37 minute read
talking wines profile
Simon Thomson, Cirencester, June 2022
Simon Thomson may be an Everton fan, but the way he’s structured his Talking Wines team bears the hallmarks of the great Ajax side of the 1970s. Everyone is happy to slip into any role that’s asked of them. Graham Holter reports
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The wine equivalent of total football
If you were to design the perfect premises for a medium-sized independent wine merchant, you might well end up with something resembling the building occupied by Talking Wines in Cirencester.
The location is easy to find, on a small trading estate on the edge of the Cotswolds town. There’s parking right outside. The shop is large and airy, with big arched windows letting in just the right amount of south western light. Adjacent to this is an office that comfortably accommodates the entire team. At the back, there’s a tidylooking warehouse, large enough to cope with the day-to-day requirements of the business.
Simon Thomson was born in Liverpool but moved to Oxfordshire as a small child,
losing his accent but retaining his loyalty to Everton FC: he still makes the regular trek to Goodison and chats at length about his hopes for the coming season.
He started Talking Wines in 2013, originally in far more modest surroundings than the ones he currently enjoys. Wholesaling is the main thrust of the business, but online sales are growing, and the shop makes a small but useful contribution. There’s no manager, and no need for one – there’s always someone in the office or warehouse who can attend to the needs of customers.
How did you start the business?
I was a keen amateur and I’d done some courses and found I had a bit of an aptitude for wine. I was working for a phone company that was being taken over by Vodafone and I got an opportunity to take redundancy. That gave me the capital to start the business. I spent six months in a garage. We’ve been here since 2012 and this is ideal for us.
We’ve got another warehouse across the yard that we store full pallets in and then we can replenish the ground floor level. We’re quite efficient and I think that’s the beauty of me coming from a background of supply-chain management.
How big is the team?
We don’t get much staff turnover – we have great people, and they all work really hard.
There’s a part-time driver, a full-time driver, a credit controller and five of us on the wine side. I say that, but there’s not anyone who will say “that’s not my job”. I’ll jump on the forklift and pick orders, and so will everyone else.
What’s the local market like?
Cirencester wasn’t a great place to eat out for many years, but we’ve been lucky that there have been a lot of openings over the past 18 months to two years and we have picked up a lot of the accounts. Whether that’s due to a lot more people holidaying in the UK …
We were supplying Jeremy Clarkson’s Diddly Squat farm shop, the restaurant there. He bought in an outside catering company and they used us. But I think they are having planning issues. Doing the deliveries, the queues down those country lanes, you can see why the locals could get upset by the traffic. I’m not a fan of his, but it is a good programme.
Have you been shipping less wine in recent years?
No, if anything we ship a bit more. Some of it is with Araldica from Boutinot, Manzanos in Spain from Alliance and we do quite a lot with Daniel Lambert ex-cellar – so we actually place the order with Patrice Tournier in Burgundy or with Calmel & Joseph in Languedoc. Sometimes we share shipments and post-Brexit, with shipping costs, that helps.
What’s prompted you to import a little bit more than you were?
I think we are growing on the things we ship. We have some unique wines that nobody else has – for example, we have Champagne from Yannick Prevoteau, a very tiny grower-producer. He makes just over 100,000 bottles but the Champagne is absolutely fantastic. Every Christmas we do a blind tasting in the shop, and it wins every year across anything you compare it with.
We don’t really do the Champagne
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brands at all and people trust us. The established house that we have is Joseph Perrier, so that is our brand, if you like, and we try not to do any of the other big names.
Who’s on the buying team?
I generally do the buying and in terms of selection, there are five of us on the wine side who will taste and we make a joint decision.
Are you aligned in your tastes?
We all like freshness in wines. We tend to find that anything that is slightly confected or commercial doesn’t get through, so we are similar in that sense. Some of us like full-bodied reds and some prefer whites, so there is a mixture and we all come to a
consensus.
Is there a place you specialise in more than others?
Not really. South America … we do a lot with Condor Wines and that has given us a great offering there.
Is it harder to get quality around the £10 mark these days?
I’d say in the shop our sweet spot now is the £10 to £15 mark. But because we wholesale a lot, we have things that transfer to the retail environment where we can start at £7.50. So there are still quality wines you can get under the £10 mark.
We do our pricing once a year in March and since we did it this year, our transporters put a 11% surcharge on. There’s a fuel surcharge of 3.5% and now DPD suppliers are coming in with increases as well, so this may be the year that we do another price increase. We’ve never had to do that across the board before. We’ve done it on odd things, like New Zealand Sauvignon last year.
