Sulfur Says What?

We'd opened a bottle earlier in the day, after some customers had apparently complained of the wine "getting weird." Sure enough, it had gone into a reductive state, even after well over a year under pseudo-cork, and showing just fine through most of that time. Now the fruit and pepperiness was still there, but masked by a top layer of smoked rubber. I tried an old test, dropping an old penny -- one that actually had some copper in it -- into the glass. Sure enough, the fruit came more to the fore, the smoky funk receded. The pseudo-scientist in me (with all due respect to JDH at Rational Denial, HK) just had to open another bottle, one that had been hangin' in my cellar for a little while, at home that night....

Côtes du Rhône "Bout d'Zan," Mas de Libian 2008
$15. 14.5% alcohol. Nomacorc. Importer: Petit Pois, Moorestown, NJ.
This bottle was reductive, too; less so, but still reductive. I found it pleasant enough on night one; slightly peppery, as suggested above, and firm in its brambly, berry fruit. Over the course of a glass, it opened and continued to show better. It was a light night, so I jammed the stopper back in the bottle with plenty left to go. Left it on the kitchen counter, ambient room temperature. Nothing more.

It was a rather hectic week, so I didn't get back to it until three days later. No more signs of reducto-funk, just bright red fruit. Snappy, spicy and juicy. Another long day had led to another short pour of a night, so back went the foamy plug and back went the wine to its same place on the counter top. The week continued in course. Last minute, spur of the moment trips; double-shift tasting events....

Three days later, I pulled that stopper again. My hopes weren't high. Few wines will stand up to a near week's worth of air in a decreasingly full bottle. I pulled the plug and sniffed the aperture. The more than half expected whiff of salad dressing met my nose. I poured anyway, knowing that -- in that pseudo-scientific way -- the more volatile nature of airspace aromas can sometimes belie what lurks beneath. Lo and behold, the wine was still bordering on delicious, certainly far more than drinkable, by any standard.

Who cares, you say? What's the point? Well, Hélène Thibon, along with the rest of her family at the Mas de Libian, produced "Bout d'Zan," a co-fermented Grenache/Syrah blend from the Ardèche, using no sulfur, neither in the vineyard nor during vinification. If you want more tech notes than that, you'll find them at Mas de Libian's website. Conventional wisdom would have it that this wine should have stood little chance of showing as it did, even three days after being opened, much less after a week.

The reduction? That's another issue, and I can't help but wonder if the closure choice (Nomacorc) might have something to do with it. As it emerged only after a fairly significant amount of time in the bottle, I'll be curious to see if it doesn't also recede given a little more time. Problem is, though, I'm not sure I have another bottle....

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No More Vin de Table, and Other Idiosyncrasies of French Wine Labeling: A Case Study

It's more than fair to say that I take a far greater interest in what's in the bottle — and what it takes to get it there — than what's on the bottle. Nonetheless, I have been known to take more than a passing interest in the finer points of labeling, especially as those details apply to the subtleties (and vagaries) of the French and Italian wine bureaucracies, not to mention the semantic choices made at wineries.

Subtle labeling changes with any particular wine from vintage to vintage, sometimes even mid-vintage, are so common that one could devote a blog entirely to their chronicling and easily find fodder for 365+ posts per year. I'm not about to build that house, as I wouldn't want to live in it. But I will visit from time to time when the opportunity grabs me.

Not even touching on the fact that I love the wine (at least not for now), there's an awful lot going on with Hélène Thibon's "Vin de Pétanque," which has undergone fairly major changes in labeling semantics in the last three consecutive vintages.

When the differences in labeling between the 2007, 2008 and 2009 editions of "Vin de Pétanque" from Mas de Libian caught my eye — I had enjoyed a bottle of the 2008 only days before the 2009 came ashore (and came home for dinner) — I fought my natural inclination to try to interpret all of the changes on my own. Instead, I reached out to Hélène Thibon, who grows the wines at Mas de Libian, with a veritable avalanche of questions. I suspect the detail of my questions may have taken her by surprise, but she responded with grace — and lots of great information. Here's what she had to say, peppered, of course, with my own interpretations. I couldn't leave them out entirely now, could I?

