"Arrivés à Troyes par l'express de Paris ils attendent généralement un second train pour joindre enfin la gare de Polisot où, le cheval "coco", Fluteau le cousin, Clément et son fils viendront les attendre tous les débuts juillet"

Ever since I read this excerpt from the book "Renoir à Essoyes" by Fabienne Dubois, which describes how "cousin Fluteau" would come collect the Renoir family at the train station to take them to their summer home in Essoyes, I’ve been curious to know exactly what the family connection was to Renoir. Well, last weekend I met up with a distant cousin, who had inherited her family’s archives and had spent considerable time researching the family tree. Thus I learned of Gustave Fluteau, the brother of Thierry’s great grandfather, who owned and operated a café in the Town of Essoyes, about 10 kms from our village.

Gustave was the elder brother in a family of 4 children. His father owned the “Hotel des Voyageurs “ here in Gyé, so I suppose it was quite natural that Gustave would embrace the same profession. (later, his brother Henri, Thierry’s great-grandfather would take over the hotel in Gyé) However, as was the case for many in those days, he was always searching for opportunities to diversify, and so in addition to running the local café with his wife Marthe Armedey (a native of Essoyes), he would provide transportation to and from the train station, about 15 kms away. In the absence of any kind of phone system in this rural corner of France, people would send quick notes written on postcards. The Renoirs, who by that time owned a summer home and workshop in Essoyes, would send word to Gustave via the post, to let him know their time and date of arrival, and ask him to collect them.

So I would guess it was more a customer relationship than familial, but I still like to think of Gustave offering the Renoirs a bottle of Champagne Fluteau as a welcome gift. The only problem is that at the time of the Renoirs, champagne was yet to be produced in the Aube, and the beverage made from the vines there was little more than cheap wine destined for the tables of Parisian workers.

If you are interested to learn more about Renoir’s life in Essoyes, you can find out more here

Or better yet, come for a visit!

Just finished harvesting and we're super happy with the result : great grapes, ripe and excellent quality. Can't wait to see how the wines turn out !

I was recently asked why we do all the grape picking by hand in champagne.

First of all, you need to be aware that champagne is an "appellation controlée" which means that all producers must adhere to guidelines which regulate how champagne can be produced. These guidelines are very strict and do not necessarily make our lives easier, but are meant to assure a certain level of quality for the consumer.

One of these rules is that ALL grapes in champagne are harvested manually.

Why is this? The main reason is because we do whole cluster pressing in Champagne. We want to pick the grape bunches on the stem. A harvesting machine works by shaking the vine and collecting the berries which have fallen off their stems. This rather rough process breaks the skin of the berries, not a big problem if you are making red wine, but definitely not what we want in champagne. To obtain the delicate aromas in champagne, it is essential to avoid any contact with the skin because that can result in hard, bitter (phenolic) caracters in the wine. Some "material other than grape" (i.e. leaves, shoots or the odd lizard...) may be collected along the way, which for obvious reasons we don't want to either. Keep in mind also that we make white wine out of black grapes (in our case, pinot noir) and in order to do this, we have to be sure that none of the coloring agents from the grape skins taint the wine.

However, I won't say that I have never dreamed of an automated grape picker. The reality is that it can be a very stressful period because our team of 2 full time employees suddenly grows to more than 30 over a 10 day period.  Finding such a huge supply of labor is difficult, and there are inherent problems in managing so many people. Not to mention the cost. Each grape picker earns at least the minimum wage of 9,53€ per hour, to which is added a 10% vacation benefit, and 10% for temporary contract, which brings us to 11,53€ per hour, not including any overtime. On top of that, the employer pays another 43% of social charges to the goverment. So the overall average cost is somewhere between 4-5000€ per hectare!

Although some noise has been made about allowing mechanical harvesting in champagne, I doubt that day will come soon. The machine doesn't carry with it a very romantic image, and that is also an important componant of champagne!

 "Ouf" ! (that's a sigh of relief in French). I'm so glad we've finished harvesting as of October 5th. The indian summer days of September have given way to clouds, rain and cold and I pity the workers who are still out there picking grapes. 