How are you finding availability from France and elsewhere?
Lead times are all longer and the biggest reason seems to be the availability of glass.
The pricing sweet spot is £10 to £15 Is France worse hit than other places?
No, bottling in Spain and Italy is also an issue. Dry goods are the problem, rather than wine, and then transport. We use Freight Transport from Portsmouth and they are superb. Post Brexit their service has been just as good as it was before. We are very pleased, as we’ve been using them for a long time, that they didn’t take on any new customers post-Brexit. The fact they are coming in from Portsmouth helps. I think the more Dover-centric you are the more difficult it is.
Is the retail range a mirror image of your wholesale range?
Yes, there are a few wholesale lines that we don’t have in here but it’s pretty much the same. We operate at roughly 35% retail, 25% wholesale margins.
Where we group ship and we have a wine that is unique to us in this area we can sometimes edge it up a bit more, and I’m quite cautious budgeting for exchange rates. I usually buy a bit better than I’ve budgeted for and that can give us a bit more margin.
How many wine come through the Rolleston wholesale buying group? It’s not that many, it’s the entry-level volume lines really, so about 10 ranges.
How is Rolleston structured these days?
There’s a committee of five. I’m the secretary and Charles Eaton from Nethergate Wines is the chair. We employ Alexander Nall from The Southwell Vintner as the manager so he deals with suppliers and generally does most of the legwork.
We’re fiercely independent and even though we meet, everyone does their own thing: we generally buy independently, apart from if there are areas that people don’t ship from, like the south of France, where members would buy from me.
You’re not obliged to take the whole range.
We’re always looking for new members. We’ve just added Wright’s at Skipton. Julian [Kaye] is a great guy, very experienced in the trade and a volume wholesaler.
What other suppliers do you work with at Talking Wines?
We have quite a tight supplier base and the ones we work with we do a lot with, and try to go deep into their list rather than pick up a few wines from here and a few from there. We have to bear in mind the logistics side of it too. There’s no point diluting our range from places we already direct import from.
What trips have you most enjoyed?
We went with Condor to South America, that was a great trip. We went to South Africa with Boutinot a few years back, that was good.
Have you got a personal favourite wine?
Christmas Day I normally drink red Burgundy. Unfortunately it’s more expensive now. It’s been a funny experience, lockdown. In retail and wholesale, we are selling more and betterquality wines. Whether we can maintain that with the economic turmoil we are about to see … we’ll see how it goes.
Your website is looking good and is simple to navigate.
That’s nice to hear. We had it ready to go just when the first lockdown came and I said, let’s just do it. I write the tasting notes and we link through to the producers’ websites. We’re probably not the cheapest and there are always people doing deals, but we don’t chase it.
I’d say 85% of our business is wholesale, and about 12% here [in the shop] and 3% online. It’s all growing. Wholesale for us had a similar reaction to retail during
The shop has no full-time manager but is right next to the busy office
Covid, in that people questioned the suppliers they were using, and we offered a personal and friendly service. We had a different approach to the nationals.
Would you say that approach was always appreciated by your wholesale customers?
It was appreciated some of the time, sometimes you’re taken for granted.
We provide training for our wholesale customers. The problem with the ontrade and hospitality is that there is such a turnover of staff, you are going back six months later to do another session and all the faces are new.
Our customers trust us, so if we have a container stuck halfway across the ocean, they tend to be understanding.
How’s the business performing financially?
We are growing and over the last couple of years we’ve grown very nicely, and profitably as well. I had spent a lot of time wondering if we’d ever make any money out of this business but now we are seeing a decent return. Last year the turnover was just short of £1.8m. That was our best year. Because we’ve got such good staff who have been here so long and are so efficient, we can increase in turnover without putting extra overheads on.
It’s lovely to be able to pay them proper wages and reward them for their efforts and they are all incentivised on
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commission with no ceiling. On a Monday when we’re all in, we have a team meeting where we talk about sales opportunities, new wines, any supply issues, and it’s all very collaborative.
What’s next for the business?
We’re not very good at following fads and we’ve never had an outside investor. We know what we are and we’re not planning to do anything radically different. It’s a question of doing the right things all day, every day and just looking after people.
That’s what we try and do. We’d like to have extra vehicles; we’d like to get the floor above, which is vacant. We’d then like to put solar panels up, that’s a project that would be very beneficial. We might push the geographical area out a little bit, but nothing massive. We’d like to do a bit more online. Nothing dramatic, just incremental growth.
