mill&eacute;sime Bio (which took place two weeks earlier in <glossary term="Montpellier" title="675">Montpellier</glossary>), over the years the <glossary term="Salon des Vins de la Loire" title="904">Salon</glossary> has become less and less of a focal point for us. Still, it&#39;s a great time to catch up with a lot of our growers we can&#39;t see anywhere else.</p> <p>Our first stop was at Thomas-Labaille. The 2010&#39;s are serious! Jean-Paul describes it as a great <glossary term="Vintage" title="1109">vintage</glossary> you can drink young, but that will truly benefit from <glossary term="Cellar" title="254">cellar</glossary> time. The 2011 <glossary term="Tank Sample" title="1008">tank samples</glossary> were rounder and richer, with less <glossary term="Acidity" title="71">acidity</glossary> and more fruit showing. Different&nbsp;<span class="zalup"><span><glossary term="Vintage" title="1109">vintage</glossary><span>,</span></span></span> different style. From then on, we broke into small groups so that we could cover more ground. I was assigned the kid&#39;s group (meaning late 20&#39;s/early 30&#39;s).</p> <p>Our first stop was at Fran&ccedil;ois Pinon. The 2010&#39;s were showing great. One big piece of news: as of 2010 the <glossary term="Cuvée" title="363">cuv&eacute;e</glossary> you know and love as &quot;Tradition&quot; is now &quot;Trois Argiles&quot;. This translates to &quot;the three <glossary term="Clay" title="301">clays</glossary>&quot; (the grapes come from three different <glossary term="Parcel" title="760">parcels</glossary> composed of, you guessed it...) and this has always been the name in France.</p> <p>Our next stop was at Domaine Olga Raffault. Eric told us about their 2011, which echoed the story we&#39;d heard over and over in France. He only had a few 2011 samples to taste, which all seemed well on their way. The 2010 current releases were fresh and vibrant, quite playful and fruity but still very &quot;<glossary term="Chinon" title="288">Chinon</glossary>&quot; aka peppery and&nbsp;<span class="zalup"><span><glossary term="Tannin" title="1010">tannic</glossary><span>.</span></span></span> A few months in bottle will do them good.</p> <p>After that we spent some time with Bernard and Matthieu Baudry. It&#39;s starting to sound redundant, but the 2010&#39;s were incredible; they were universally recognized by the group as some of the best wines we&#39;d tasted the whole trip. Besides &quot;Les Granges&quot; which is already available, these were all <glossary term="Bottling" title="185">bottled</glossary> the Friday before the show and will be hitting the U.S very soon. Rejoice! 2011 was also very promising: a little more on the fruit... The 2011 ros&eacute; is super good.</p> <p>At this point it was lunch time, and after some pork and butter sandwiches, we decided to refuel with the ultimate palate cleanser: a coffee and beer. This strategy was taught to me by the very wise Jake Halper during last year&#39;s trip, and just like P.Diddy and Proactiv, Jake knew the secret way before any of us young ones. It totally works by the way.</p> <p>During our break, someone stumbled on a wine called OVERDOSE in the official pamphlet. The description said: &quot;the secret of its <glossary term="Vinification" title="1104">vinification</glossary> leads to an overdose in pleasure.&quot; Everyone got really into it: some wanted to go try it then make believe they were having a drug overdose on it (in poor taste I know), while others like myself were perplexed about the &quot;secret of its <glossary term="Vinification" title="1104">vinification</glossary>&quot;. We all agreed the we had to check it out. This proved to be the single worst idea on the trip.</p> <p>We got to the stand and asked if we could try the &quot;O&quot; cuv&eacute;e. Before even tasting it, I asked what the secret of its <glossary term="Vinification" title="1104">vinification</glossary> was. I didn&#39;t ask if it would lead to an overdose of pleasure.</p> <p><em>&quot;Ah, yes! The secret is that we age the wine in </em><glossary term="New Oak" title="717"><em>new American oak barrels</em></glossary><em> for two years! And just like in old times, we bury the </em><glossary term="Barrel" title="142"><em>barrel</em></glossary><em> deep underground in the soil.&quot;</em></p> <p>At this point, I asked if by &quot;old times&quot; she meant with&nbsp;<span class="zalup"><span><glossary term="Amphora" title="103">amphora</glossary><span>,</span></span></span> since there is no history of burying <glossary term="Oak" title="731">oak</glossary> <glossary term="Barrel" title="142">barrels</glossary> underground for <glossary term="Aging" title="74">aging</glossary> EVER. She seemed a little confused by the question, but answered with an enthusiastic yes! When I told Evelyne de Jessey and Eric Nicolas about it, she asked what the purpose of doing this was. Nicolas exclaimed:</p> <p><em>&quot;More work. First you have to bury it. Then you have to unbury it!&quot;</em></p> <p>The wine was the color of shitty American beer, tasted like an <glossary term="Oak" title="731">oak</glossary> <glossary term="Barrel" title="142">barrel</glossary> and was marked by the other <glossary term="Vinification" title="1104">vinification</glossary> secrets she failed to mention, namely the <glossary term="Commercial Yeast" title="321">commercial yeasts</glossary> and INSANE quantities of&nbsp;<span class="zalup"><span><glossary term="Sulfites" title="993">sulfur</glossary><span>.