Vin de Pays, Vin de Table, Vin de France

The biggest shift, in that it is indicative of the farthest-reaching changes, is in the official designation of the three vintages: Vin de Pays for the '07, Vin de Table for the '08, and Vin de France (I believe the "Bon" is purely Hélène's modification) in '09.

There was a time that I might have jumped to the conclusion that a move from AOC or Vin de Pays status to "Vin de Table" was a forced declassification, a punishment of sorts as legislated by the bureaucrats of the INAO. But over the last few years, an increasing number of producers have been voluntarily opting to use the supposedly inferior VdT category. Hélène confirmed that the latter was indeed the case. She had originally chosen Vin de Pays status for Pétanque, even though the fruit comes entirely from her young vines in the Côtes-du-Rhône and Côtes-du-Rhône-Villages areas, as her own personal declassification, a statement that said "this is my simpler, more casual wine." She chose the move to Vin de Table status with the 2008 vintage because it allowed her greater freedom when it came to decisions such as harvest date and blending.

As for the move from Vin de Table to Vin de France in '09, Hélène is simply getting a head start. At the end of 2010, the Vin de Table designation will no longer be allowed in France, replaced by the seemingly catch-all designation of Vin de France. This is part of a broad spectrum of changes to the entire French AOC system, as well as to geographic labeling conventions throughout the EU, that are due to be implemented by the end of this year. You can read a little more about it here.

2007, 8002, 2009

After the big changes detailed above, the rest are at least somewhat simpler and largely interrelated. Vin de Pays status has historically allowed for, indeed required, the vintage dating of wines. The Vin de Table category, conversely, did not allow the use of a vintage date on the label, whether or not the wine was produced from the fruit of a single harvest. A kind of legislative punishment for utilizing the VdT category, one (along with the VdT status itself) likely to result in more difficult sales for the bulk of wineries. Producers came up with all kind of creative ways to convey the year of origin of their wines, from lot numbers to embedded codes in their label art. Hélène's solution for her 2008 VdT was simple: print the date in reverse and make it look ambiguously artsy — in this case, like an etching on a pétanque ball. With the new "Vin de France" category, vintage dates are permitted.

Hélène Thibon and her horse Nestor, conducting déchaussage (plowing soil back from the foots of the vines) in the vineyard at spring. I've taken the liberty of borrowing the above picture from the new Mas de Libian website, which is more than worth a visit (even if you don't like Flash) for its extensive photo gallery.

Mas de Libian "Vin de Pétanque," Vin de Pétanque de Libian
(Mise en bouteille au mas, Mise en bouteille par Mas de Libian)

The stricture against vintage dating having been lifted, the INAO apparently felt it necessary to put another ambiguity (and potential economic hardship) in place. The shift here is subtle and requires an understanding of the language used on French wine labels to differentiate between estate bottled and non-estate bottled wines.

Any time a winery name as presented on a wine label opens with the words Domaine, Château or, less frequently, Mas (southern French dialect for "farmhouse"), you're being told that the wine is estate bottled. It's been produced by a winery that owns and farms its own land; harvests and crushes its own fruit; vinifies, ages and bottles its own wines; and markets those wines under its own label.

Likewise, there are any number of phrases that are part and parcel of French wine labels that can also convey this kind of information. "Mise en bouteille au domaine... au château... à la proprieté... au mas" all indicate that a wine was "placed in bottle at the estate," estate bottled if you prefer.

