Our first Champagne at The Last Drop! Something entirely new, but in another sense a step back in time. 

My first encounter with Vouette et Sorbée was in around 2010 when we made a staff trip to visit winemaker Bertrand Gautherot at his vineyards. If I recall correctly this had something to do with the wine shop I worked at being vetted as to whether we would be suitable to sell his Champagnes in Paris. At the shop we already had a truly great selection of grower champagne, and my boss was renovating a country house not far from Buxieres-sur-Arce where the Gautherots are located, so he was very keen that we should add Voutte et Sorbee to our stocks. In retrospect I do wonder why he included me in this travelling party on a mission to impress  - my French was bumbling and most of my wine confidence came from drinking when I probably should have been spitting. Nevertheless it worked, we got our allocation of Vouette et Sorbée, had a ball selling it, and even more fun drinking it - which continued the rest of the years we lived in France.

Bertrand started as a vigneron in 1986, tending his family’s hillside vineyards. A Jurassic limestone hillside, Vouette is the name of the main slope the vineyards are planted on, with a Kimmeridgian marl topsoil, Sorbée is the name of the very small Lieu Dit at the top of the slope, differentiated by its fractured Portlandian limestone soil. The soil types are much closer to those of Chablis to the south, than to those of the commercial heart of Champagne to the north. Demeter (biodynamic) certification was achieved in 1998. 

For the first 15 years of working the vineyards, the Gautherots remained grape growers only, selling their precious fruit to negociant champagne producers. Encouraged by friends and mentors Anselme Selosse and Jerome Prevost, Bertrand bottled his first Vouette et Sorbée wines in 2001; their last contracts for fruit sales ended in 2008. 

Despite a difficult first few years with poor growing seasons and yield, the wines were met with acclaim. Perhaps what marked the first wave in the revolution of grower champagnes most, was the commitment of these producers to make truly great fine wine first, the fact of them being sparkling wines of champagne nearly a secondary concern. Their immediate connection to the vineyards as growers and producers (unlike the negociant system that is still the model for the region), and the turn to organics and biodynamics, served the purpose of making the best possible wine. 

When we visited, I asked Bertrand why then, if biodynamics itself was not the goal, it was important to be certified biodynamic. His answer was that certification was like registering for a marathon - it forces you to commit to regularly going for a run. Without that commitment, he explained, we can know that going for a run is good for us, but that doesn’t mean we necessarily do it, especially when it seems hard. 

That commitment to making great wine first, continues in the winery. The Gautherots use a traditional wooden press, the wine is not pumped, fined or filtered, SO2 is added sparingly at press only, fermentation and elevage takes place in barrels up to 8 years old. Hand disgorged, all cuvées are finished non-dosé. From high quality low yielding (concentrated) fruit, the wines are managed with careful attention to the influence of lees and oxygen during elevage. The results are wines that are textured, layered and complex. They also have the clarity and drive typical of the best champagne. 

Champagne today is a region containing many paradoxes. From the outside Champagne can appear as the most conservative and least interesting of wine regions, built on luxury marketing, and a standardised product produced in large quantities. With the revolution of grower champagnes, the leading lights of the region came with no marketing budget (their resources spent on meticulous farming, and a commitment to unthinkably low yields relative to the standards of the region), with many, including Vouette et Sorbée, eschewing accepted methods of standardisation, preferring to make single vintage wines without added sugar, so as to uniquely express the singular time and place their wines come from. 

It is in this most stuffy and conservative of regions that some of the most radical, exciting and game changing wines are being produced. It’s such an exciting region for The Last Drop to enter into, and I couldn’t think of a better place to start than with Vouette et Sorbée. 

Chenin Blanc from the central Loire Valley was my first crush in French wine. Grown and made well it is deceptive in its complexity. It can be aromatically generous with notes of ripe stone fruit and crisp green apples and pears, hold residual sugar in perfect balance with scintillating, mouthwatering, acidity, and be both opulent and round and stony and mineral - all in the same glass. And it does it at a fraction of the price of equivalent wines made elsewhere. Lise and Betrand Jousset make exactly these wines. 

