The Chateau des Estanilles covers 35 hectares. The property's name come from two distinct areas of the vineyard--"Estagnols" and "Fontanille." They are the two hillsides on the horizon. An outcropping of schist, which is responsible for the Faugère appellation's homogeneous terroir, is visible in the foreground.
The first thing you notice about the Château des Estanilles is that it’s closer to a Roman villa than a chateau. I’m an American whose primary method of selecting a French wine in the Pennsylvania State Liquor Stores where I shopped for wine before coming to France was the “Château de something-or-other” on the label. Despite having lived here for the better part of two decades, it’s still not clear to me what criteria must be met to put the word “Château” on a wine label.
Of course some estates do have the requisite chateau on their property, so there really is no question about using the name. Evidently it can be also a question of proximity; a chateau in the village or down the road is reason enough. Or maybe there’s a pile of stones or an ancient foundation on site; viola, “Chateau de whatever” is created.
There’s an entire other category of domaine-produced French wine that incorporates the chateau moniker, and this is where winemaker Michel Louison, owner of said Château des Estanilles, fits. He confided to me, partly through my interview with him and without my even mentioning the subject, “You know, there isn’t really a chateau here.” This pseudo confession was accompanied by a wink, leaving me with the sudden realization that “chateau” was sometimes a state of mind, rather than a Versailles-like edifice, and, that, from a commercial perspective, maybe we Americans could learn a thing or two about marketing from the French.
Not that this matters any, as everything else here is very real; from Louison’s devotion to the wild schist-filled hills of the Faugères appellation in the Languedoc to the dark, rustic, spicy, mineral-accented wines that he produces, among the best in the region.
Louison, perhaps reflecting his years in Switzerland before purchasing his Faugères property, is a perfectionist. His large, modern wine cellar is equipped with temperature-controlled, stainless steel tanks. The partially-subterranean cellar has 250 barrels, 30 of which are replaced annually. The oak barrels come from central France, and he only uses coopers who air-dry the wood for at least 24 months. This gives, he explains, the tannin in the wine the proper balance and structure.
Louison’s daughter, Sophie, who has worked with her father and her mother, Monique, since she finished her viticulture and oenology studies in 1999, gave me a tour of the cellar. Meanwhile, a spry 65-year-old Louison was busy cleaning the inside of the tanks with a pressure washer. He lamented the fact that, despite France’s high unemployment rate, it was difficult to find people who wanted to do this kind of work.
Michel Louison examines a rocky outcropping of schist that caps Le Clos du Fou, a 45° incline that he planted to make a point.
Like his Lenthéric neighbor Didier Barral, Louison uses viticultural methods that respect the environment and that allow the rocky schist terroir to be best expressed. Unlike Barral, however, who is a zealot when it comes to biodiversity and non-intervention wine making, Louison remains a pragmatist. He does not use any chemical weed killers or fertilizers, but he doesn’t have cows, horses or pigs roaming freely among his vines either. And, unlike Barral who has forsaken sulfur dioxide, Louison does use it, in small quantities, as a preservative and disinfectant in the wine cellar.
His flagship red wine, Le Clos du Fou, is the culmination of Louison’s 30-plus years of working with rocky schist where nothing else will grow. Le Clos du Fou, which translates literally in French as “that crazy man’s field” (but which doesn’t sound so bad in French), is a not-so-subtle retort to his neighbors who have long viewed Louison as an eccentric. In 1991 he decided to thumb his nose at his detractors, who thought that it was folly to plant on a slope approaching a 45° incline, by creating a high-density plantation of Syrah (6,500 plants/hectare) on one of the highest points in the surrounding area. The vineyard, facing due south, is visible from just about anywhere in the tiny hamlet. The first vintage Clou du Fou was made in 2004. Harvested at the maximum maturity, the grapes, after destemming, are hand-selected and then allowed to ferment for up to 50 days. The wine is then aged in new oak barrels.
Le Clos du Fou, being a monocepage (a wine made totally of one grape variety), doesn’t carry the Faugères appellation on its label. The 2005 that I tasted had a delicious, fruity odor, but with a sharp edge that needs time to soften. The wine itself was harmonious and balanced, with an agreeable almond taste. This “crazy” bet of Louison’s, a unique wine in a place where no one else dared touch, has been realized. For this wine successfully marries the noble Syrah grape, with its fruity, savory style, with the primeval, metamorphic, mineral-rich terroir of the Faugères schist.