</span></span></span> By the time we&#39;d walked over to Bellivi&egrave;re to taste, we had gotten what we&#39;d asked for&nbsp;and were all overdosing. Ken and I started having hot flashes, John Connelly got the spins and Jamie thought he was going to faint. Everyone was feeling it hard, and it took between 15 and 30 minutes for each of us to feel better.</p> <p>A big part of how we bounced back from our malaise was by tasting with Christine and Eric Nicolas of Bellivi&egrave;re. The 2011&#39;s are all <glossary term="Bone-Dry" title="176">bone-dry</glossary> this year, which is exceptionally rare for them (read Eric&#39;s harvest report here). While I love the <glossary term="Residual Sugar" title="853">RS</glossary> on Bellivi&egrave;re, it was interesting to see this alternate path. Also, the &quot;Rouge Gorge&quot; was my favorite red wine of the trip.</p> <p>Our last stop was Fredrick Filliatreau. Once again the 2010&#39;s were showing really well and the 2011 <glossary term="Tank Sample" title="1008">tank samples</glossary> offered something to look forward to. The really exciting discovery this year was Fredrick&#39;s first ever attempt at making&nbsp;<span class="zalup"><span><glossary term="Pétillant Naturel" title="778">p&eacute;tillant naturel</glossary><span>.</span></span></span> That&#39;s right, everyone&#39;s making a <glossary term="Pétillant Naturel" title="778">p&eacute;tillant naturel</glossary> these days, and I couldn&#39;t be happier. Long live Pet&#39; Nat&#39;! The yet to be named <glossary term="Cuvée" title="363">cuv&eacute;e</glossary> is made with <glossary term="Cabernet Franc" title="216">Cabernet Franc</glossary> from young Chateau Fouquet vines, and man oh man is it delicious. Fresh, fruity, light, easy... Everything you&#39;d want for an&nbsp;<span class="zalup"><span><glossary term="Aperitif" title="112">aperitif</glossary><span>.</span></span></span> This will definitely be making it&#39;s way Stateside, so keep an eye out.</p> <p>That was our trip. That night we had dinner at Une &Icirc;le in <glossary term="Angers" title="104">Angers</glossary> and G&eacute;rard made the best Beurre Blanc sauce ever. We went to Paris the next night and John Connelly bought cheeseburger chips, which taste EXACTLY like Mcdonalds cheeseburgers. We had another great dinner at Jeu de Quilles. It was a snowy, beautiful (albeit freezing) night, and we finished strong on this trashy strip right by the hotel. It was&nbsp;full of weird, tourist trap, &quot;gimmick&quot; bars. The one we chose was&nbsp;Rolling Stones themed. Josefa got really into this one track (forgot the name) and some dude actually came up to and seriously asked her who was singing the song. It was one of their lesser known tracks, but come on dude! We then had a mini showdown for who could do the best Mick Jagger dance.</p> <p><iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="360" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/SGyOaCXr8Lw" width="640"></iframe></p>

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<p><em><strong>Re-reading this, I disagree with a lot of what I wrote and some of it is just flat out wrong. I think it comes from an attempt to understand Italian wine better; my French lense is very obvious in the writing. But there are also a lot of valid, good points I still agree with. And it was&nbsp;written from the heart of a 25 year old who&#39;d just lost his father and who was figuring out he really wanted to do this wine thing. It was also the epilogue to the totally improvised decision to write visit recaps of our trip, often the same night of the visit. This choice would truly shape the written content throughout the 2010&#39;s to this day.&nbsp;</strong></em></p> <p>It&#39; s been a week since I got back from Italy, and I think I know why I was having a hard time writing this until today. Recapping each day as it happened helped capture our experience.&nbsp;But sitting back to write my global impression of the trip, I needed a week for everything to sink in. I needed to think about it.</p> <p>This trip featured two types of distinct experiences for me: the first being&nbsp;in the thick of things, living in the&nbsp;moment. I believe I&#39;ve captured this in all nine&nbsp;parts of The Italy Chronicles (<strong>ed note:</strong> these have now become visit recaps and were the first of their kind writen for the website). The other is invariably attached to the former, but extends past the moment to shape both present and future perceptions; these are the observations (and that&#39;s all they are) I hope to deliver in this epilogue.</p> <p>First of all, everyone we work with in Italy loves French wine. Angiolino Maule has three rows of <glossary term="Chenin Blanc" title="281">Chenin Blanc</glossary> planted somewhere in his vineyard, and when his son Francesco told me that they had sold three palettes to France this year, he felt it was &quot;an honor.&quot;. I must have drank Francis Boulard at least five&nbsp;times as an&nbsp;<span class="zalup"><span><glossary term="Aperitif" title="112">aperitif</glossary><span>.</span></span></span> Elisabetta Foradori claims that drinking <glossary term="Beaujolais" title="151">Beaujolais</glossary> influenced her to make softer, less <glossary term="Tannin" title="1010">tannic</glossary> wines herself. Gian Marco Antunuzi of Le Coste spent almost a decade working with French <glossary term="Vigneron/Vignaiolo" title="1089">vignerons</glossary> and more or less said: &quot;Almost all Italian wine sucks&quot;.