Montlouis in the central Loire Valley, might be one of the best places in the world to grow Chenin Blanc, but this far from defines Lise and Bertrand's story. Lise took a now somewhat familiar path to a life amongst the vines, beginning her career as a server and sommelière in restaurants in London and Paris. Bertrand took a more circuitous route, arriving at winemaking after an early stint in the military. 

I first met them in 2010 when I was still working my way toward the noble title of cellar rat on a staff trip to the Loire Valley where we visited them at their Domaine. At this point my main responsibilities in these trips was to try desperately to keep up with technical wine related French vocab and esoteric jokes, and to drink my share of killer wines in the back of the people mover on the way home to Paris. Two roles that have never really left me. The first thing you notice about Betrand is that he is a big guy whose physical stature is shadowed only by his gregarious, engaging nature. Lise is just as generous, warm and welcoming.

I would subsequently encounter Lise and Betrand in Paris, either at the shop if they were visiting or at some of the best natural wine salons, where they played integral roles. They will tell you that wine is above all made to be shared and enjoyed, and their role as winemakers is to to make wines that fulfill that purpose in any context, from the most fancy table to the back of the people mover with your mates. 

But life in Montlouis in the last decade or so has not been that simple. Multiple vintages have been decimated by either frost, hail, disease pressure, or a combination of all three. In typical fashion the Joussets found a positive solution in the most difficult of circumstances, sourcing fruit from similarly minded natural wine making friends in other parts of the country and creating a new range of ex-appellation wines. These wines are all treated with the same care as their estate wines, and are each in their unique way just as delicious as the wines from their Montlouis estate.

Special mention should also be made of their Pét-Nats, of which they were early adopters who have perfected the style. They make several, both from estate grown fruit and from organic fruit sourced elsewhere. For me they are benchmarks for this method of sparkling wine, managing to be fruity and fun while also leesy, sherbity, linear and pure. Not to mention incredibly moreish.

Marc Ollivier began Domaine de la Pepiere in 1984, as the property grew in size and stature he took on first local boy Rémi Branger and then former intern Gwénaëlle Croix. Marc retired in 2019, leaving Rémi and Gwen to continue his legacy. 

It would be easy to describe Domaine de la Pépière as radical for its region. Muscadet, situated on the western edge of the Loire, where the river meets the Atlantic ocean, is a grape growing region historically dominated by an industrial, négociant based, wine making system that values quantity over everything. Grape prices are low, the wines cheap and (at best!) forgettable. 

From the beginning la Pépière took a different path. Low yields, old vines, hand harvesting, single vineyard terroir specific wines, wild yeast fermentation, and long and slow (up to four-five years) maturation of wines on lees. As time went on and Rémi and Gwen added their own influence, La Pépière converted to organic and eventually biodynamic farming. Today, a very small amount of SO2 at bottling is the only addition to the wine. The viticultural and wine making decisions at la Pépière are entirely practical, motivated by a desire to make the best possible wines that speak of their place. The fact that they fit comfortably within the parameters of the natural wine world is neither here nor there for Gwen and Rémi. 

As much as the drive to make great wine sets la Pépière apart, far from representing a radical departure, they have for a long time been heavily invested in telling what they believe is the true story of Muscadet. Marc especially was instrumental in the formation of several ‘Cru Communale’ designations within the formal AOC system of the region.This dedication to having the unique terroirs of their region recognised, and the meticulous way with which they work as winegrowers, is for them a direct response to the quality of Muscadet as a place to grow wine. They would prefer to think that their approach is not an anomaly, but rather a setting of standards appropriate to their region. 

The wines themselves are a delight, especially for lovers of lively, focused, exceptionally mineral driven wines. If you love the best of Chablis, these wines are for you. It is, luckily for us, only the particularities of the region that keep them incredibly affordable. Some of my favourite wines to drink, exceptionally age worthy, and unbeatable value for money. 

For the last few decades the Montanet family have made for themselves a place in the wine world that is unique and highly respected. They make Burgundian wines that are affordable, affable and simply delicious. Thoughtful but unpretentious wines that are warmly welcomed at the tables of all your favourite winemakers and their switched on wine loving friends. Valentin Montanet, who recently took the reins from his parents Jean and Catherine, will tell you that his wines are definitively Burgundian, even if they tell a very different story than that of the prestigious world of the contemporary Cote d’Or. These are soulful, thirst quenching, morale boosting wines, not wines that require quiet intellectual or spiritual reflection and deep pockets. 

