Sebastien's Sancerre

Sebastien Riffault is a bit like a big teddy bear. This is not a reference to his physique, more to his face and demeanour. He has benign eyes and a face that is generally smiling, even if the smile is somewhat concealed behind a beard. It is the face of the man who makes wines in the purest image of Sancerre and we love him for it. We loved him before we met him and, now having made his acquaintance, we love him all the more.

Mind you, Tom and Jude not only made his acquaintance but proceeded to get quite drunk with him at the Real Wine dinner earlier this year. I had to deal with the result of that when I fetched both of them after having to do a tasting elsewhere. On this later visit Jude was most reproachful when I was so impressed with Sebastien’s top cuvees since he claimed to have told me all about them during the journey home.

I had to remind him that the drunken ramblings of one man while another mutters incomprehensibly in the back of the van are not usually noted by me in all seriousness and followed up on forthwith.

Never mind. Here we all are in the stupidly pretty town of Sancerre, having dinner in a restaurant called The Cat, with very lovely Sebastien. We start by tasting, all from magnum, his 2008’s. This is a vintage of acidity and, particularly in this format, the wines are all rather lively and very tight at first.

The Akmenine (which we sell) is almost pure grapefruit and limestone; the flavours of richer, honeyed fruit which are usually there are not evident tonight. All of Sebastien’s wines are made from biodynamically grown grapes harvested incredibly late (indeed the Sauvignon of this year was picked on the 19th of October). He says that this is how Sancerre was 50 or 60 years ago; before the very modern vogue for more austerity and arguably, more simplistic fruit came into being, facilitated largely by the use of stainless steel during fermentation.

He sticks to old wood and does everything he can to preserve as much of the vivacity of the wine as possible, working utterly naturally and without any sulphur. The result is life in a bottle, changing every day, reacting – often very dramatically – to all the big life changes it has to endure – bottling, moving, the opening of the bottle again for drinking. These are often not easy wines to drink and serve. You have to open and pay attention. Does it need some air? Provide this forthwith. Is it too cold? Let it rest, warm up and revive. The wine is full of life and like all life, it has its own rhythms. Ignore these at your palate’s peril.

The 2008 Skeveldra comes from a vineyard on flint as opposed to chalk for the Akmenine. This was the cuvee that was the subject of Jude's drunken ramblings. It has a much richer perfume but still an amazingly delicate, although very steely minerality. This is part of what we love about Sebastien’s wines: the combination of power and finesse.

This wine is delicious and I have to admit that even in his drunken state Jude got it completely right. If smoke could be turned into a liquid suffused with aromatic herbs and added to wine, the result would be the Skeveldra.

Next is a cuvee fermented, at least partially, in whole bunches and on the skins. Sebastien worked for a time in Beaujolais before returning home to Sancerre and the Sauvignon for this cuvee is basically treated exactly the same as Gamay. This too is delicious. Rich with orange peel and white chocolate, the characteristic grapefruit and stony minerality are none the less ever present even if somewhat buried beneath other aromas.

We have a debate about terroir versus technique. Clearly, this wine is less about the place that it is from (although the Sancerre stoniness is for me, definitely present) than it is about how it was made. The world of natural wine is being, loosely and without the animosity that generally characterises such fault lines, split between those who emphasise the former and those whose wines are more redolent of the latter (low temperature fermentations, carbonic maceration etc.).

Personally, I find the argument slightly tiresome. If a wine tastes great, either because the minerality is to the fore or because there is a purity and intensity of fruit, does it really matter either way? At least in both cases, what you are drinking is the unadulterated juice of the

grape and I never find wines in the latter camp to be overly simplistic (which is the implication). Pure fruit can be every bit as multi layered as the combination of fruit and mineral.

Next, his red is utterly awesome. Raudonas is 100% Pinot Noir and necessitates an immediate retrospective swallowing of all the words I have ever uttered against red Sancerre. None of them have been good, but this is great Pinot by anyone’s standard. Sebastien explains: "Pinot is not big. It has to be made to be fine and delicate, easy to drink and fresh.”

And to that end he does whole bunch fermentation here too, leaving the wine for 18 months in old wood. The result is lifted, scented cherry fruit with an amazingly sweet red fruit sorbet finish.

Dinner over, we follow Sebastien’s battered van on a tour of the back streets of Sancerre. Two of us, myself included, stay at the hotel while the rest pile into the back of the Riffault chariot and spend a few riotous hours in the winery, clambering up and down ladders to peer in at the teeming life in the nascent, fermenting wine and drinking specialist Belgian beer.