This was a very unusual season for us. The cold wet spring weather that lasted until the end of June really slowed down the vegetation, and as a result the harvest was predicted to start early October. However, the hot and relatively dry summer months of July and August meant that the grapes had a chance to develop. That was somewhat compromised when we had a week of rain in September. The "official" opening dates of the harvest were published on September 21st, and the starting date for our village was Thursday the 26th. Thierry had to make a quick decision : should he pick the grapes early when they were still in good condition, at the risk of them not being ripe enough? Or should he wait for them to ripen more and risk further degradation? He decided to start picking on Friday the 27th, and we were amazed at how fast the ripening had progressed, and also how fast the first signs of botrytis were progressing! Hindsight is always 20/20, and perhaps we could have started a couple of days earlier, but we're happy we did not wait until October!

"phew" ! (c'est un soupir de soulagement en anglais) Nous sommes très heureux d'avoir fini de vendanger le 5 octobre, car l'été indien a disparu et a laissé place à la pluie, la grisaille et le froid. Il y a encore quelques confrères qui n'ont pas terminé de rentrer leur récolte, et nous compatissons !

Cette saison était assez particulière dans le sud de la champagne. Le printemps froid et pluvieux a retardé la vegetation considérablement. Le dicton dit qu'on compte 100 jours après la fleur pour savoir la date du début des vendanges. Logiquement, puisque la floraison s'est passé début juillet, on aurait dû vendanger la deuxième semaine d'octobre ! Heureusement que les conditions estivales de juillet et aout ont aidé la vigne a ratrappé son retard. La date du début de vendanges était fixé dans notre village pour le 26 septembre. Thierry hésitait encore car il craignait que les raisins n'avaient pas encore atteint leur maturation optimum, mais finalement il a décidé de commencer dès le vendredi 27 car les conditions sanitaires se dégradaient rapidement. Il n'a pas regretté sa décision, car finalement la maturité était au rendez-vous, et les raisins étaient encore en bon état. Bien qu'avec le recul, c'est toujours facile, mais on pense avoir pris la bonne décision !

Nous sommes actuellement au Salon des Vins à Oyannax dans l'Ain ou les visiteurs se font rares......comme preuve, voici des photos prises à 15h samedi montrant les allées vides. Pendant qu'on est coincé ici, un grand soleil brille généreusement dehors et les clients onts sûrement décidé d'en profiter après ce long hiver........on ne peut pas leur en vouloir, car nous  aurions fait sans doute le même choix... !

Thierry and I are participating in a wine fair this weekend trying to sell our wares in a small city in southeastern France called "Oyannax". The place is depressingly EMPTY, as you can see from the photos I took at 3 o'clock in the afternoon. The sun is shining brightly outside while we are stuck in here, and I'm sure even the most avid wine lover would rather be outside soaking up some rays after our long, cold, wet winter......I know I would !  

During our 2010 bottling, I encouraged Thierry to start producing in 3 liter bottles, called "Jéroboam", the equivalent of four normal sized bottles.  We'd never ventured into larger formats, because for one thing, absolutely all the work has to be done manually, from bottling to labeling, not to mention the turning ("remuage"), disgorging and corking also all done by hand. Even finding a printer to print up a small quantity in the right format with a decent quality paper is difficult. But we're happy to announce that the first bottles are now available ! However, I was chewed out by a (very) irate customer who was not happy about the price, which he pointed out is 50% more than the price of one bottle multiplied by 4. I explained about all the manual work involved, adding that the bottle alone is 20 times the price of a 75cl bottle, and the individual wooden gift box is more expensive too. Ofcourse if you have a dozen guests, four  bottles of champagne will go around fine, but if you are celebrating a once in a lifetime event, a Jéroboam can be just the thing you need to really memorialize the special moment !

Below is a family photo : starting from right to left: Half bottle (0,375l) Bottle (0,75l) Magnum (1,50 l) and Jéroboam :