In a sense the wines of La Cadette and Monanet-Thoden, both headed by Valentin, and both started by his parents, reflect the place they come from. St Pere is a tiny village just to the south  of Chablis. Quintessential rural France, a village dominated by its 13th Century rural Church, surrounded by picturesque pastoral land, and little else. It is about as far from the commercial hubs of the Burgundian wine trade as you can travel before completely leaving the region, both geographically and culturally. It makes sense that the wines that come from here should feel no need to be monuments to anything but simple pleasure. What is also clear when you visit the Montanets is that, although it might have been forgotten by history for a brief moment, there are great terroirs here. Soils rich in limestone and marls, a very cool climate and sundrenched vineyard slopes. In the right hands this place makes wines that are lean and driven while also showing texture and aromatic complexity that comes from grapes at full maturity without excessive sugar levels. 

Speaking of the right hands. Jean and Catherine first planted their vines in Vezelay in 1987, at which point the grapes were destined for the local cooperative where Jean became the general manager. In this role Jean grew in confidence as a vigneron, and was especially inspired by the close working relationship and friendship he formed with Bernard Raveneau of Domaine Francois Raveneau. That confidence was boosted when in 1997 Vezelay was officially recognized as its own AOC. With a growing awareness of the value of their terroirs, and an understanding that great wine first needed great viticulture, by the end of the 1990s the Montanets had converted to organics. Soon after Jean and Catherine broke away from the cooperative and established first Domaine de la Cadette, and later with land inherited from Catherine’s family, Domaine Montanet-Thoden. Like a number of winemakers of his generation, Jean was greatly influenced in his approach to natural winemaking by his friendship with Marcel Lapierre - pioneer of this approach in Beaujolais. There is an honesty and ease to the wines  - not to mention the use of carbonic maceration with the reds  - which reflects that influence. 

Since Valentin has taken the helm, Jean has remained involved in the everyday operation, and he has very much continued in the spirit with which his parents began. In recent years he has started a negociant label called La Soeur Cadette. Made with fruit purchased from like minded growers in other parts of Burgundy and Beaujolais, the wines are made at the Domaine in St Pere with the same stylistic approach and care as the wines made with fruit from the Montanet’s vineyards. In one sense La Soeur Cadette was a practical response to devastating frosts and unpredictable climatic shifts that have had drastic consequences for winemakers in Northern France in recent years. But it has also presented Valentin an opportunity to make wines with fruit from regions that he enjoys drinking and feels an affinity with as a winemaker. ext goes here

Cécile and Phillipe Valette’s wines have for a long time been a core reference on the lists of natural wine bars and top restaurants across the northern hemisphere. Their exceptional wines are as beloved by sommeliers and other vintners as they are by the casual quaffer. They also find a home in the cellars of both fans of fine Burgundy, and natural wine lovers (not always the same camp).

The Valettes’ reputation and popularity is well-deserved. They only grow Chardonnay – typical of the Macconais – and all cuvees are site-specific, created with precise, determined viticultural practices that draw out the intricacies of this southernmost region of Burgundy.

Grapes are left to ripen longer than most of the region, yields are low, great care is taken to promote plant and microbial diversity above and below ground. In the early 2000s, the Valettes began experiments with extended barrel aging to complement their hands-off approach to wine making.

On tasting the first results in 2004, the Revue du Vin de France described their practices as having “neither precedent nor equivalent in modern wine making” and said the impact of the wines on the industry when bottled would be “like a bomb”.

Today the long maturing experiments of the Valettes have become their standard practice. The wines, as predicted, are as delicious and explosive with energy as they are unique.

Natives of the Jura, Pauline and Géraud met while studying winemaking in Dijon and created Domaine des Marnes Blanches when they returned to the Jura in 2006. Since then they have carved out a position for themselves next to the stars of the Sud-Revermont, the southern part of the Jura which has seen a full blown renaissance in the last decade or two. Their starting point is slightly different from that of their local peers at Domaines Ganevat and Labet as they don’t come from established wine making families, which makes their rise all the more remarkable. The Revue du Vin de France wrote as much when awarding them a prestigious second etoile in record time, noting the ‘disconcerting ease’ illustrated in their mastery of the winemaking styles of the Jura. The RVF writes further that recent vintages have ‘never ceased to amaze’, concluding that ‘The future of the Jura is written here.’    