</p> <p>Does Italian wine suck? Is French wine better? The answer to both these questions is obviously no. But in the context of <glossary term="Natural WIne" title="708">natural winemaking</glossary> in Italy, it makes sense that so many of our growers are looking and finding inspiration in France. This inspiration is multi-layered, but essentially boils down to this: effectively mastering your <glossary term="Terroir" title="1026">terroir</glossary> to best express it.</p> <p>Does France have better&nbsp;<span class="zalup"><span><glossary term="Terroir" title="1026">terroir</glossary><span>?</span></span></span> Do the French take <glossary term="Terroir" title="1026">terroir</glossary> more seriously? Again no, but we must remember that the concept of&nbsp;French wine having a &quot;sense of place&quot; has existed longer than in Italy, at least in the post <glossary term="Phylloxera" title="788">phylloxera</glossary> landscape of European&nbsp;<span class="zalup"><span><glossary term="Viticulture" title="1103">viticulture</glossary><span>.</span></span></span> Unlike Italy, where every day I discover five new grape varieties, France -who used to have thousands- began replanting&nbsp;<span class="zalup"><span><glossary term="Noble Grapes" title="720">noble grapes</glossary><span>.</span></span></span>.. Less grapes meant wines had&nbsp;to distinguish themselves by <glossary term="Terroir" title="1026">terroir</glossary> rather than&nbsp;<span class="zalup"><span><glossary term="Varietal" title="1071">varietal</glossary><span>.</span></span></span> The <glossary term="AOC" title="108">AOC</glossary> system was put in place in 1925 while <glossary term="DOC" title="1156">DOC</glossary>&#39;s first appeared in 1963. All this to say that Italy&#39;s potential for quality is exactly the same, but the cultural approach to making wine isn&#39;t as focused on sense of place. Yet.</p> <p>This is also NOT to say that Italians are trying to make French wine. Quite the contrary; in our visit to her&nbsp;<span class="zalup"><span><glossary term="Cellar" title="254">cellar</glossary><span>,</span></span></span> Elisabetta told us how she tried making a <glossary term="Semi-Carbonic Maceration" title="942">semi-carbonic</glossary> <glossary term="Teroldego" title="1020">Teroldego</glossary> last year that was &quot;undrinkable&quot; and &quot;disgusting&quot;. It was a fun experiment, but it ruined the wine&#39;s territorial qualities by tasting forced and unnatural. To make <glossary term="Teroldego" title="1020">Teroldego</glossary> from <glossary term="Alluvial" title="93">alluvial</glossary> soils in the&nbsp;<span class="zalup"><span><glossary term="Dolomites" title="399">Dolomites</glossary><span>,</span></span></span> she had to find her own way to work harmoniously with nature. This means going further than not using <glossary term="Chemicals" title="279">chemicals</glossary> in the vineyards and in the&nbsp;<span class="zalup"><span><glossary term="Cellar" title="254">cellar</glossary><span>,</span></span></span> but to humbly acknowledge that nature will always be more powerful than you are&nbsp;and that uniforming it will never work.</p> <p>Unlike France, for almost everyone we work with in Italy, this is the first generation who has philosophically decided they want to work this way. So it makes sense that they&#39;d turn to a more experienced France for help. And it also makes sense that this generation would be a more forward thinking bunch than their Northern neighbors...</p> <p>It&#39;s a sign of the times. While many <glossary term="Vigneron/Vignaiolo" title="1089">vignerons</glossary> still lean on tradition, experience and quality in France, their has been a recent reversal in trends, where a majority of the country&#39;s third (and VERY young) generation of <glossary term="Natural WIne" title="708">natural winemakers</glossary> are so focused on how their wine is made that they are forgetting to care about how it tastes.&nbsp;<span class="zalup"><span><glossary term="Native Yeast" title="538">Native yeasts</glossary><span>,</span></span></span> <glossary term="Organic" title="746">organic</glossary> <glossary term="Agriculture" title="78">agriculture</glossary> with no additives or <glossary term="Sulfites" title="993">sulfur</glossary> is great. As long as the wine doesn&#39;t taste like&nbsp;<span class="zalup"><span> <glossary term="Volatile Acidity" title="1116">volatile acidity</glossary><span>,</span></span></span>&nbsp;<span class="zalup"><span><glossary term="Brettanomyces" title="195">brett</glossary><span>,</span></span></span> unintentional <glossary term="Oxidation" title="754">oxidation</glossary> and&nbsp;<span class="zalup"><span><glossary term="Secondary Fermentation" title="938">referementation</glossary><span>.</span></span></span></p> <p>The big trick to avoid or cover up these flaws is to make every wine <glossary term="Carbonic Maceration" title="236">carbonic</glossary>; so you are either left with <glossary term="Glou-Glou" title="495">glou-glou</glossary> wines that could be made from anywhere and from any grape or you have wines that all have the same flaws. These wines may all be&nbsp;<span class="zalup"><span> <glossary term="Natural WIne" title="708">natural</glossary><span>,</span></span></span> but they also all taste the same (which is often fucked up). This is not what we are looking for as importers; to me it&#39;s just as bad as the <glossary term="Spoof" title="977">spoof</glossary> that Joe, Denyse and Kevin have dedicated the last two decades sifting through to find the wines we now all know and love.