COMPLEMEN’TERRE
Marion Pescheux & Manu Landron
France, Loire - Muscadet - Le Pallet
Marion Pescheux and Manuel Landron were both born in Muscadet, and grew up surrounded by viticulture. Keen eyed observers will note Manu’s familiar surname: he’s the son of Muscadet godfather Jo Landron, and cousin of our Benoit Landron. They farm 9 hectares of Melon de Bourgogne & Folle Blanche, though occasionally have cause to use a little Gamay from Benoit.
If we placed a pin at a central point close to their winery in Le Pallet, we could take a 5 minute cycle from each one of their vineyards to the next. For the plots that yield La Croix Moriceau and Ker Ma you climb five hundred metres to the north. For the plot that yields Tribute, just roll downhill five hundred metres in the opposite direction: south towards the river. For NoLem, head a few hundred metres west towards town.
Manu & Marion aim to keep vinification methods identical to show how the varied terroir of each parcel- even within such a close distance- can express itself so differently in each wine. Work in the vineyards is undertaken by hand, according to biodynamic practices and the lunar calendar, but they have no interest in pursuing certification.
We spoke to Manu on Nouveau Day, having finished for the year, watching their 2020 ferments carefully and eagerly awaiting the arrival of his & Marion’s 3rd child. We spoke at length on the differences between each of the cuvees we received at the end of November, and why nutrient analysis is key at every step of the fermentation.
2019 - Ker Ma - Melon de Bourgogne
”Let’s start with Ker Ma because we can do a comparison with Croix Moriceau which you’ve already received. The parcel for Ker Ma is about 0.7ha planted over amphibolite rocks - all sedimentation from sea deposits.
It’s good to compare with Croix Moriceau because they share a parcel; Ker Ma is at the bottom and Croix Moriceau is at the top of the slope. It’s mostly amphibolite at the bottom and as you move further up the slope you get much more orthogneiss. There’s just 6 metres between the two plots, it suddenly gets quite steep as you begin to head up the Croix Moriceau slope.
For all of our Muscadet we try to keep every process the same, we ferment in glass-lined concrete tanks. Everything is handpicked, always. Then pressed directly, no maceration.
After the press there’s 24 hours of decanting before fermentation to ensure there’s no copper residue in the wine (if we’ve had to spray any in the parcel that year) Copper can damage the fermentations so we really want to make sure there’s none in the juice. It’s good as a compound in the soil but.. not in the wine of course!
Fermentation for the 2019 finished in May, we still had a little sugar in early May. In November though we had to stop the wine going through malo-lactic as the levels of volatile acidity were too high when we analysed the wine. So we had to add a tiny amount of sulphites to pause fermentation, before adding organic champagne yeast to make sure it could continue fermentation safely; so it eventually finished in May.
Climate change has been really difficult on yeast populations, so this is something we sometimes need to do in order to save the wine. We can’t let it go to waste. It was bottled in May. We didn’t need to add any more sulphites at bottling, it was very stable by the end so the total is around 30mg/l. Still tiny really.
Ker Ma we bottled just after it had finished fermentation, still full of gas- in May or June. It just didn’t feel ready, we knew it needed more time. It took 3-4 months before we felt ready to release it.
Croix Moriceau had finished fermentation earlier so it was fine to release sooner, the wine was already good. Ker Ma, the yeast population was just less active than Croix Moriceau, it had a much slower fermentation.
But Ker Ma isn’t a wine made for keeping for 4 years though; it’s made for drinking now! Croix Moriceau has a bit more body & fruit, it’s great now but it will be good to see in 3 years also. Even today, Croix Moriceau 2020 has already finished fermentation, and Ker Ma is still going.”
2019 - Tribute - Melon de Bourgogne
”We’re on a slope again, but these soils are not as deep as our Northern plots. Towards the surface we have quartzite rocks, orthogneiss again and silty, sandy soils. Being South-facing, the grapes ripen quicker. The sun heats the rocks and these keep giving heat to the vines through the night so the maturity is much faster. These vineyards with their quartz rocks & sandy soils always give something a little spicy, there’s a complexity here that we don’t get from the Croix Moriceau/Ker Ma plots. The roots can go deep here, there’s not much compaction to the sandy soils and small rocks.
Tribute we only started making in 2017 so we’re still learning how to best express the complexity of this vineyard. Vines are again 40-50 years old. Vinification is as always, the same! We experiment with ageing lengths but otherwise we try to keep everything the same. The less variables in the vinification the clearer we can express the particularities of each parcel. We bottled Tribute in July. Tribute was a good one for us to make in 2019, not too complicated!
It’s important for us that we couldn’t make Croix Moriceau with southern plots, and we couldn’t make Tribute with the northern plots. The terroir really dictates the wine we make.
Tribute is under the sun all day and the grapes, you can see, are almost tanned! Croix Moriceau/ Ker Ma is greener, it’s much cooler up there and the soils are much deeper; the results are so different.”
2019 - Nolem - Melon de Bourgogne
”This parcel is west of our imaginary pin, NoLem slopes down towards the town, whereas the Tribute plot slopes down towards the river. We don’t have rocky soils here, but the terroir is close to Tribute but with poorer soils, sandstone & clay. These are younger vines though: 20-30 years old, so the yields are a little higher and we don’t have the same concentration as the older parcels. It’s also the only wine we ferment in barrel. In 2013, before we did our first proper vintage, we already had access to this plot but no space at my family winery, and my Dad told us to just pick a barrel, and it worked quite well, so we continued the tradition.