They have farmed organically from the word go and have added parcels (some they planted) along the way to reach a total of 12ha today, spread across four villages in the Sud-Revermont. Cesancey, their first acquisition, is home to the white marl after which the domaine is named, while Gevingey, Vincelles and Ste-Agnès have more varied soil types, the majority being red marl and gryphées (limestone rich in fossils). After the first few years they were able to add a purpose built winery in St-Agnes, which has  given them plenty of space and allows them to vinify and age every parcel separately. 

I came to meet Pauline, Géraud, and their wines through mutual friends at Domaine Labet. They were already in hot demand and I held out little hope that I would be able to secure any of their fabulous wines beyond a few bottles for personal consumption. I am doubly delighted to now be bringing them to Aotearoa. 

Julien Labet bristles with energy and seems to get by on very little sleep; when tasting or talking wine he is precise and focussed on the smallest of details. He treats every corner of the vineyard as a unique and interesting mystery to be discovered through the lens of wine.

Every opinion on how and why it tastes as it does can lead him to understand it better and to find its most truthful and balanced expression. No stone and no thought is left unturned.

Today Julien, as head winemaker, runs Domaine Labet with his sister and brother, Charline and Romain, having taken over from their father, Alain. The wines are held in great esteem across the industry in France, and are highly sought after across the natural wine metropoles of the world.

The Hamlet of Rotalier in the Sud-Revermont department of the Jura (toward the south of the region), while somewhat removed from the more established appelations to the north, is unquestionably a great terroir - the Labets along with their neighbours the Ganevats have alerted the world to this.

The Labets’ wines are a reflection of that terroir, but they’re also the product of a winemaker who is a master of his craft and whose great energy is totally attuned to it.

Tasting with Julien takes ages. I’ve hosted public tastings with him hoping our little shop could make some sales to keep paying the bills, only for the throngs of wine lovers who inevitably turned up to be trapped by Julien as he entranced and baffled them with endless site specific cuvées he had hidden in his backpack – he’s incredibly generous with anyone interested in his passion. At his home in Rotelier, a ‘little tasting before lunch’ goes on through lunch and dinner before you finally roll away from the table late in the evening.

Barrel tastings draw half the village and usually industry folks from further afield as Julien leads conversations (usually by asking lots of questions, as much to himself as to anyone else) about the infinite variations on a terroir and a season to be found in each sample. He somehow holds all of these details and conversations on his palette and allows them to find their way to his finished wines.

Domaine Labet’s wines are both wonderfully focused and concentrated, while remaining detailed and precise. It’s a rare trick.

Sometimes it seems like everyone has a story about Jean Foillard and his wines. 

The origin story is well trodden. Foillard, along with Marcel Lapierre and friends, under the inspiration of scientist and wine tinkerer Jules Chauvet, began making wines in the 1980s that would transform how we understood the Beaujolais region, and gave the world what we now know as natural wine. It’s hard to overstate the influence of these relative unknowns and their vanguardist experiments on what in much of the wine world is now considered simply best practice. 

Foillard is of course today not at all an outsider. And if you hang around wine and wine people long enough you’ll inevitably hear personal stories about his wines that I think tell us just as much about them as do historical accounts of their origins. 

Many wine drinkers have stories about their first encounter with Foillard’s wines - usually it’s a bottle of Cote du Py, from the by now practically mythical hillside just outside the village of Villié-Morgon. Wine pros will tell you it's the wine they want to drink when they're not working. Mischievous wine merchants tell stories of sneaking aged bottles of Foillard into lineups of cru Burgundy blind tastings and winning the day. It’s my Mum’s favourite wine. 

I didn’t know any of these stories when I first encountered Foillard. My first job in wine largely involved moving pallet loads of wine down the narrowest of stairwells into the cellar beneath a shop. Foillard was one of our best selling wines, and Jean delivered the wines himself to the shop. He still regularly drives to Paris to make his own deliveries. My first Foillard memory is helping Jean unload endless boxes from his little delivery truck. My most recent is from May this year when I ran into Jean and his son Alex at a tasting deep in rural Loire Valley, which led to joining them at home in Villié-Morgon.