</p> <p>All this <glossary term="Natural WIne" title="708">natural</glossary> stuff: it&#39;s great for the environment, it&#39;s healthier for consumption and it takes a very strong stand against&nbsp;<span class="zalup"><span><glossary term="Industrial Agriculture" title="539">agricultural industrialization</glossary><span>.</span></span></span> But let&#39;s not forget that the good ones taste great! They taste great because they are unique, and they are unique because of where they come from. You&#39;re not tasting <glossary term="Organic" title="746">organic</glossary> <glossary term="Agriculture" title="78">agriculture</glossary> and <glossary term="Native Yeast" title="538">native yeast</glossary> <glossary term="Fermentation" title="441">fermentation</glossary> when you drink; those are means to and end, a work ethic that best expresses where a wine comes from. These are wines of&nbsp;<span class="zalup"><span><glossary term="Terroir" title="1026">terroir</glossary><span>!</span></span></span> And Italy does not take its&nbsp;<glossary term="Terroir" title="1026">terroir</glossary> for granted.</p> <p>My impression was that Italy&#39;s approach to these wines is just as rooted in tradition as France, but with a more progressive attitude towards smarter, better work. This is not to knock the French: things guys like Eric Texier and Didier Barrouillet are doing with science, what Alexandre Bain is doing with <glossary term="Biodynamic" title="160">biodynamics</glossary> or what Michel Aug&eacute; is doing with(out) <glossary term="Sulfites" title="993">sulfur</glossary> is great, great stuff that confirms why France remains the &quot;capitol&quot; of&nbsp;<span class="zalup"><span><glossary term="Natural WIne" title="708">natural wine</glossary><span>.</span></span></span></p> <p>And just like France, where <glossary term="Vigneron/Vignaiolo" title="1089">vignerons</glossary> started making <glossary term="Natural WIne" title="708">natural wine</glossary> in the early 80&#39;s to maintain a tradition that they believed best expressed their <glossary term="Terroir" title="1026">terroir</glossary> (thanks to generations of know how)&nbsp;all while&nbsp;giving&nbsp;a big fuck you to&nbsp;<span class="zalup"><span><glossary term="Industrial Wine" title="540">industrialization</glossary><span>,</span></span></span> this first generation of Italians have stopped and asked themselves &quot;Why has it always been done this way?&quot; and &quot;Why does it make the wines taste better?&quot;. But unlike France, where&nbsp;in some cases -and mostly from this current generation- people tend take their <glossary term="Terroir" title="1026">terroir</glossary> for granted, the Italians we visited seem to be all asking themselves: &quot;This is great&nbsp;<span class="zalup"><span><glossary term="Terroir" title="1026">terroir</glossary><span>.</span></span></span> What can I do to make it even better?&quot;</p> <p>Most of our growers are learning as they go along, by using methods linked to a rich past of tradition and know-how, but also by constantly reevaluating their work through personal, scientific experimentation and research; they respect tradition but don&#39;t fear moving forward by creating new ones, as long as the work is natural and the wine is good. <glossary term="Vigneron/Vignaiolo" title="1089">Vigniaoli</glossary> working this way are fewer than in France, but their dedication and passion to working as naturally as possible, both in an environmental and qualitative context, is very impressive.</p> <p>Changing to better suited vine-tending methods (Maule, Foradori, Montescondo, Le Coste), associations like <glossary term="Vinnatur" title="1106">Vinnatur</glossary> who fund soil research in hopes of ridding it of <glossary term="Mildew" title="1137">mildew</glossary> and&nbsp;<span class="zalup"><span><glossary term="Oidium" title="737">oidium</glossary><span>,</span></span></span> harvesting at optimal <glossary term="Maturation" title="639">maturity</glossary> (i.e earlier), experimenting with various methods of fermentation and <glossary term="Aging" title="74">aging</glossary> in the&nbsp;<span class="zalup"><span><glossary term="Cellar" title="254">cellar</glossary><span>,</span></span></span> <glossary term="Vinification" title="1104">vinifying</glossary> and <glossary term="Blending" title="1146">blending</glossary> different grapes in ways they never have been, not using any&nbsp;<span class="zalup"><span><glossary term="Sulfites" title="993">sulfur</glossary><span>:</span></span></span> none of this is very traditional, but all of this leading to clean, natural and unique wines of <glossary term="Terroir" title="1026">terroir</glossary> that wouldn&#39;t exist if these efforts weren&#39;t made.</p> <p>For example, for years Elisabetta Foradori wanted to make a lighter, brighter wine from&nbsp;<span class="zalup"><span><glossary term="Teroldego" title="1020">Teroldego</glossary><span>,</span></span></span> a typically fuller and more <glossary term="Tannin" title="1010">tannic</glossary> grape. She tried a&nbsp;<span class="zalup"><span><glossary term="Semi-Carbonic Maceration" title="942">semi-carbonic maceration</glossary><span>,</span></span></span> but that didn&#39;t work. She easily could have <glossary term="Harvest" title="521">harvested</glossary> earlier (lower % potential), <glossary term="Maceration" title="610">macerated</glossary> the wines less or even have added water. Instead, she began using <glossary term="Clay" title="301">clay</glossary> <span class="zalup"><span><glossary term="Amphora" title="103">amphora</glossary><span>.