So, one arbitrary rule having been lifted, another has been put in place. The regulations for the Vin de France category do not allow wines to be labeled as estate bottled, even if they are — and Hélène Thibon's "Vin de Pétanque" is. It's the shifts in the naming and provenance conventions in use on the label that reflects this change, as "mise en bouteille par Mas de Libian" means "bottled by Mas de Libian," not bottled "at the estate." Someone out of the know with the background of this wine but in the know with French labeling conventions would pick up this bottle, read the label, and rightly assume (but wrongly conclude) that it is some form of négociant or more commercial bottling.

That's it for the technical stuff. As with so many other independent vigneron(ne)s, Hélène is accepting the somewhat pejorative nature of the Vin de Table/Vin de France rules rather than being subject to the more restrictive nature of the rules governing the higher categories of VDP and AOC, which will soon be replaced by Indication Géographique Protégée (IGP) and Appellation d’Origine Protégée (AOP) — more on those at a future date, when I've had a chance to more fully understand and digest the legalese of their meanings. To quote Hélène via my rough translation capabilities, "We do not want to be slaves of the new European and French directives that we deem aberrant!"

Produce of France, Product of France

This is an old favorite of mine, something I've long wanted to post about. To my knowledge, this language, in the large sense, must appear on all French wine labels. The exact syntax, though, is up to the winery (or label designer). While "Product of France" (and the corresponding "Produit de France") is by far the more common, I have a soft spot for "Produce...". Though I suspect it's more an accident of translation than an intentional play on the subtleties of English, I like the way that "produce," used as a noun, denotes the wine as a food product, an agricultural product. I hope I'm not the only one that thinks like this.

Vin issu de raisin de l'agriculture biologique certifié par...

I'm still waiting for an answer from Hélène on this. Her entire estate has been farmed organically since the 1960s, and she began biodynamic conversion in 2005. As far as I know, the entire property is certified organic. Yet the only one of her wines where I've ever seen the certification (by ULASE) mentioned is "Pétanque" and it's been dropped from the label with her 2009 release. Is it a marketing issue? Another imposed limitation? Or simply personal choice? Your thoughts are welcome, and I'll share Mme. Thibon's response as soon as possible.

What about the wine, you say?

Oh yeah, if you've made it this far I suppose you might want to know at least a little bit about what's in the bottle. As I said in opening, that's what really counts.

"Vin de Pétanque" is a blend of Grenache and Syrah (about 75/25) from the young vines (4-20 years-old) of the estate, fermented in tank with native yeasts, a short maceration of about five days, and no added sulfur dioxide. As the name implies ("pétanque" is the local name for boules), Hélène views it as a casual wine for everyday enjoyment, one that can be served chilled throughout the summer.

The 2009 is delicious; richer (13%) than the previous two vintages and an early indicator of the success of the vintage both in the Ardèche and at the Mas de Libian. It's dark purple in the glass, a color reflected in the wine's juicy spirit and vital energy, vibrantly fruity and enticingly peppery. Summer indeed. I'm thinking burgers — or just about anything else you might consider throwing on the grill and pairing with a fresh, young red.

Enjoy it (you really should), and thanks for reading!

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Scenes from Tuesday's Therapy Session

Had a great time pouring wine at Bicycle Therapy on Tuesday. A pretty decent crowd showed up to check out the new urban commuter bikes from Globe.

The Globe lineup ranges from a slick little fixie all the way up through some pretty serious workhorses. The very low key designs remind me of retro/classic British cruising bikes crossed with the utilitarian sensibility of Worksman's industrial bikes. The integrated racks on several of the models not only look pretty cool but are strong enough to handle designated driver duty.

Lola the shop dog took a moment to chill and chew before the crowds showed up for the main event.

Dan, Specialized's local sales rep, gave a quick seminar on the concept and merits of the Globe line of bikes, while his regional manager, Mike, performed a QA test on a glass of the 2008 Touraine Sauvignon "Le Petiot" from Domaine Ricard.