It’s satisfying to now represent both Jean and Alex’s wines in Aotearoa, a bit like circling back to where I started, only at home. Between then and now Foillard’s wines have not so much punctuated key moments of my life, as lubricated them. Wines made not to be exclamation points to the story but to be part of it. 

There’s something so simply delicious about these wines, they are just a pleasure without being in any sense demanding of attention. But they are at the same time also completely captivating, enchanting and full of grace. I think that might be why there’s so many stories shared about these wines. They’re invitingly accessible, immediate and honest, but they hold you with something deep and intriguing. Profound beauty from something so apparently simple. 

When in 2021 the prestigious Revue de Vin de France awarded Sylvain Fadat its Vigneron de l’Annee prize – the wine world’s Academy Award for Best Picture – it was rewarding much more than one vintage of exceptional southern wines.

In this case, the picture had been 30 years in the making.

The Fadat family have farmed the lieu-dit known as Auphilac since the Nineteenth Century, and there are records of vineyards on the site dating back to Roman Times. It is historically and geologically a special place. But when, in 1989, Sylvain and his wife Desiree established Domaine d’Auphilac and set out to make their own wine, it was no simple task.

The Languedoc at the time was associated with mass production and the worst excesses of agro-chemical “advances”, and local varietals were being torn out in favour of the Bordeaux grapes that were fashionable in international markets. But Sylvain was committed to organic, and later biodynamic, farming. He wanted to grow the grapes that his family had for generations, particularly Carignan, the local varietal which had been all but written off. Money was scarce and equipment difficult to source; Sylvain tells the story of having to borrow a friend’s tanker to use as a Cuve (a tank for vinefying in) when his first vintage came in.

The couple persevered, establishing their vineyard below the ruins of Montpeyroux’s ancient Château, with a perfect south west sun exposure and cascading terraces of marl and limestone scree, producing Carignan full of deep black fruit, salty olives, and long, finely-woven tannins.

In the early 2000s, after years of back-breaking work clearing boulders and wild shrubbery, Sylvain planted a second site called Cocaliers. The site is abundant in limestone and ancient marine fossils, at a greater elevation than the Auphilac site in the village below with a cooler north west aspect. From it they coax pure, elegant wines with an electric minerality.

Sylvain’s work has not only established a Domaine of rare quality producing wines at accessible prices, but has also been formative in turning around perceptions of his region in the eyes of wine lovers. Jancis Robinson crowned him “the King of Carignan”.

It is a lifetime’s work to breathe life back into a remarkable but abandoned grand terroir as Sylvain did at Auphilac; to then uncover and build a future classic terroir where no one had dared to look as he did with Cocalier is something else.

Speaking to the Revue de Vin de France, the Fadats revealed their secret: They decided from the beginning to do everything with joy. They are two of the most vibrant, energetic and generous souls you could meet, and it shows in their wines.

In the mid-nineties Jean-Baptiste Senat abandoned his legal studies in Paris to return to the land of his mother’s family in Trausse, in the Minervois region of the Langudoc. There, he and his wife Charlotte set about coaxing from that warm and rugged southern landscape wines that were at once true to their origin, while also seamlessly elegant. The resulting wines have a bold presence characteristic of their warm southern climate and are redolent of olives and garriques (the wild herbs that cover the stony soil), but also remain fresh and lively. They are in the best sense highly drinkable wines. That’s no surprise.

Charlotte and Jean-Baptiste are charming and gregarious people, and bottles of great wine are never far from their table. Charlotte is the driving force behind one of my very favourite trade tasting salons, the ‘Vin de mes Amis’, which is made up of a group of some of the best natural winemakers in France, and the occasional Amis from abroad.

As the name suggests, the Vin de mes Amis tasting is as much about conviviality and joie de vivre as it is about thoughtful delicious wines, as it should be. The Senats’ wines are fine, fresh, and elegant, standing up to any of the best natural wines coming

out of France today. But there’s no doubting these are Languedoc wines, and they still express all the qualities that come from growing in such a dramatic and rugged environment.