Because of the exposition, the tannins are stronger in this parcel, and the barrel gives it a little more structure still. These are big, used 500-600l barrels, we don’t want to make oaky wines. Like the Ker Ma though we had to add organic Champagne yeast towards the end of the fermentation because we had 40g/l of sugar left. We started with 190g/l. But with 40g/l of sugar we had 0.7 volatile acidity- if that got up to .95 the wine would be over. It’d be vinegar.
So it’s hard but- we had to decide to pull the wines out of barrel (because that can be a real toxic place for the yeasts) and added external yeasts. That worked, it finished fermentation, and it’s good, phew. In these instances we use organic champagne yeasts because they’re strong enough to kick-start fermentation even when alcohol is already in place.”
Is it disheartening to have to add yeasts to a ferment to save the wine?
”As you can imagine, we really don’t like to do it. A lot of people do it and don’t discuss it… but, we speak about it to explain the process, what can happen, where things can not go to plan. It’s the particularity of each vintage.
I want to make natural wine, as naturally as possible, but I do not want to waste our wine. I don’t want to waste the petrol, the money, the people’s time who have worked alongside us all year. To get to the end of a year and say “okay, it’s not good, rubbish!” I can’t do that. We do everything we can to make sure a wine will work and we’ll be able to release it.
But we’ve been measuring the yeast populations at the beginning of each harvest over the last 5 years, and simply, we don’t have the population we need on the berries. We try in advance to take precautions: we do our analytics, we know what we need, we know what is missing, so if we need to add some nutrients, we’ll add some. We pick a little the week before harvest to make a levain; a huge 10 hectolitre starter, and then every week through harvest we make two new starters.
When the juice comes into the winery, we’ll add at least 10% of the starter to each one. We try to not blend parcels, we’ll add a starter from the parcel that the wine is also made from. That’s not always easy, timing those early picks right, knowing we’ll need a starter ready for this parcel in 5 days.
We follow closely during fermentation the evolution of ph and bacterias and the populations of yeast under microscope. The bacterias release some toxins into the wine, which is killing the yeast. If you have a big population of bacteria you can be sure that it’s going to be harder for the yeasts. Bacteria eat the nutrients too, it’s a competition.
If I take a glass of juice during early fermentation and I can taste butter then I know we’re going through malolactic- early. It’s not a problem, we just have to check the volatile acidity levels, check if we have enough food for the yeasts, if we’ll need to put some sulphites at the end… if you add sulphites at the end, you’ll print that lactic taste onto the wine: butter, cream. If you have a fermentation strong enough to carry on afterwards then the process will eat those flavours. I’d prefer to have malolactic at the end when the sugars are lower and the acids are less volatile. But I can’t pick when it will begin! We’re happy with the wines though, they all find their way with time.”
And how was the 2020 vintage for you?
”Spring was good, June was wet - which was good, rain is good- but this is when the vines were the most sensitive. We did have good flowering before, in May. But once the berries are starting to grow, that wet & humidity means things like mildew start to grow in the middle of the bunches, which you can’t see until we pick, the bunch grows around it. It’s like finding an unwanted gift once you open it! So we lost a bit, mosty from the Croix Moriceau plot, but not everywhere.
Where there was a lot of wind, and drier soils they worked out okay, Tribute & NoLem are looking good this year. But Croix Moriceau and the deeper soils meant we lost a bit. August was dry so the maturity stopped and we started picking a month earlier this year, mid-August. We’re already finished... our holidays were longer this year!
We’re trying to see if we can have some parcels to have 4-5 sheep, there’s 4 of us working in the vineyards so why not? A sheep each! It’s good for the vineyards, though it takes time to try and buy a new parcel or lease a parcel. But Marion is expecting our 3rd baby soon so we need to see how we go with growing the 3 kids first before we get the sheep!
This year we planted half a hectare, next year we’ll plant another .75. We’re planting more Folle Blanche - the parcel we use currently is 40 yrs old, the yields are not very high. We’re also planning on planting some Pineau d’Aunis for more sparkling in the future, maybe a rose or nouveau whilst it’s young.”
Could you tell us a little about your work with biodynamic practices? Your approach sounds very pragmatic.
”We believe in biodynamics, we practice as much as we can, but we don’t have time to do everything. We’re part of the Nature & Progres certification which is much more important to us; it’s more about society also, about respecting not only the environment but people & animals too: you don’t buy your compost from the other side of the country, you don’t use electricity coming from nuclear- you try to find another way, you take care of your people.
We do biodynamics because we believe it works but we don’t push to be certified because; if the label is just to sell wine, what’s the point? Too many growers are certified to improve sales. We do what we want to do, we do what’s good because we’re farmers.”
NOW IN STOCK
2019 - La Croix Moriceau - Melon de Bourgogne
NEW 2019 - Ker Ma - Melon de Bourgogne
NEW 2019 - Nolem - Melon de Bourgogne
2018 - Nolem - Melon de Bourgogne
NEW 2019 - Tribute - Melon de Bourgogne
2019 - VDF - 68 Ares - Folle Blanche
2018 - Le Breil - Melon de Bourgogne
WHOLESALE ONLY
FOR PRICE LIST ENQUIRIES, PLEASE EMAIL hello@winesutb.com