I’ve looked at having a second shop and I’ve done the sums, but I struggle to see how it would be profitable. If we did, it wouldn’t be Cirencester. We’re happy doing what we’re doing here.
Someone once told me that the way it works economically is to have one premises, seven or 30. With seven you can put in a regional management structure and you’ve got enough economies of scale to make it work, but two or three don’t really work.
The independent trade must seem a bit more crowded than it was back in 2012.
There is more competition, but as long as people operate on the right principles then the more the merrier, I’d say. The more diverse the market is, the more interesting it is.
The picturesque streets of Cirencester
THE WINEMAKER FILES // Jean-René de Fleurieu
Château de Montfrin
As a board member of our local co-op for many years, we realised that making organic wine within the group would be
impossible. And so in 2011 we made the decision to start our own cellar.
Our soils are composed mainly of rounded pebbles from the ancient bed
of the Rhône river, some deep sands of the actual river beds and poor soils of villafranchien gravel which allows us to obtain a diversity of juices. Working within the intersection of Provence, Languedoc and the Vaucluse is a strength which allows us to offer a variety of wines to please a large number of palates.
We like fresh and fruity wines and produce these easy and fresher styles by choice. These are my preference as I do not really appreciate woody notes in wines from our area and I am passionate about making interesting wines that people will love. These styles are pleasant and good with food, and are great value for money, which satisfies a large part of our clientele.
Our dry climate helps in holding back
the spread of disease, but the nature of the soil, with so many pebbles, makes the work between the plants much more difficult.
We grow over 15 varieties with very
distinctive organoleptic qualities. Their collective ripening cycles cover quite a large stretch of time. Five years ago we began experimenting with a new variety, a white grape named Monarch, which is basically treatment-free.
We produce one white Vin de France,
which has been met with great success: À Mon Seul Désir. It’s made from the Viognier grape, and is very expressive and fruity. This year, a new cuvée is launched: a sparkling organic white wine, À Nos Amours. Of course we could consider producing other Vins de France, since it would be the easiest way to boost our production. But we are happy working within the rules and regulations of an AOP because it adds important visibility to our cuvées. My favourite wine within our range is Á la Rêverie Côtes du Rhône blanc: in my opinion, the most harmonious and sophisticated of our wines.
We aim to reduce our environmental
imprint, and seize every opportunity to do so. We have adapted ourselves to the increase in demand for organic wine. In the past 20 years the vineyards have increased from 30 hectares to about 150 hectares of 100% organic vines. After the launch of red and white sulphite-free cuvées, we hope to introduce a new sulphite-free rosé: Un Coup de dés Jamais n’Abolira Le Hasard”. Midway between Nîmes and Avignon on the cusp of two appellations lies Château de Montfrin - a historic estate, inherited by Jean-René de Fleurieu, who runs the family business. There are around 200 acres of land, including farmland, olive groves and 95 hectares of organically-farmed vines, yielding Côtes du Rhône, Costières de Nîmes and Côteaux du Pont du Gard wines.
Wines are imported by Jeroboams Trade
020 7908 0600 jeroboamstrade.co.uk
After a lifetime of farming, I have not
changed my mind that the best way to know a land is to farm it. And that is what I do every day, even when times are hard. We love sharing the pleasures of life through the wines we produce on this land.
Montfrin la Tour Blanc
One of our best sellers, this shows all the hallmarks of young Grenache Blanc with some tropical fruit notes, hints of peach and apricot and fresh pink grapefruit. Rich, satisfying and with complexity that belies its modest origins, this is a perfect aperitif or accompaniment to fresh tomato salads.
A la Rêverie Rouge
This wine really represents what we try to achieve at the winery. It demonstrates that by taking care of the vineyard and choosing the perfect ripeness, we can give the blend of Grenache, Syrah and Carignan soft tannins and long, light, red-fruit flavours. Perfect with any mildly spicy food.
A La Doucer d’Aller Côtes du Rhône Rouge
A classic Côtes du Rhône Village blend with a fruity mouth feel. We select our oldest vines juices for their ability to add structure. The wine is aged in 600-litre barrels so wines develop complementary soft oak aromas, helping soften the tannins. This adds a level of complexity, ensuring the wines can age for five years or more.
