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RÉGIS’S FAVORITE WINE

At times, to get a wine conversation going, Edward likes to ask the question “What’s your favorite wine?” or “If you could have any wine for your last bottle on earth, what would it be?” I am amazed when some people answer before he has even finished the question. Not Régis. When asked in his huîtrerie, the smile fell off his face, and you could almost hear the grinding of his thought machine. He took the question very seriously, even though we were pretty sure what his answer would be. Some people pick a famous and great wine they have never tasted, others an old wine that connects to a year that marks an important event in their lives, and others go back to the greatest wine and wine memory they possess for a repeat performance. Régis said, “Sancerre.” “Well, there is Sancerre and Sancerre,” Edward prompted, and Régis’s thought machine really went to work. “Plante des Prés from Daniel Crochet,” he then added, citing one of the wines on his wine list. He gave a current vintage—no doubt the year will change over time, but the choice of this as his favorite wine won’t.

Régis’s love for wine grew with his love for oysters. He discovered wines, and more particularly Sancerre, at friends’ homes. When it came to creating a wine list for his place, it was a fun little game. He thought there would be few wines, but only the ones he loved and felt his customers would, too, because they were good pairings with his oyster selection. Being a wise guy, he did several blind tastings with friends who knew a thing or two about wine and put his favorite Sancerre brands in the selection: he says Crochet came first and Alphonse Mellot got high marks, then also Jack Pinson as well as those of Jean-Claude Chatelain in Pouilly-Fuissé. Voilà, nearly half of his wine list was complete. Today it is a bigger wine list than the small space can seemingly hold, but that’s Régis.

I’d been to wine regions all over the world, and dozens and dozens of wineries, but I had never been to Sancerre. I wanted to meet Crochet and Mellot and visit the source. When I told Régis my idea and asked him for some contact information, he said, “You must go on a Monday and I will meet you there for lunch.” That’s Régis. He didn’t want to miss the fun. Plus, it seems he likes to drive down in his truck, hang out a bit with his friends, and come back loaded with cases of Sancerre. I don’t want to know the details.

The trip is a mere hour and a half by car from Paris and perhaps fifty years in time. For this trip, Edward rented the car in his name and drove (sans tickets). When we arrived, I was astonished by the extent to which this area is frozen in time. It was another delightful experience of la France profonde and very close to Paris. We stayed in the village next to Sancerre, called Chavignol, just over the hill (but still classified as Sancerre), where the famous Crottin de Chavignol goat cheese is made: picturesque, quaint, rustic, and agricultural, with a more than decent inn and restaurant. Recommended.

MONSIEUR MELLOT

For me the treat always is to put a face on a wine I’ve been drinking for years, whether in Paris or New York, and Mr. Mellot (senior) was no disappointment, having about the same vivacity and aging capacity as his wines.

With so much of the world becoming similar thanks to globalization, it’s always refreshing to see that some things subsist, and some maisons de vin (winehouses/domains) continue to follow centuries-old traditions in the same family. Alphonse Mellot, Vigneron de Père en fils depuis 1513: yes, this house of winegrowers celebrated its five hundred years in the same family from fathers to sons in November 2013. Alphonse, who calls his son now in charge of making the wine dieu (god), is still going strong. He is vital, young late sixties, un personnage, a character, though I think he always was and calls himself an anarchist. His professed love of flying—he pilots his own small plane—makes him sound like a twenty-year-old.

He met and welcomed us in the town square (place) in Sancerre, a lovely village that really does make one feel that France has not budged in centuries. The pace is slower than in Paris, and there was no rush, though it was already late morning when we arrived. A few people were still lingering over café and tartine at the square’s cafés, while some tourists were already eyeing the lunch menus.

Monsieur Mellot greeted us warmly and with real pleasure and then announced the plan: a couple who owned a wine-shop in Paris would join us for a cellar visit and lunch. Régis would join us when he arrived. That happened in short order.

Alphonse Mellot started with a few jokes about Régis, who had brought along a good friend from Paris. Interestingly, Régis was kind of shy next to Alphonse’s strong personality. One could note a great sense of respect and deference to the winemaker and a pride in making the introduction. Régis was all smiles and kept telling us how much he liked to come down here and that he felt at home with his pals. It was easy to see it on his face. No doubt they’ve had lots of parties over the years, and Régis often shows up on Tuesdays for lunch at his oyster place looking a tad tired from too much drinking and eating the previous day and night. Right away one could feel the deep friendship between two artisans passionate about their trade.