</span></span></span> Yes, one could argue that <glossary term="Amphora" title="103">amphora</glossary> wine is the original and most traditional way of making wine, but this predates it being made in Elisabetta&#39;s region. So instead of using <glossary term="Oak" title="731">oak</glossary> (which can only draw out more <glossary term="Tannin" title="1010">tannic</glossary> structure from the <glossary term="Wood" title="1126">wood</glossary>) or settle with the neutrality of&nbsp;<span class="zalup"><span><glossary term="Concrete" title="325">concrete</glossary><span>,</span></span></span> she decided to try&nbsp;<span class="zalup"><span><glossary term="Amphora" title="103">amphora</glossary><span>,</span></span></span> which adds freshness, brightness and lightens the wine&#39;s body. It&#39;s why so those wines taste so good, and it&#39;s why she has decided to make all her whites in <glossary term="Amphora" title="103">amphora</glossary> as of 2011.</p> <p>Maybe in 100 years, this will be the traditional way of <glossary term="Vinification" title="1104">vinifying</glossary> in the Dolomites. Maybe in 50 years, that &quot;<glossary term="Old Vines" title="740">old vine</glossary>&quot; <glossary term="Sangiovese" title="911">Sangiovese</glossary> planted in <glossary term="Gobelet" title="497">alberello</glossary> by Silvio Messana will yield the best fruit in&nbsp;<span class="zalup"><span><glossary term="Chianti" title="285">Chianti</glossary><span>.</span></span></span> Maybe in 10 years <glossary term="Vinnatur" title="1106">Vinnatur</glossary> will have discovered what causes <glossary term="Mildew" title="1137">mildew</glossary> and eliminated it, thus rendering <glossary term="Copper" title="333">copper</glossary> and <glossary term="Sulfites" title="993">sulfur</glossary> <glossary term="Contact Treatment" title="328">treatments</glossary> in the vines obsolete. Maybe next year, one of our completely <glossary term="Sulfites" title="993">sulfur</glossary> free producers will have mastered it.</p> <p>I don&#39;t know if any of that will happen. But I do know that none of it could happen at all if it wasn&#39;t for the people we visited, not just this trip but those we have been working with for the last 23 years. So much has happened with European wine in the last 30 years, but 30 years is nothing! It took 30 years for <glossary term="Industrial Agriculture" title="539">chemical viticulture </glossary>and the complete industrialization of winemaking to turn its back on a millenia of work and tradition. It also took 30 years for people to take a stand against this, a stand we are proudly committed to. We are at a point in time where more and more people also taking this stand by making these wines, as is the consumer by drinking it. It&#39;s in everyone&#39;s best interest that we keep this going.</p> <p>We must always respect nature. If nature has proved us one thing, one &quot;tradition&quot;, it&#39;s that you work with it and not the other way around. Every time we goes against nature, we lose.</p> <p>Yet&nbsp;nature isn&#39;t trying to be our enemy. It&#39;s not trying to hide anything from us or play games: it&#39;s all right there, in our faces everyday. If you respect it, work with it, understand it and love it, nature will give you everything you need.</p> <p>And some pretty fucking good wine too.</p>

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<p><img src="http://louisdressner.com/uploads/images/article/2020_Sep_21//26/bc/26bc58231c88576522a7cdcecf688d93.jpg" /></p> <p>How do some old favorites hold up? Let&#39;s find out!</p> <p><strong><u>Jacques Puffeney &quot;Vin Jaune&quot; 1998:</u></strong></p> <p><img src="http://louisdressner.com/uploads/images/article/2020_Sep_21//7e/ea/7eea921842d7450f7a5e4bbe4c6fbb41.jpg" /></p> <p>This was opened at least two years ago, and was tucked back in the corner of the kitchen. Only a glass was left. I remember it being delicious two years ago, but it was overly oxidized and not showing great.</p> <p><u><strong>Pouchoullin &quot;Br&eacute;z&egrave;me Rouge&quot; 1997:</strong></u></p> <p><img src="http://louisdressner.com/uploads/images/article/2020_Sep_21//77/d8/77d840c606e38f5e02cfef38f0f447d9.jpg" /></p> <p>For those who aren&#39;t Eric Texier historians, Mr Pouchoulin was his inspiration for reviving the completely forgotten region of&nbsp;<span class="zalup"><span><glossary term="Brézème" title="204">Br&eacute;z&egrave;me</glossary><span>.</span></span></span> Mr. Pouchoulin was a factory worker, but had always kept a&nbsp;<glossary term="Hectare" title="523">hectare</glossary> of red and a little of bit of <glossary term="Roussanne" title="878">Roussanne</glossary> that he <glossary term="Vinification" title="1104">vinified</glossary> traditionally himself. Eric somehow discovered him, was mesmerized by the wines and place and decided he had to work there.<br /> <br /> A slightly dusty and musky nose at first, followed by pepper spice and balance on nose. Translucent but developed color. Medium body, nice <glossary term="Acidity" title="71">acidity</glossary> that lasts on finish. Pepper on mid<span class="zalup"><span><span>-</span>&nbsp;<span class="zalup"><span><glossary term="Palate" title="756">palate</glossary><span>.</span></span></span></span></span> Overall a fantastic bottle that kept getting better. Decanted an hour and half before drinking.