Wine merchant, meet wine producer
As Awin Barratt Siegel prepares for its biennial portfolio tasting in London, partner Elliot Awin says the company’s aim is simple: to connect winemakers with the people who sell their wines
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Elliot Awin
Elliot Awin doesn’t have to think hard about his answer when asked if there’s a common thread running through the list of ABS agencies.
“Most importantly they are all people you would go for a beer with,” he says. “The topics of conversations you’d have might be vastly different, but they are all people you’d want to spend a couple of hours having a drink with. It’s part of why I joined the wine trade – the people. They are all different, in an interesting way.”
Next month, ABS’s independent customers will get to spend some quality time with these winemakers too, as the company stages its biennial portfolio tasting in London.
Awin is a strong believer that people
who sell wine should have a direct link with the people who make wine.
“Having 48 producers in front of people is so important,” he says. “ABS and companies like ourselves should just be a conduit for making introductions. We are matchmakers, so to speak, rather than salespeople. We would rather have an independent and a winery chatting to each other and building that bond and relationship.
“We have a good enough relationship with both of these groups to allow that relationship to flourish. We are just there in the middle to deliver that stock. Of course, our sales team help with range selection and to help merchants understand what’s possible. But more than anything we want to see the wineries connect with customers and consumers, and that is where I think the trade is going.”
Awin talks about the “inverted pyramid” of information that flows between winemakers at one extreme and consumers at the other, with importers, wholesalers and retailers in between.
“Our role is to broaden out that inverted pyramid into a straighter column of information and the best way to do that is to cut out the Chinese whispers in the middle,” he says.
“Of course we’re not going to write down every little bit of information about the winery in our booklet, but if we cut out the distance from winemaker to consumer the communication will be more effective for everybody.”
At this year’s tasting there will be 10 Australian winemakers in attendance, as well as nine from South Africa and six from the US.
Trent Burge, winemaker at Corryton Burge in the Barossa Valley, will be among them. He exemplifies the long-term relationships that ABS has developed with its winemaking partners, and the family bonds that exist beyond the commercial links.
“ABS as an Australian specialist was
Right: Veronica Vassala from Flavia Wines in Sicily, who will be attending the London event on September 7
Below: Wines from Corryton Burge, whose winemaker Trent Burge has a long family connection with the Awins
September 7, 10.30am to 6.30pm
The Great Hall, One Great George Street, London SW1P 3AA Registration: lesley@abs.wine
always at tastings in the 90s with the pioneers of the Australian industry, producers such as Grant Burge, and today the second generation of the Awin and Burge families are working together.”
There are seven ABS reps who work exclusively with the independent trade. Awin and three of his colleagues also look after a number of indie accounts in addition to their other roles.
The company worked hard to support independents during Covid restrictions.
“We did a lot of activity which put winemakers on screen, both in a formal way on Zoom with tasting packs sent out for B2B, and with informal chats on Instagram with a celebrity guest and a winemaker for a more casual approach,” Awin says.
“It became more important that we brought the feeling of what ABS is into people’s minds rather than just looking at the order book.”
Awin wants the atmosphere at the London tasting to capture that informal, more “touchy-feely” way of talking about wine.
“It’s almost marketing B2B like we would B2C. We’ve always thought that B2B interaction should be more formulaic and professional, but actually we’ve found that a lot of the independents would rather it was more informal and relaxed.”
Quatre Vin, a Provence rosé launched by ABS during lockdown
flexible friends
ABS minimum order quantities have been halved. Elliot Awin says: “We want people to cherry-pick. We like the idea that independents should have the best range of wines for their customers and not be dictated to by suppliers.”
In recent times, much has been written about the agency model and whether it’s fit for purpose in today’s wine trade.
Awin says ABS is always adapting to what the market demands from its suppliers. With logistical and currency issues creating supply chain challenges, the business is able to insulate its customers from the worst effects of the problems.
“These two things are quite a headache at the moment and so we do hold a lot of stock, and we do limit currency exposure through hedging to make sure we are offering good value,” he says.
“We are shipping and consolidating full containers from most places rather than shipping pallets or half pallets. Our previous stock holding for any line would have been 20 weeks on average, and we are now moving that to 30 weeks average. If there is an interruption in supply or logistics or delays, we’ve got that covered, and we find that’s really important for independents who can still draw stock off it.”
The minimum order has been reduced from 14 dozen to seven dozen to give indies more flexibility.
In September ABS also plans to launch a new web-based service allowing merchants to buy in even smaller quantities.
