LOUIS / DRESSNER
Tomorrow we're going to have Carl Moberg of LDM Selections in town, and we're going to be pouring a bunch of wines from them, so that's what I'll be talking about.
LDM was founded in the late 1980s by Burgundian Denyse Louis (from the less fashionable southern Burgundy, know as the Maconnais) and her husband, Long Islander Joe Dressner (their last names make up the LD in LDM, they were later joined by Kevin McKenna, a New York wine buyer and Italian wine expert and LDM was born). At the time of the company's founding the main motivation for importing was simple, they both wanted to spend more time in France and this seemed a way to do it. So they started bringing in small producers, making a little bit of money and continuing to expand a bit until they visited a small producer just ten minutes from Denyse's home, Henti Goyard at Domaine de Roally in Vire-Clesse who changed both of their lives. Stunned by the purity of the wines Joe started asking all kinds of questions and it turned out that Roally was simply working the way his family had, organically and using only natural yeast and a bit of sulfur. At the time in France this was far from the norm, most of the vineyards had been given up to so called 'conventional' agriculture and everything in the cellar was controlled scientifically.
This is often written about as some great tragedy, but the reality is after the post war period agriculture prices kept collapsing as farming became more mechanized and chemical driven farmers were much less at the mercy of the seasons, pests, and disease. And this also gave people a sense of freedom, as one old vigneron I visited said "suddenly people had a weekend". In the late sixties and seventies however some people realized that all this sudden change came a great many consequences, of chemicals and tradition. There appeared a systemic study of oragnics, led by people like Miguel Altieri, Masonubu Fukuoka and Bill Mollison and suddenly farmers had systems to take back a sense of control from chemical farming.
But where we are in the story, in the 1980s, these ideas were still moving glacially. Wine prices outside of a few regions had all but collapsed, increased pressure from relatively new wine regions had driven down prices everywhere, and multi-national companies were promoting brands, rather than winemeakers. But there were some, and their numbers were increasing slowly, and into this group Denyse and Joe found themselves. They met staid traditionalists like Henri Goyard, the punk rock Puzelat brothers, and folks like Jean Paul Brun, who never really fit into a category, they just knew the wines had changed and needed some love to get back. Later when Kevin joined he brought a great number of Italian producers into the fold, from the greatest producer of Moscato who ever lived, Alessandra Bera to the new vanguard in folks like Stanko Radikon in Friuli and Ariana Occhipinti in Sicily.
The company survived a very tough time while people's tastes caught on and slowly but surely they became one of the most revered importers of natural wine in the states without any intention of doing so, and inspiring multiple generations of wine lovers and buyers, including Uzzi and I.
We're pouring a good selection of wines from both LDM's Italian and French portfolios including the wines of Stanko Radikon's son Sasa, who took aover the estate upon his father's death, the aforementioned Allesadra Bera, Alice and Olivier DeMoor, who have singlehandedly turned the conversation around of what Chablis can be, Herve Villemade, one of the great paysans I've ever met in my life, and someone who brings a great amount to the humble areas of the Loire, and Ariana Occhipinti.