As you can imagine, breakfast the next morning is rather subdued. Florian and I are busy on our laptops and everyone else is meditatively contemplating croissants when Sebastien arrives.

“Aah, whiffy time!” he says, beaming at the group.

We stare back blankly and it takes a while to realise that he is making reference to Florian and I, remotely logged into the hotel’s WiFi.

Whiffy sounds so much more amusing though, don't you think?  Henceforth whenever I have to do something via WiFi which is getting me down, I shall think of it as Whiffy time to cheer myself up.

We drive to the Skeveldra vineyard. It is a diamond bright morning, achingly cold but utterly pure. The Riffault family farm 12 hectares in the commune of Sancerre and have vineyards on two soil types – silex and chalk. All in all, there are 35 different parcels which give the wines great complexity. They are based in the eastern part of the appellation and from where we stand, near the crest of a hill, we look directly out over Pouilly Fume.

This is a smaller and much flatter appellation, having none of the high hills of Sancerre.

The average age of this vineyard is 50 years. Because Sauvignon Blanc is particularly susceptible to a range of viral diseases it is very rare to find truly old vines and their replanting program is extensive an on-going. Their farming is of course completely natural, but Sancerre being the highly populous region that is it, the proximity of those liberally applying all sorts of additives to the soil is a worry. Sebastien acknowledges this but, "What can you do?" he asks with a shrug. Other than not compromise your own principles and continue to work as hard as you can at making your vines as healthy and happy as possible.

We talk again of terrior. Both Sancerre and Pouilly Fume are places where, in the best examples, this is of the utmost importance. Having only a single variety to work with means that the character of the vineyard is arguably infinitely more important. Sebastien points out though that true terroir goes beyond merely the growing of the grapes. Even if you have grown naturally, would the addition of sugar from the Caribbean, Sulphur Dioxide from Iran and wood flavours from a barrel from elsewhere in France really result in a wine which can truly be described as a product of this terroir?

He has a good point.

Recently, he started working with horses in the vineyard, a practise seen as much better than even lightweight modern tractors since there is much less compaction of the soil this way. Sebastien admits to having lost a few vines to over zealous hooves but he is getting better at it.

On that note, we pile back into the van to go and visit his beasts of burden. The two of them stand, big as houses and just as solid, in a field next door to the winery. They are as friendly as they are large, stomping heavily over to us and grinning broadly. I give the bigger an organic plum I have brought with me from London in case of a blood sugar crisis. She chomps on it thoughtfully for a few seconds before unceremoniously spitting it all over Tom’s shoes.

Back to the winery where the hiss of life in the fermentation vats is audible. Yeasts, unhindered by even the merest pinch of sulphur dioxide, are going crazy and their rich, heavy scent hangs in the air, laid over the sweet, fruity smell of the juice/wine. All of the vats are open topped, with oxygen interacting in full,  developing the much richer, rounder flavours of his wines as opposed to what is now thought of as ‘classic’ Sancerre.

Even a tiny bit of SO2 now will, Sebastien believes, severely dampen the yeast's ardour and even a pinch before bottling will inhibit biological development in bottle. I cast my mind back over the 3 years that we have been selling (and drinking) his wines and despite this complete lack of what is supposed to be a vital preservative, there is not a single example I have tasted which is unacceptably oxidised or which shows even a hint of bacterial spoilage.

It is time for lunch. We move to a very simple room just off the main winery. A long wooden table is soon laden with crusty bread, chacuterie, cheeses and for me, some smoked salmon. There is also Bordier butter. Russell the chef and Florian are both ecstatic.

For the uninitiated (like me), Bordier is supposedly the very best butter on the face of the planet. Beaten into utterly delicious, silky submission by hand between two wooden paddles(who knew butter had a rebellious streak?), it is sold in all the very best French restaurants and delis and a few over on our side of the channel as well.

We have a variety – sweet, salted and even one with seaweed. The group are hushed in appreciation, cutting chunks as thick as cheese and eating these with far- away expressions on their faces. The butter goes with all the wines but that is no surprise. Hand made artisan butter and wine produced the same way were clearly destined to be enjoyed together.

We finish with an orgy of Madeleines served with a 2001 late harvest Chenin from Oliver Cousin. Heaven. Our arteries no doubt irreparably clogged, it is into the cars next for the long drive back to Touraine. Everyone falls asleep and I am left alone with the unfolding road along the river, all fairytale turrets and far-away- kingdom bridges; the taste of flint and fruit still strong in my mouth.