“The idea is for independent retailers to buy at wholesale prices via an exclusive B2B Shopify website,” Awin says. “They can put together a mixed case of more expensive wines as a way of bolstering their offer. We’re hoping this will allow them to dabble a bit more in our range. Sure, they’ll have to pay the DHL or DPD delivery for that, but it will be next-day delivery and at least they can be reactive to requests from their customers.
“This is not to replace their current ordering mechanism. It just means they don’t have to wait until they’ve reached their minimum order to re-fill on their everyday wines. It’s another service that will help them get the right range to their customers as quickly as they need it.”
WHO’s coming to london?
AUSTRALIA
Graham Cranswick-Smith (Cranswick Wines) Trent Burge (Corryton Burge) Simon Cowham (Sons of Eden) Walter Clappis (The Hedonist) Troy Jones (Payten & Jones) Jane Campbell (Campbells Wines) Wendy Killeen (Stanton & Killeen) Damian Shaw (Philip Shaw Wines) David Freschi (Casa Freschi Wines)
SOUTH AFRICA
Jacques Bruwer (Bon Courage) Kathy & Gary Jordan (Jordan Wines) Karl Lambour (Tokara) Hagen Viljoen (Zevenwacht) David Finlayson (David Finlayson Family Wines) Julien Schaal (Vins Julien Schaal) Neil Bruwer (Cape Chamonix) Niels Verburg (Saboteur)
USA
Chuck Cramer (Terlato Wines) Meliza Jalbert (Hope Family Wines) Peter Franus (Peter Franus Wines) Maja Jeremaz (Grgich Hills Estate) Tom Monroe (Division Wines)
SOUTH AMERICA
Alvaro Puebla (Finca Agostino) Alberto Guelo (Casas del Bosque)
GERMANY
Matt Giedraits (Dr Loosen/Villa Wolf) Konstantin Guntrum (Louis Guntrum) Karl Johner (Karl H Johner) Martin Luithardt (Weingut Schnaitmann) Alexander Stodden (Weingut Stodden)
AUSTRIA
Lorenz Hass (Allram)
FRANCE
Emma Jullien-Prat (Maison Montagnac) Romik Arconian (Château Canon Chaigneau) Melanie Soto (Vinibegood) Vincent Bremond (Château Mont-Thabor) Viv Menon (Domaine de Galuval) Marie Leclaire (Mas de Cadenet) Lea Desprat (Desprat Saint Verny)
PORTUGAL
Pedro Fonseca (Mouchao) Joao Vilar & David Baverstock (Ravasqueira) Pedro Branco (Quinta do Portal)
ITALY
Alessandro Fabiano (Viver) Léon Femfert (Nittardi) Veronica Vassalla (Flavia)
THE WINEMAKER FILES // João Barbosa
João M Barbosa Vinhos, Tejo wine region
We planted our first vineyards in 2000.
Since the beginning I’ve only worked with grape varieties that I like. We started with Touriga Nacional, Aragonês and Syrah. We took out the Syrah in 2014. Our terroir is very similar to Burgundy and the Côtes du Rhône and our Syrah was a very French style. But I think it’s a grape that can perform well in a blend.
We planted Pinot Noir in 2004, first of
all to make sparkling. In 2011 we made a red for the first time and that was really great. It was aged in small barrels. Now we have more than one hectare of Pinot Noir. It’s a very difficult grape – very capricious. You never know what’s going on but when it’s good it’s really, really good.
We are in the north west of Tejo, in the foothills of the Serra d’Aires e Candeeiros mountains and 15km from
the Atlantic. In the past few years it has not been the heat that we’re concerned about. It’s the rain that’s coming out of season. Because we are working organically, last year we just got 20% of our normal white crop. This year we have had heat after the rain, which reduces the risk of oidium and mildew.
We have a big Atlantic influence and the
soil is very salty. Our wines are very fresh and elegant. We have some salt mines here very close to our land – the ocean was here many years ago. All the limestone is very salty. The wines become very mineral, not boring wines. A lot of people are doing things to give their wines more salinity, but we don’t need to.
We waited until 2009 to plant our white
grapes because at that time in Portugal white wines were not very well accepted. Nowadays we sell much more white than red. I have Sauvignon and Fernão Pires, which we call Maria Gomes; we have Alvarinho, and last year we planted Chardonnay. I am not a fan of Chardonnay but I am a fan of Chablis. The Chardonnay I usually taste is very fat and I don’t like this kind of wine. I told my children that if our Chardonnay becomes like a normal Chardonnay, we’re going to replant.
