Thierry Michon is the third generation vigneron to make wine in this tiny, viticultural area known as Fiefs Vendeens. Out of the mainstream of French winemaking, in an area known mostly for oysters and summer cottages, he is passionately producing organic wines of extremely high quality with a dramatic sense of maritime terroir.
The Michon family vineyard is on Olonne Island, off the western coast of France, south of Nantes. Adjacent to the Loire wine region, the soil is mostly clay and slate with small boulder size chunks of quartz, and strongly influenced by salty breezes that blow off the ocean, across salt marshes to the vineyards.
A century ago, there were 100 winemakers in Brem; today Thierry Michon claims to be the last one. He is certainly the best known and the most accomplished.
The Michon approach to wine is one of dedicated biodynamic farming and an obsession with discovering the terroir of the island. In 1993, as soon as the family heard of biodynamic farming, they adopted the practice and have been buying up adjacent lands to create a buffer against non-organic farms. Only indigenous yeasts and natural methods are used in the cave.
The vines grow close the ground like shrubs to protect them from the wind and are harvested by crawling through vineyards on your knees. No irrigation or machinery is used with a dedication to the natural state of the soil. The vineyard produces extremely low yields per acre and winery production is quite small making the wines hard to find.
Take a look at this video of Theirry talking about his vineyards and his terroir. There are subtitles if your French is rusty.
This bottle of Cuvee Jacques is 75% Pinot Noir, 25% Cabernet Franc. It is named after his grandfather, who started the vineyard, 50 years ago.
The wine is an unusual blend, almost defying taste logic but is really is quite delicious. Bright colored, vivid, fresh and balanced. Take a rich Pinot Noir and add to it the density and fruit of the Cabernet Franc. Then wrap it in a slight organic pungency that often is characteristic of the very purist and very best organic wines.
You can taste the soft tannins. But you can also sense the salt of the sea air which is both the challenge and the character of this land, this vineyard and this incredibly rich bottle of red wine.
A bargain at $26.99 from a vineyard that is dedicated to purity, to terroir and to the taste of place. Can’t go wrong with this.
Available from Chambers Street Wines in TriBeCa, NYC.
***Photo credit to Bertrand Celce (bert@wineterroirs.com)