Régis’s friend looked familiar. He turned out to be someone we’d met at the restaurant who organizes safaris to Africa and has been Régis’s friend for thirty years. What I learned was that he is married to Régis’s great friend Christiane, who serves lunch at the huîtrerie whenever Régis needs help or one of his young lunch serveuses can’t make it. Christiane is very devoted, and they’ve known each other since childhood. Both grew up in the same town, Jarnac, in the Charente, and married others but kept in touch through the years. Christiane’s lovely daughter, Elodie, worked for Régis at lunch for years while pursuing her dance career, and now has her own school.

Christiane told me one day when she was working, and Régis was not yet back from Sancerre, that Régis is the only commerçant she knows who does what pleases him rather than pleasing the customer. Yet he loves to connect and sit down with the customer at the end of a meal and talk and listen. She started by saying how entier (how whole, how complete) he is with his integrity, rigor, perfectionism… a rare thing. He is interested in only the best and is uncompromising in that regard to anything or anybody. She vouches for his sublime apple tart, which, no matter how he is feeling, he makes six days a week, nine months a year, knowing all the baking tricks and using the finest butter and organic golden delicious apples. She says, “Il a un fichu caractère,” her way of saying he is tough to deal with, as he can show his best and his worst during the course of a service. He easily gets carried away, and his stubbornness is one of a kind. And yet one could see she is in awe and would do anything for Régis.

We go to the cellars, and Alphonse Mellot does not lose a second in pointing out that there are fewer and fewer cellars in the wine world today, as most growers now have little financial choice but to opt for what looks like outdoor barns: cubes with corrugated roofs and some temperature-control system that avoids the extremes.

The Mellot family cellars, though, are the real thing, built underground and showing the rows of aging barrels. He does mention that there are still a few real cellars around, such as Vacheron’s, but clearly his family has the best in the area. With 60 hectares of vineyards, and about 45 employees between the vineyards, cellars, and tasting rooms/shops in town, the Mellot rule in Sancerre land and stand as the reference point for quality and professionalism.

The tasting of a dozen wines from barrels in the Mellot cellars took about two hours. To me, all the wines were good and displayed promising and distinctive personalities. The tasting took time because Alphonse Mellot is quite a talker, sometimes even about wine.

We tasted mostly white wines but a few reds. Most people think white when thinking of Sancerre, and the red variety is a small production (20 percent) overall, but they are more and more trendy with a young generation of French people in the know who want to impress their guests or help them discover new varieties.

Burgundy wines they are not, though the grape variety is pinot noir. The soil is more Loire Valley, even though Sancerre is very close to the Burgundy border. Before phylloxera hit in the late nineteenth century, the majority of the wines in Sancerre were red.

Throughout the tasting in the cellars, Alphonse joked and emphasized the importance of terroir and put down most Bordeaux wines, which grow on sand and thus are devoid of major characteristics. To him they taste alike and lack personality, except, he said, the Right Bank Saint Emilions and Pomerols.

What is important about the taste characteristics of Sancerre is that there are three different types of soil that produce wines with distinctive differences. There is silex, or flinty clay, which—surprise—tends to produce wines with flinty minerality overshadowing most of the fruit. There is white soil (terres blanches), which is chalky clay from fossilized seashell limestone. This is known as Kimmeridgian marl. This soil produces fruity and age-worthy wines. Then there is caillottes, gravelly limestone, which results in a more delicate and perfumed wine.

When it comes to describing wines, Alphonse likes to mention how he once had to describe a wine (not his) to a group of journalists, so he pretended to write notes and then recited a ready-made text, written by a famous enologist/sommelier, which described the appearance, nose, taste, and food pairing of a wine that could apply to any or none, and left the group speechless. To him, wine is not about words and lengthy descriptions, but about pleasure, conviviality, and sharing. The rest is nonsense.

When asked what he’d eat with each of his wines, Alphonse was quick to reply, “Tout,” anything, but prefers again to talk about the soil structures and always always always wants to share a bottle with une jolie femme, a pretty woman. Here goes the Frenchman!