This year we’re going to have for the first time a very old variety called Olho
de Lebre, which is a totally different grape. In the 50s it was planted in Tejo. I’m very excited about it. I think it will have a very nice acidity and a totally different nose and flavour. We have to wait and see, but I think it’s going to be very nice.
We do some foot-treading – we’re going
back to the old ways. It’s more gentle on the skins, and all the good things are on the skins. In the pulp it’s just water and sugar. We do some Pinot Noir this way, and the Vinhas Velhas, which is a blend of red and white grapes. Also Alvarinho, and that’s it. We are a small team and it’s usually done by myself and my children, and our guests. You can tell if the wine has been foottrodden because it’s velvety smooth and more elegant. It’s totally different.
João began his wine career working with his grandfather and established his own business in 1997.
The Ninfa wines come from his organic vineyards near Rio Maior in Tejo and are distributed in the south Wales region by ND John. The company is seeking similar tie-ups with other regional wholesalers.
More information at joaotmbarbosa.com
Tejo in the last 10 years has improved
quite a lot. People understand how to make good wines and how to present them in the market. They have to understand what the market is looking for but the wines also have to have character.
Ninfa Maria Gomes
I think this is a wine you can drink on any occasion. It has nice acidity, and is well balanced and fresh. It brings a lot of happiness to people who drink it.
Ninfa Espumante Reserva Blanc de Noirs
This is 100% Pinot Noir aged between 18 and 24 months. We are currently selling the 2016 vintage. It’s a beautiful wine with very fine bubbles; the mousse is beautiful.
Ninfa Grande Reserva Tinto
This is 100% Touriga Nacional vinified in oak and aged for 24 months in barrique. It’s a complex, beautiful wine and very elegant with a very long finish.
The fast track to sustainable winemaking
Langlois-Château has a long association with the Le Mans Classique motor racing event.
But the producer is just as devoted to sustainable viticulture, with a growing commitment to organic farming in its Loire vineyards.
A group of independent merchants was recently invited to taste the difference for themselves – and to spend an unforgettable day at the races.
Published in association with Mentzendorff
www.mentzendorff.co.uk
Loire wine producer LangloisChâteau has been making wine since 1885, but its longevity is no barrier to progress. A recent and significant leap forward is a move to full organic certification for Saumur still wines, from the 2020 vintage, and Sancerre from 2024.
“Langlois-Château has a long link with sustainable viticultural practices, going back to 2000,” says general manager François-Régis de Fougeroux, “so it was a natural progression to work on organic certification.
“At first we had six hectares of vineyards which we worked on for 12 years to see the impact of being organic, and then in 2017 we started the certification process, and we now have 30 hectares of organic vineyards.”
The company’s complete holdings – including those for sparkling wines – comprise vineyards in the Saumur, Saumur-Champigny and Sancerre AOCs, and parent company Bollinger added 60 hectares in Sancerre and Pouilly-Fumé with the acquisition of the family-run Hubert Brochard estate in July.
Langlois-Château is a major player in Crémant de Loire and Saumur sparkling wines, but its investment in organic viticulture and winemaking practices is helping it take a lead in updating the reputation of the region’s still wines.
“The most important thing it brings is gaining a nice balance in the soil and that has led to more balance in the wines with extra freshness and acidity,” says de Fougeroux. “This line of acidity helps us to build fresh, elegant, easy-drinking wines, but also wines with more complexity and maturity.”
The Wine Merchant tagged along with a group of indies, who all already list Langlois-Château wines, when they were hosted by the producer and UK agent Mentzendorff on a three-day trip to the region last month. The trip provided the opportunity to catch up on LangloisChâteau’s still-wine progression and included a day at the Le Mans Classique 24-hour motor racing event, of which Langlois-Château is an official sponsor.
With 200,000 spectators watching top quality vintage acts over three days, it’s kind of the motor racing world’s version of Glastonbury. The team was kitted out in crimson Langlois-Château polo shirts for ease of identity in the crowd, and VIP passes provided access to the pits, to get just metres away from the action during
driver handovers.
The partnership is a perfect fit for Langlois-Château, de Fougeroux believes. “We are the vineyard closest to Le Mans,” he says. “It’s a high-quality event and we as a team are engaged in making high-quality wines. Also, a third of visitors to Le Mans are from the UK, and that’s a key market for us.”
The trip itinerary includes a winery visit and a tour of Langlois-Château’s extensive cellars, housed in caves burrowed into the hill under its adjacent Saumur vineyards. We are given special access to a library of old and rare bottles of sparkling wine dating back as far the 1883 vintage.