</p> <p><u><strong>Franck Peillot Roussette du Bugey &quot;Altesse&quot; 2001:</strong></u></p> <p><img src="http://louisdressner.com/uploads/images/article/2020_Sep_21//bf/45/bf45e893bf5af5ec4427cbd6be401824.jpg" /></p> <p>Golden, advanced color without notes of obvious&nbsp;<span class="zalup"><span> <glossary term="Oxidation" title="754">oxidation</glossary><span>.</span></span></span> Petrol on nose, which apparently Franck doesn&#39;t like but I found nice. Also Peach pit (God I hate writing about wine like this..). Rich, round body, slight petrol on mid<span class="zalup"><span><span>-</span>&nbsp;<span class="zalup"><span><glossary term="Palate" title="756">palate</glossary><span>,</span></span></span></span></span> great <glossary term="Acidity" title="71">acidity</glossary> and long, long&nbsp;<span class="zalup"><span><glossary term="Finish" title="450">finish</glossary><span>.</span></span></span> Another winner.</p> <p><u><strong>Clos de la Roilette &quot;Cuv&eacute;e Tardive&quot;&nbsp;2004:</strong></u></p> <p><img src="http://louisdressner.com/uploads/images/article/2020_Sep_21//92/0a/920ae87f50da232b27f351cd996c2451.jpg" /></p> <p>Bottle was a &quot;Tardive&quot; even though the label doesn&#39;t mention it. This was pretty closed off when Alain opened it in his&nbsp;<span class="zalup"><span><glossary term="Cellar" title="254">cellar</glossary><span>,</span></span></span> but got real good quick. The Roilette wines get a little dusty with age, particularly on the nose, but once the fruit came out it was unstoppable. Brownish color:</p> <p><img src="http://louisdressner.com/uploads/images/article/2020_Sep_21//29/39/2939f8aa1feb97da440603d182beceef.jpg" /></p> <p>Total &quot;pinotisation&quot;. Yum.</p>

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<p><u><strong>Agn&egrave;s et Ren&eacute; Mosse &quot;Anjou Rouge&quot; 2000:</strong></u></p> <p><img src="http://louisdressner.com/uploads/images/article/2020_Sep_21//f3/5b/f35be31b2212662a92dbf304bce7ba28.jpg" /></p> <p>Check those old&nbsp;<span class="zalup"><span><glossary term="Wine Label" title="573">labels</glossary><span>!</span></span></span> Upon opening, a bit of a metallic nose but great, dusty fruit that made me feel the <glossary term="Blend" title="168">blend</glossary> was more <glossary term="Cabernet Franc" title="216">Cabernet Franc</glossary> heavy. The finish was rather short and the wine was not too&nbsp;<span class="zalup"><span><glossary term="Tannin" title="1010">tannic</glossary><span>.</span></span></span> Quite nice.</p> <p><u><strong>Luneau-Papin &quot;le L D&#39;Or&quot; 1998:</strong></u></p> <p><img src="http://louisdressner.com/uploads/images/article/2020_Sep_21//ba/66/ba66133daac38e4e48754afebe86cc42.jpg" /></p> <p>I didn&#39;t find my notes for this but we finished it at lunch and I remember it being fresh and good.</p> <p><u><strong>Fran&ccedil;ois Pinon &quot;Cuv&eacute;e Tradition&quot; 1998:</strong></u></p> <p><img src="http://louisdressner.com/uploads/images/article/2020_Sep_21//2a/97/2a9731f9c1382af05254f226be0bd047.jpg" /></p> <p>This was before Fran&ccedil;ois started making the &quot;Trois Argiles&quot; and &quot;Silex Noir&quot;&nbsp;<span class="zalup"><span><glossary term="Cuvée" title="363">cuv&eacute;es</glossary><span>,</span></span></span> so the wine is a <glossary term="Blend" title="168">blend</glossary> of both&nbsp;<span class="zalup"><span><glossary term="Terroir" title="1026">terroirs</glossary><span>.</span></span></span> Youthful color, good structure, a hint of sugar and distinct <glossary term="Chenin Blanc" title="281">Chenin</glossary> fruit. Drinking well.</p> <p><u><strong>Claude et Catherine Mar&eacute;chal &quot;Chorey-les-Beaunes&quot; 1999:</strong></u></p> <p><img src="http://louisdressner.com/uploads/images/article/2020_Sep_21//4e/9d/4e9db2d00563211ebca21fae623089f1.jpg" /></p> <p>Tasting stunningly young. Light body and captivating fruit; I would DARE to call it&nbsp;<span class="zalup"><span><glossary term="Glou-Glou" title="495">glou-glou</glossary><span>.</span></span></span> Light&nbsp;<span class="zalup"><span><glossary term="Tannin" title="1010">tannins</glossary><span>,</span></span></span> balanced&nbsp;<span class="zalup"><span><glossary term="Acidity" title="71">acidity</glossary><span>.</span></span></span></p> <p><u><strong>Bernard B</strong><strong>audry &quot;Les Gr&eacute;zeaux&quot; 2005:</strong></u></p> <p><img src="http://louisdressner.com/uploads/images/article/2020_Sep_21//2c/84/2c84bdbf0d90985f14a5d8a6b84e8a55.jpg" /></p> <p>A lot of the people at the table thought the wine was &quot;hard&quot;, but I really liked it. 2005 was a very hot, solar&nbsp;<span class="zalup"><span><glossary term="Vintage" title="1109">vintage</glossary><span>.</span></span></span> The wine certainly wasn&#39;t fruity, though I liked its rustic charm and&nbsp;<span class="zalup"><span><glossary term="Structure" title="990">structure</glossary><span>.</span></span></span> The green pepper became more pronounced halfway through the bottle. Personally I think the wine needs more time to age.<br /> <br /> Also, here&#39;s a picture of a comically large Saint-Nectaire we enjoyed at the lunch with the Baudry.</p> <p><img src="http://louisdressner.com/uploads/images/article/2020_Sep_21//bf/b9/bfb98304166cac270f398cb293faa654.jpg" /></p> <p>The 97 P&eacute;pi&egrave;re in the back was&nbsp;<span class="zalup"><span><glossary term="Cork Taint" title="337">corked</glossary><span>.</span></span></span>..</p>