Another few statements he made during the course of the day helped me understand the man and what he stands for: “Aller à l’essentiel” (Whether it’s about the wines or life, only the essential matters) and “En France, tout est interdit sauf ce qui n’est pas autorisé” (In France, everything is forbidden except what’s not permitted). And when he talked about certain visitors… les notaires (a profession in France to negotiate sales of houses, land, etc.), who could be collants (uptight) when they first came but always left la queue entre les jambes (with the tail between their legs), we all laughed. Mellot cited all sorts of authors amid his jokes.

Since it was a Monday in Sancerre, the best “restaurant” was closed, and after tasting all those wines, we were starving. Monsieur Mellot invited us to lunch in a tiny place in Chavignol. The place was worth seeing, and the owner looked like he was right out of an old movie—a bit roly-poly, with a big red nose and a big grin. The menu was limited, and we opted for the tomato stuffed with fresh goat cheese from Chavignol, bien sûr, and then it was a pata negra with tagliatelle, and for dessert a thick chocolate mousse sure to give one energy to walk through steep hills in the afternoon.

The first course came, the owner-waiter added knives to the table setting, and Régis looked at it, stuck his hand in his pocket, came out with his pocket knife, and smiled. Mellot agreed and pulled out and opened his pocket knife. Where am I? I thought. What year is it? Then Régis’s friend pulled out his knife. The guys were happy. We drank more Mellot wines, and Alphonse told the owner he’d bring some bottles to replace whatever we consumed. No bill was given. He probably had an account, and again the trust and friendship came out.

A memorable lunch ended, we split up, and Régis took us to visit the House of Crochet.

THE HOUSE OF CROCHET

Monsieur Crochet is a man in his early thirties, I suspect, who is the portrait of a young vigneron in twenty-first-century France. We arrived at his winery to find out from his young wife that he was out working in the vineyards, but she was ready and happy to drive us to inspect the various vineyard sites, which they lease and farm.

So, driving over hills and a variety of soils, we saw what constituted Crochet’s individual bottlings. Along the way, we passed him on his tractor: he was driving through a steeply sloped vineyard, headphones on to cancel the noise, head down, peering at the vines and grapes and his work. Monsieur was working hard, as there were just a few days left to do a lot of the necessary work before the heavy rain forecasted for the following week.

After a nice tour led by his wife, we met up with Daniel at another hillside. Here was another man interested in the soil and talking and showing the young buds and what was next on his agenda. “See that line of trees there… you cannot grow grapes there, the soil is too erosive… and over there it changes from clay to gravel. Here, look at this grape and that one ten feet over there. Completely different.” The enthusiasm and passion for the vineyards was apparent, as was a love for being outdoors. He felt lucky to have his job, and his wife and his two young kids. His wife joked that he was not good at administrative work, and his bookkeeping was worse. She was pleased and honored to oblige him and handle all that… and “he is in heaven.”

After our multivineyard tour illustrating the differences between higher and lower elevations as well as sun exposure, including hours and angles and a host of defining details in Mother Nature, we headed to Daniel’s tasting room for proof that what he was talking about was in the bottles.

It was a nice little tasting room in a nice little winery: nice maps, nice little bar, nice wine descriptions, and wines for sale. We were just into our first swirl, smell, taste, and who showed up? Alphonse Mellot. Then the jokes started flying back and forth like flying saucers… or more like Frisbees. Then the corks really started popping and the laughter was contagious. Edward said he felt like he was in a friendly neighborhood pub or bar.

Régis was eager to tell us about how after the Crochet wines kept winning his blind tastings, he became immediately fond of young Crochet when he placed his first order. Crochet told him, “You pay me when you pay me.” That is the kind of trust Régis has in his friends and embraces in others. From that trust the friendship grew, and now it’s like they are great old friends meeting, yet they’ve known each other less than ten years.

There is an expression in the wine business: “Like the winemaker, like the wine.” That’s why hospitality is such a big part of the wine-marketing business. It is very hard not to like the Mellot and Crochet families. When I dined recently at Le Vivier, a one-star Michelin restaurant in the Provence village of Isle-sur-la-Sorgue, I was pleasantly surprised to see “Sancerre La Moussière (A. Mellot)” listed. Of course, I just had to order it. Delicious.