Carbonic Maceration & Beaujolais History

Happy new year's all!

Last week at the meeting we popped a bottle of Nicole Chanrion's
brilliant Cote-de-Brouilly and we got onto the subject of carbonic
maceration.

Carbonic maceration as a winemaking technique that is most closely
associated with Beaujolais as a region from the 1960s onwards, and for
a long time it was assumed the technique developed there the two were
so closely intertwined. Later, as natural wine began picking up it
started being associated with that as *the* technique for making
natural wine.

In the past few years however the story has largely been corrected,
from a story about the birth of beaujolais nouveau, or the birth of
natural wine, to the story of of two scientists, Michel Flanzy and
Jules Chauvet, and Jules Chauvet's assistant, Jacques Neauport and
Georges DuBouef. In 1934, as the head of the Narbonne Viticulteur
Institute in Southern France, Michel Flanzy started researching
anaerobic (without the presence of oxygen) fermentation on the grape
Aramon, a widely planted but fairly innocuous grape at the time. To do
this he would bring in whole-cluster, completely intact grape
clusters, place in a smaller steel tank, and fill the tank with C02,
and seal the tank. Yeast present in and on the grapes would start to
rapidly ferment, the uncrushed grapes would begin to burst and the
juice would macerate. After about 8 days, the wine would be pressed
off, fully fermented. The resulting wine was incredibly light, with an
aromatic intensity not present in the traditional styles of the wine.
Despite interest from winemakers in the area, the expense of C02
during the depression years and then the war meant that the technique
was largely untouched until the 60s.

In the 60s, with the recovery of the economy and a rapidly modernizing
wine industry, people started inquiring Michel about the technique. It
was a flop in Bordeaux, where winemakers detested the light tannins
and fruit-forward nature. A few minor producers in the Rhone had good
results for their everyday cuvee, and Domaine de Fontsainte in
Corbieres was the first winery to really make great wine using the
technique, which they continue to do to this day (their contribution
to this is often overlooked, but their forward thinking is amazing,
and the reputation of Corbieres as a whole was raised by them). But no
one who looked into Michel's research had anything as close to as big
an impact as Jules Chauvet, a serious chemist first and a Beaujolais
winemaker second. At the time when Jules started his research into
Michel's techniques he was already a renowned scientist and wine
taster (his prowess as a taster was so widely known that INAO,
France's appellation body had him largely develop the official tasting
glass used professionally by the organization). He was fascinated by
Michel's work, and seeing the connection between the thin skinned,
light grape Aramon and Gamay, he began a rigorous study of the
technique over the course of years. His findings largely matched with
Michel's, that the wine produced was lighter on its feet, more
aromatic and less tannic, suited to afternoon drinking.

As Jules' research continued he started picking up friends interested
in the technique, most importantly the winemaking team at Georges
Dubouef, the king of Beaujolais, and a group of five young vignerons
making their mark on the world. Since the early 1800s there was always
a tradition of a beaujolais nouveau, a quickly fermented wine that was
used to celebrate harvest and sold to restaurants in Lyon, which was
often accomplished by floating still fermenting barrels of wine in the
Saone to Lyon. The vagaries of weather, harvest dates, and temperature
made nouveau a tricky proposition and many vignerons resorted to heavy
chaptilization (adding sugar to the ferment, a still common practice
in many parts of Europe) and using chemicals banned by the government
in France to speed up fermentations (it's often told that Beaujolias
winemakers were the ones using diethylene glycol, an ingredient in
antifreeze, to jumpstart fermentations. This is however a myth, it was
Austrian winemakers using the chemical to sweeten and fatten Riesling.
The scandal did however forever change the wine industry in Europe, as
many winemakers went to jail and many regulations sprung up around the
use of what could be used in winemaking). In response to winemakers
trying to force fermentations early INAO made it illegal to sell
nouveau before the second week of December. So Georges Dubouef, an
extremely ambitious winemaker, found out about Jules' research, that
it could ferment faster and cleaner and produce incredibly uniform
results if the right yeasts were added to the process began his own
research into using it on a wide scale and started using it to make
his nouveau, which exploded in popularity, making him a boatload of
money, but damaging the reputation of Beaujolais as a whole, as it
became associated with his particular style of banana scented wines (a
result of the particular yeast strain favored by Dubouef).

In tandem with this was Jules own research, which was rigorous and
instead of pushing the technique to make wines fast, he was interested
in making great wines. As his research went on he converted to
organics, finding the fermentations were cleaner the less chemicals
involved. And he found the cleaner the grapes the easier for
fermentations to be natural, using only native yeast. And he also
found that using the technique cleanly he was able (in certain
vintages) use 0 sulfur. On this side of this were 5 young vignerons,
Marcel Lapierre, Jean Foillard, Guy Breton and Jean Paul Thevenet in
Morgon and Yvon Metras in Fleurie (this group is often referred to as
"the gang of four", excluding Yvon, who never sold to America and was left out of the story) These five, under the tutelage of Jules and his assistant
Jacques Neauport, started to make Beajolais in a whole new way.
Converting to organics, using less or no sulfur based on the vintage
and beginning to change the whole conversation around wine, a
conversation that is still continuing.

For all these reason Jules Chauvet is often referred to as "the
godfather of natural wine". This could be considered true, but for me
Jules is a scientist who came to conclusions. His assistant Jacques,
however, became a true believer. In the years following his time with
Jules Chauvet Jacques toured the  country, consulting with interested
vignerons, teaching them about carbonic maceration and organics. His
students became a whos-who of early natural wine in France, Catherine
and Pierre Breton in Bourgueil, Eric Pfifferling in Tavel, Pierre
Overnoy in the Jura, and Phillipe and Michele Aubry-Laurent at Domaine
Gramenon in the Southern Rhone. From there the technique slowly gained
serious traction and became a mainstay of natural wine worldwide.

It isn't without its drawbacks however. One of Jules' main lessons was
that this was a precise process, unclean, broken grapes were prone to
bacterial infections. Overripe grapes would cause malolactic
fermentation to start before alcoholic fermentation would finish,
causing a problem known as "piqure-lactique" that makes wine taste and
smell like yogurt. And the biggest concern was using the technique
with little regard to the grape in question caused wines to be
uniformly fruity and aromatic, losing much of what makes them special
in the first place. Still, the promise of fresh, light, drinkable
wines keeps bringing people to the table with results from the sublime
to mediocre.

So back to Nicole Chanrion, she doesn't make carbonic wines, her wines
are an example of traditional beaujolais winemaking. Perhaps next time
we'll do a side-by-side comparison.

Until next time

Cory