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<p><img src="http://louisdressner.com/uploads/images/article/2020_Sep_24//cb/b1/cbb1ef2c8d8df9bcf13c86a6c7a76995.jpeg" /></p> <p>Everyone knows it&#39;s a young wine market out there; when you go to a retailer or a restaurant, it&#39;s highly unlikely they&#39;ll have anything but current releases. There are many reasons for this: cooking styles have changed, a taste for lighter, easier wines has started to win a lot of people over and many restaurants/customers simply don&#39;t have the space, time, patience or money&nbsp;to store and save bottles to&nbsp;<span class="zalup"><span><glossary term="Aging" title="74">age</glossary><span>.</span></span></span></p> <p>At our official Louis/Dressner headquarters in Poil Rouge, France, Joe started a <glossary term="Cellar" title="254">cellar</glossary> that, while highly unorganized, is full of really cool shit. Some of it is young, some of it is old. Some wines could benefit from more cellaring, some have been sitting in there too long, and some are just right. Wine is meant to be drank, so I&#39;ve decided to be a good samaritan and taste through the good, the bad and the ugly to tell you how some of the wines we work with <glossary term="Aging" title="74">age</glossary> in bottle.</p> <p><u><strong>1996 Fran&ccedil;ois Pinon Vouvray &quot;Brut Sec&quot;:</strong></u></p> <p><img src="http://louisdressner.com/uploads/images/article/2020_Sep_24//96/7d/967d4adb1e38dddc4bc28d897d629b3d.jpeg" /><img src="http://louisdressner.com/uploads/images/article/2020_Sep_24//96/fd/96fd798c399507d815d1befc579168cd.jpeg" /></p> <p>Golden color. Nose and <glossary term="Palate" title="756">palate</glossary> have that old <glossary term="Chenin Blanc" title="281">Chenin</glossary> thing happening. Nice fruit. Bubbles are small but still present. Nice finish. It ages well!</p> <p><u><strong>2002 &quot;Cuv&eacute;e St Maur&quot; by Henri Goyard:</strong></u></p> <p><img src="http://louisdressner.com/uploads/images/article/2020_Sep_24//97/cd/97cd7097d499736957ded3246149d8a9.jpg" /><img src="http://louisdressner.com/uploads/images/article/2020_Sep_24//27/e5/27e5382f07469733e8c689f6f6b9b9d0.jpg" /></p> <p>This was a short lived project from Henri Goyard, the original <glossary term="Vigneron/Vignaiolo" title="1089">vigneron</glossary> at Domaine de Roally. Henri retired in 2000, but kept making a tiny amount table wine from the vines behind his house. Dark, golden color. Rich, honeyed nose. Depth and dense fruit with a present&nbsp;<span class="zalup"><span><glossary term="Acidity" title="71">acidity</glossary><span>.</span></span></span> It ages well!</p> <p><u>2000 Ch&acirc;teau d&#39;Oupia &quot;Les Barons&quot;:</u></p> <p><img src="http://louisdressner.com/uploads/images/article/2020_Sep_24//32/31/3231a3a7cd83620f79e23fed9ae912aa.jpg" /></p> <p>Much better second day. Dark but transparent red color. Cassis on nose. Roundness and weight in the body. Probably could still hang in the <glossary term="Cellar" title="254">cellar</glossary> for 5-10 years no problem.</p> <p><u><strong>2001 Marcel Richaud Cairanne Blanc:</strong></u></p> <p><img src="http://louisdressner.com/uploads/images/article/2020_Sep_24//db/3f/db3f230ee071d0da3ab15bf15680f7b3.jpeg" /></p> <p>2001 was an exceptional <glossary term="Vintage" title="1109">vintage</glossary> in the&nbsp;<span class="zalup"><span><glossary term="Rhône Region" title="1209">Rh&ocirc;ne</glossary><span>.</span></span></span> This was the freshest of the four, and could easily be confused for a current&nbsp;<span class="zalup"><span><glossary term="Vintage" title="1109">vintage</glossary><span>.</span></span></span> Light, translucent color. Really nice <glossary term="Acidity" title="71">acidity</glossary> and balance in mouth. I approve.</p>

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<p><u><strong>2001 Oratoire St-Martin &quot;Cuv&eacute;e Prestige&quot;:</strong></u></p> <p><img src="http://louisdressner.com/uploads/images/article/2020_Sep_24//63/e3/63e3bf109447ac005bd0334d41a1d622.jpeg" /></p> <p>Not as exciting as the 2001 white from Richaud, but still very alive. After being opened up for a few hours, the fruit was way more present on the nose and&nbsp;<span class="zalup"><span><glossary term="Palate" title="756">palate</glossary><span>.</span></span></span></p> <p><u><strong>1998 Franck Peillot Montagnieu Mondeuse:</strong></u></p> <p><img src="http://louisdressner.com/uploads/images/article/2020_Sep_24//a7/67/a76700b09e91141a42283ab3fc0f14f8.jpeg" /></p> <p>This bottle was completely dead. No fruit, no&nbsp;<span class="zalup"><span><glossary term="Minerality" title="662">minerality</glossary><span>,</span></span></span> no alcohol, nothing. When I brought this up with Franck, he pointed out that while the whites can age quite gracefully, his reds are to be drank young. It might (or might not) be interesting to note that this was the last vintage Franck used preselected <glossary term="Commercial Yeast" title="321">commercial yeasts</glossary> to <glossary term="Fermentation" title="441">ferment</glossary> his wines.</p> <p><u><strong>1999 Fran&ccedil;ois Pinon &quot;Cuv&eacute;e Tradition&quot;:</strong></u></p> <p><img src="http://louisdressner.com/uploads/images/article/2020_Sep_24//5f/4f/5f4fbd8b4f9d3d68828fb7c9b74d4005.jpeg" /></p> <p>Old <glossary term="Chenin Blanc" title="281">Chenin Blanc</glossary> rocks! Bone dry, but a ton of round, <glossary term="Aromatic" title="120">aromatic</glossary> fruit. Nice <glossary term="Acidity" title="71">acidity</glossary> and&nbsp;<span class="zalup"><span><glossary term="Minerality" title="662">minerality</glossary><span>.