Fastidious wine blogger that I am, I somehow forgot to snap a shot of the juice I poured for the crowd that evening. I did deliver a seminar of my own, though, on a natural wine foursome that included the Sauvignon mentioned above as well as the delicious Gamay-based 2008 Touraine "Le Clos de Vauriou" from Vincent Ricard; the 2008 Muscadet Sèvre et Maine Sur Lie "Vieilles Vignes," made by Pierre Luneau at his daughter's estate, Château les Fromenteaux; and the 2007 Côtes du Rhône "Bout d'Zan" from Hélène Thibon at Mas de Libian.

I did, however, manage to catch a post-sacrificial shot of the mighty tasty hazelnut torte provided by local cyclist and entrepreneur of all things fudgey, Liz Begosh of Betty's Speakeasy, which is located just around the corner from Bicycle Therapy at 2241 Grays Ferry Avenue.

Did I mention that there was local beer on hand, too? No bike shop is complete without some.

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Two Under $15: One for the Grill and One for the Leftovers

The long Memorial Day weekend brought with it two welcome things: a much needed (and all too rare) two consecutive days off and perfect grilling weather. For the advent of warm weather and simple food, it was time to reach for a couple of quaffable, good value summertime wines.


Vin de Pays des Coteaux de l’Ardèche “Vin de Pétanque,” Mas de Libian 2007
The Thibon family has been farming organically in the Ardèche since the 1960s. Young Hélène Thibon took over the viticultural responsibilities a few years back and has since begun conversion to biodynamic principles. As of 1995, she is also the first generation of the family to estate bottle their wines, most fruit previously having been sold to négociants or taken to the cooperative. “Vin de Pétanque” is the basic red produced at the estate; it falls under Vin de Pays guidelines rather than being designated as Côtes du Rhône like most of Hélène’s other reds. As its name implies – pétanque is a Provençal lawn bowling game, sort of a cross between bocce and horseshoes – it’s a wine perfectly suited to casual drinking. A blend of young vine Grenache with a dash of Syrah, this is best served immediately upon opening, when the primary aromas of fermentation on the wild yeasts are still vital. Serving it with a slight chill, say at cellar temperature, helps to brighten its low acid profile and enliven its dark, spicy red berry fruit. Lower alcohol than Mas de Libian’s bigger reds, it’s a solid choice for summer entertaining and a great choice for burgers – we were flipping bison patties – or grilled sausage and peppers. $12. 13% alcohol. Nomacorc. Importer: Petit Pois, Moorestown, NJ.


Beaujolais-Villages, Domaine des Pierres (Jean-François Trichard) 2007
Roast chicken is a cold weather kitchen staple at the McDuff household, at least for the omnivorous member of the family. When putting a bird in the oven, Beaujolais or Cru Beaujolais, from a good producer of course, is one of my go-to wines. This time of year, when the cooking often moves outdoors and the chicken takes on the more intense flavors brought by grilling, a sturdier red could be called into action. My call often stays with Beaujolais though, as its textural freshness marries well with the warmer weather. Like the Ardèche wine above, most Beaujolais also shows well with a light chill, helping it to stay refreshing and making it a good alternative to a crisp white on a hot night on the porch.

At Domaine des Pierres, Jean-François Trichard took over winemaking responsibilities from his father Georges as of the 2006 vintage. His wines continue to show the purity of fruit that was a trademark of his father’s style, while also bringing firm structure into play. The estate’s 2007 Beaujolais-Villages, still very young, is perfectly balanced and already showing lovely aromatic purity and clean, vibrant fruit. Not only did this show better on day two, when its raspberry and strawberry laced aromas became more focused and its tannins more resolved, it also paired better with cold, leftover chicken than it did with chicken fresh off the grill. Translation: a great choice for your next picnic. $15. 13% alcohol. Natural cork. Importer: Petit Pois, Moorestown, NJ.

For more information on pétanque, visit the Official Website of Pétanque America and the Pétanque America blog.

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