The limited quantities of the vintages stashed away – just one bottle each of the 1883 and the next oldest 1911 – mean the corks stay in, but naturally there is plenty of opportunity for tasting more contemporary stocks.
These include the Quadrille brand (RRP £28), an Extra Brut that’s a four-way blend of Chenin Blanc (50%), Cabernet Franc (20%), Pinot Noir (20%) and Chardonnay (10%), and whose label celebrates the winery’s association with four legs as well as four wheels, through a partnership with the local equestrian institute Le Cadre Noir.
Over lunch during the winery visit, there is a chance to taste the Quadrille 2016 – light in colour, fresh and fruity – against the 1994, displaying a lush yellow-green hue and a caramel/crème anglaise character on the palate.
De Fougeroux says the earliest picking windows for grapes have come forward by almost three weeks, from mid-September to the end of August, since he first joined the company in 2001.
“Studies show we have the same climate now as Bordeaux had 30 or 40 years ago,” he adds.
“Bordeaux wines have around 14% or 15% alcohol today, whereas we are at 12.5%-14%.
“It means we have more freshness but
Langlois-Château’s indie guests were given VIP passes to the Le Mans pits
without the green character that used to be associated with Loire Chenin Blanc and Cabernet Franc.
“Our winemakers used to obsess about how to get the right maturity in the berries but that isn’t an issue anymore.
“We have more yield on the vines for sparkling wines and we pick earlier to keep the freshness that’s essential. For still wines we pick later but can now find a nice balance.
“Our Vieilles Vignes still whites from Saumur or Saumur-Champigny reflect more the terroir and special place of the vineyard. They are really balanced and elegant wines and the price is very good compared to Burgundy or other regions.”
Langlois-Château’s reds also reflect climatic and stylistic evolution, alongside ageing potential. The Saumur-Champigny 2020 (RRP £15) has all the freshness and drinkability Langlois-Château is seeking from its modern approach, while the 2015 vintage of the same wine shows an additional soft and silky elegance.
On fizz, the aim for the Bollinger-owned producer is simply to be “the best sparkling wines outside of Champagne”.
De Fougeroux adds: “Crémant de Loire production has grown from 6 million to 23 million bottles in less than 15 years and more than 50% of those wines are on the export market.
“We’re starting to see a big evolution in the UK, and in the US. Last year, crémant hit 1 million bottles in the UK market and, as a producer, we have seen a huge increase.
“Consumers want to drink something a bit different, more complex and with an identity of its own, and I think it will continue to grow, especially when Champagne prices are going up and there is not always enough available.”
The feeling among wine merchants on the trip is that crémant represents a good-value stepping stone for consumers between Prosecco and Champagne.
“We get people coming in and asking for crémant and wiping us out over a weekend,” says Georgie Toms of Salut Wines in Manchester. “If they get a taste for it, people realise it’s a great alternative to Champagne. But a lot of people don’t realise how close, geographically, they can get something else that’s sometimes half the price. The wines here are beautiful; really well balanced.”
Simon Parkinson of Vinsanto in Chester adds: “Crémant is generally the only nonChampagne we put on the by the glass. For non-Champagne drinkers it’s incredible value.
“The Langlois-Château crémant is fantastic value for money, looks good and the branding gives the impression it’s a small winery and an artisanal product, but because it’s actually quite big we know we’ve got reliability, year in year out. It always tastes good and our customers love it and are happy with it.”
WHAT INDEPENDENT MERCHANTS SAY ABOUT LANGLOIS-CHATEAU WINES
PAUL WARDLE, CORKS OUT, CHESHIRE “We sell Langlois-Château crémant by the glass and we have Sancerre in our machines. The wines are class and every single one we’ve tasted on the trip has been fantastic. It’s really good on affordability and the value you get from the price points. People like crémant as a cheaper but quality alternative to Champagne. We had Langlois-Château’s Sancerre red, which is rare to see, and people found that an interesting talking point.”
GEORGIE TOMS, SALUT WINES, MANCHESTER “The Sancerres are beautiful. We do some of the highest price point Sancerres in our Enomatics and they do really well. A lot of people love Sancerre but sometimes they’ll pick any bottle based on the region’s name; they want a French Sauvignon Blanc but that’s as far as the mindset goes. We like to give them something that’s got a lot more character and complexity that they’re not really expecting – and you can definitely do that with some of the wines we’ve tasted. We’ve got the rosé too and it doesn’t stay on the shelf for very long.”