</span></span></span></p> <p><u><strong>Julien Fremont &quot;L&#39;Augeron&quot;:</strong></u></p> <p><img src="http://louisdressner.com/uploads/images/article/2020_Sep_24//fc/34/fc34874e9a9e27bd7e226b0d0e1d091f.jpeg" /></p> <p>This bottle has been standing on a desk in the house, NOT the&nbsp;<span class="zalup"><span><glossary term="Cellar" title="254">cellar</glossary><span>,</span></span></span> for at least 12 years. Maya &quot;Mayhem&quot; Perdersen proposed we taste it as a joke because of this whole little experiment, so we threw it in the fridge and popped it open. It was surprisingly fruity, and not that&nbsp;<span class="zalup"><span><glossary term="Oxidation" title="754">oxidized</glossary><span>,</span></span></span> with the purity of the apple still present. However, it had this cheesy funk thing that made it hard to drink more than a glass of it. Interesting to try, but this didn&#39;t get finished.</p> <p><u><strong>1994 Clos Roche Blanc</strong><strong>he Sauvignon Blanc:</strong></u></p> <p><img src="http://louisdressner.com/uploads/images/article/2020_Sep_24//16/2a/162ae1b1507bcd907e770211ba06214e.jpeg" /></p> <p>There was a ton of shit floating in the bottle, and we were worried it was well past its prime. Couldn&#39;t have been more off: bright, alive,&nbsp;<span class="zalup"><span><glossary term="Minerality" title="662">mineral</glossary><span>,</span></span></span> fresh. A stunning wine that was an absolute pleasure to drink. Notice my giving a thumbs up through the glass!</p>

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<p><em>Originally published in the summer of 2012.</em></p> <p><u><strong>1998 Domaine de Roally M&acirc;con-Monbellet:</strong></u></p> <p><img src="http://louisdressner.com/uploads/images/article/2020_Sep_22//13/ef/13ef7d43c6bad601cb88d5a36739ad05.jpg" /></p> <p>These wines age incredibly well. Slight hint of pleasant&nbsp;<span class="zalup"><span><glossary term="Oxidation" title="754">oxidation</glossary><span>,</span></span></span> a bit of <glossary term="Residual Sugar" title="853">residual sugar</glossary> (which is normal), ever present <glossary term="Acidity" title="71">acidity</glossary> and nice finish. This and Marc Grozellier&#39;s goat cheeses from Blanot are the best pairing in the universe.</p> <p><u><strong>2003 Franck Peillot Montagnieu Altesse:</strong></u></p> <p><img src="http://louisdressner.com/uploads/images/article/2020_Sep_22//49/7b/497bf198a90d12896c0cdfbdd166865f.jpeg" /></p> <p>Hot year, so very round and rich. Didn&#39;t find it flabby at all. This was a hit with our dinner guests&nbsp;and didn&#39;t last very long.</p> <p><u><strong>1999 Domaine des Terres Dor&eacute;es&nbsp;<em>&quot;Cuv&eacute;e Premiere&quot;</em>:</strong></u></p> <p><img src="http://louisdressner.com/uploads/images/article/2020_Sep_22//49/52/4952960405bed5bb3746239cf3ca2269.jpeg" /></p> <p>Another half-joke that turned out to be a pleasant surprise. This <glossary term="Cuvée" title="363">cuv&eacute;e</glossary> is released the January after the <glossary term="Harvest" title="521">harvest</glossary> as a follow up to <glossary term="Beaujolais Nouveau" title="152">Nouveau</glossary>; it&#39;s&nbsp;obviously meant to be immediately consumed, not <glossary term="Cellar" title="254">cellared</glossary> for 12 years. At first&nbsp;it felt a little beat, but over the course of the night it opened up, with really vibrant fruit taking over. Against all odds, the bottle was finished.</p> <p><u><strong>2005 Georges Descombes Brouilly&nbsp;<em>&quot;</em>Vielles Vignes<em>&quot;</em>:</strong></u></p> <p><img src="http://louisdressner.com/uploads/images/article/2020_Sep_22//57/3f/573f70dada1f574adea6c33167e1b316.jpeg" /></p> <p>Georges Descombes <glossary term="Aging" title="74">ages</glossary> his <glossary term="Old Vines" title="740">old vine</glossary> <glossary term="Cuvée" title="363">cuv&eacute;es</glossary> six months in <glossary term="Oak" title="731">oak</glossary> and they usually hit the market a whole year after everyone else has put their <glossary term="Beaujolais" title="151">Beaujolais</glossary> out. The result is an age worthy bottle with&nbsp;<span class="zalup"><span><glossary term="Structure" title="990">structure</glossary><span>,</span></span></span> elegance and fruit produced from his extremely steep <glossary term="Old Vines" title="740">old vines</glossary> in&nbsp;<span class="zalup"><span><glossary term="Brouilly" title="200">Brouilly</glossary><span>.</span></span></span>&nbsp;&nbsp;His very-little-to-no <glossary term="Sulfites" title="993">sulfur</glossary> winemaking gave the wine a subtle little funk on the finish, but it was consumed so quickly it never had time to (maybe) get worst.</p> <p><u><strong>2003 Fran&ccedil;ois Pinon Vouvray&nbsp;<em>&quot;</em>Premi&egrave;re Trie<em>&quot;</em>:</strong></u></p> <p><img src="http://louisdressner.com/uploads/images/article/2020_Sep_22//04/15/0415acd6658eb27a3da217faa40c87d9.jpg" /></p> <p>Another 2003, France&#39;s biggest heat wave in a long time. It must of been a great year for Fran&ccedil;ois Pinon to produce dessert wines, as this special <glossary term="Cuvée" title="363">cuv&eacute;e</glossary> consisted of the first <glossary term="Pass" title="1144">pass</glossary> of overripe and <glossary term="Botrytis/Noble Rot" title="181">botrytised</glossary> <span class="zalup"><span><glossary term="Chenin Blanc" title="281">Chenin</glossary><span>.</span></span></span> There was still enough <glossary term="Acidity" title="71">acidity</glossary> in the wine to serve with cheese, but it really held its weight with dessert.</p>