That said, I preferred Louison’s Grande Cuvée red, which I found to be less demanding. Predominantly Syrah, with another long fermentation (40 days in this case), the Grande Cuvée has a similar voluptuous style as Le Clos du Fou, but a more delicate and rounder structure. The traditional Faugères peppery aromatic notes are still there, as well as bright fruit and pronounced minerality. This is certainly a wine that would benefit from additional aging; the 2004 that I tasted still seemed to be a youngster.
Tradition, which is Louison’s entry-level red, is equal blends of the five Faugères appellation grape varieties: Grenache, Syrah, Mourvèdre, Carignan and Cinsault. Meant to be drunk young, this wine lives up to its name with its characteristic ripe red fruits, accented with black-peppery, cigar-sweet tastes and strong underlying mineral accents. Served slightly cooler than room temperature, it makes the perfect accompaniment to a nicely grilled steak.
The real shocker of our wine tasting (as I was tasting with my wife, whose nose I trust better than my own; not for its size, but for its French provenance), was the Château des Estanilles’ atypical rosé, the eponymously named Rosé M. Blood-red-orange colored with faint copper hues, Louison’s Rosé M might as well be from another planet in comparison to rosé wines created by mixing white and red wine together. These faux rosé wines, which would be allowed on the market beginning this summer under a new European Union law, are viewed by the French as a fraud against wine lovers everywhere. Mixing red and white, they say, may make something pink to drink, but it is not rosé wine.
The ethereally-colored Rosé M des Estanilles.
Fermented in oak barrels on top of fine lees for one year, the Rosé M then undergoes, still in the barrel, a natural malolactic fermentation. All previous ideas about rosé wine need to be thrown out, including that rosé needs to be drunk early. This is a rare, long-keeping rosé that improves with age. Some of its longevity may be explained by a slight oxidation, similar to the controlled oxidation found in tany Port, oloroso Sherry and Madeira. The odor is of blood oranges and dried fruit, while the taste is rich and fresh, with traces of citrus fruits and cigar smoke, and a lingering release of fragrant spices that lasts for a minute or so even after you swallow the wine. Rosé M is made primarily from the small, sweet, thick-skinned red Mourvèdre grape. Only 4,000 bottles of this wine are made annually, and I would guess, judging from the number of results in Japanese when you Google “Rosé M,” that a large proportion head to Japan. Obviously it goes well with Japanese cuisine. My own personal cache of three bottles is going to be kept in my cellar for a decade or so. When I do uncork a bottle, I plan on drinking it with a Chicken Curry or something like a Prawn and Harissa Stew over Couscous. Something spicy, at any rate, that goes well with such a complex and nuanced rosé wine.
In many ways, the Rosé M wine reflects the personality of its winemaker. Louison came to make wine in Faugères by a circuitous route. He isn’t from there (he was born in the Savoy region of France, then moved to Geneva to work as an industrial electrician), and he is a self-taught wine producer. Much of the attention to detail exhibited in his vineyards and wine cellar can, I suppose, be attributed to his education and work in electrical design.
Appellations throughout the Languedoc-Roussillion are now attracting winemakers who want to make artisanal natural wine. But back in the mid-1970s when Louison purchased the Château des Estanilles, many wine makers were fleeing rocky, back-woods hamlets to work in provincial cities or Paris, or, if they chose to continue making wine, they went to the fertile plains closer to the Mediterranean, where a more-industrial, less-manual type of wine viticulture was possible.
So Louison has been swimming against the tide for a long time. And, at a time when most people are contemplating retirement, he’s still flailing away. Around nine years ago, he purchased a 10-hectare property in the Limoux appellation, which is in the eastern Pyrenean foothills in southern France. This region’s vineyards are the highest, coolest and furthest from the Mediterranean influence in the Languedoc. Limoux is traditionally a sparkling wine region, with Blanquette de Limoux generally being accepted as having preceded Champagne as the world’s first cork-stoppered sparkling wine.
A red wine Limoux appellation was added in 2005, and increasing amounts of Chardonnay and Chenin Blanc are being planted. Louison is not one to adhere strictly to tradition, so I suspect that he is not there to produce a poor cousin of Champagne. It is worth watching to see where this leads. He might consider calling at least one section of his new vineyard Le Clos de l’Inspiration, as I think that he’s definitely proved that he is more inspired than crazy.