SIMON PARKINSON, VINSANTO, CHESTER “We list Langlois-Château’s crémant, Sancerre and the Saumur Blanc Vieilles Vignes. We’ve started taking the old vine Chenin-Sauvignon which is spectacular. We’ll definitely stock the Quadrille. I don’t know why we’d never looked at it before. There’s almost never a time when there isn’t one of its wines on our menu, and normally two. I don’t think there’s a single other winery that has that consistency of presence on our wine list.”
JEFF FOLKINS, DALLING & CO, KINGS LANGLEY, HERTFORDSHIRE “They’re good wines and they’re great value. The Saumur rosé is absolutely exceptional for the price. They tick a lot of boxes: the wines are great, the pricing’s great and the presentation of them is great. That’s why I’m quite happy to have seven or eight wines on the shelves. It’s a well-regarded corporate enterprise but it feels like a small family producer. And we like the people. We always enjoy working with people we like.”
The consequences of keg I just dropped in to see what condition bottle conditioning was in
North Yorkshire’s Black Sheep Brewery enlisted the help of comedian Maisie Adam to confront popular misconceptions about cask ale. A YouTube video shows Adam reading out real-life tweets and ridiculing the views held in them, including ones that “95% of real ale does taste like warm arse piss” and “real ale is for old men, metalheads and weird folk guys in their twenties”.
It seemed for a while back there that cask beer had reached its own end of history, to borrow a phrase coined in 1992 by the political scientist Francis Fukuyama. Just as the global world order seemed to have settled into a consensus around western neo-liberalism after decades of tension and rancour between conflicting ideologies, real ale became accepted as something that could not only comfortably co-exist with other branches of the beer world, but was actually acknowledged as the true mark of quality.
For a while it even seemed like the Campaign for Real Ale might disappear, its agitating work in favour of the cask ale process complete.
So how did we end up back at arse piss and weird folk guys? Well, one answer is that the settlement around real ale’s status was a mirage all along, conjured out of the beer preferences of a generation of gatekeepers of consumer taste, who have all now been superseded by a younger generation of radical thinkers. For them, what the beer tastes like and the image it projects are more relevant than a political position on how it’s made.
Tied in with this is the inexorable rebirth and rise of keg beer, with young brewers using modern hop strains and kicking back on filtration to deliver flavoursome beer that is also cool, in both the physical and image senses. As well as finding acceptance with many old men and metalheads, such beers also reached out across the bridge to the mass market drinkers of premium lagers that the ageing gatekeepers had all but forgotten about.
This all rubbed off on the off-trade, of course. Keg beer is relatively easy to keep and doesn’t require the high throughput of cask to keep it fresh – great for hybrid locations that want to do draught beer without the faff.
And in packaged beer there’s been a post end-of-history shift from bottles to cans. Yet while the social media trolls still have much to say about cask ale, there’s very little noise about its packaged equivalent, bottle-conditioned beer, the subject of as much heated discourse as real ale was back in the 1980s and 1990s. Bottle-conditioned beer is still out there; it’s just that no one’s really that bothered about it one way or another anymore, which is a shame.
Essentially, bottle-conditioning involves introducing a small amount of sugar into a bottled beer before sealing it, inducing a second fermentation with the yeast residue left over from the first one. This produces a small amount of alcohol and soft carbonation; crucially, beers produced in this way will mature in the bottle, much the same as with wine ageing in oak casks or glass, bringing complexity, depth, balance and texture.
In the modern craft brewing community, bottle conditioning is a dying art
A few brewers are also can-conditioning, though it remains a relatively niche practice. But for the majority of conventionally-canned beer, there’s only a short shelf life in which the beer remains at its best before succumbing to the aggravating impact of oxygen.
Most of the very best packaged Belgian beers remain bottle-conditioned, as do many from traditional British ale brewers. But within the modern craft brewing community, it’s a dying art. Even Sussex brewer Hepworth, a go-to source of advice and inspiration on bottling in the last couple of decades, has installed a canning line.
With no particular big commercial gain to be had, bottle-conditioning is increasingly seen as a complication with little material gain. One notable exception is London brewer The Kernel which, with its plain brown-label aesthetic, doesn’t need the canvas of a can to daub cartoon graphics on. It has stuck to bottles and bottle-conditioning as an article of faith: one that delivers arse piss-free authenticity, longevity and character.
