Thanks to Louis/Dressner for this profile of brand-new import Domaine La Providence:

(Click here for more on La Providence on the LDM website)

For over 20 years, Jean Benoit and Bénédicte Comor have dreamed of starting their own estate. They’d even gotten close a few times: first in the Beaujolais, Saint-Véran and Pouilly-Fuissé then in Limoux. From false starts and dashed hopes, opportunity struck in 2016: located in the village of Lambesc, about 30 minutes North-West from Aix-en-Provence, a property called La Pomme had become available. The couple, originally from the area, instantly fell in love with the old farm house and 18 hectares of vines.

Lambesc and its surrounding environs have changed dramatically in the last 20 years. Well into the 1990’s, this was a poor agricultural region where most farmers lived off traditional models of polyculture. Then came the rosé craze of the early 2000’s, with Provence front and center. A shift in focus was inevitable: almost overnight vines became a monoculture, with people planting anywhere they could: terroir be damned, if it grows it goes. The prior owner of La Pomme worked in an ultra-conventional fashion, focusing exclusively on yields. 95% of his grapes were destined for the local cave cooperative’s rosé.

From the beginning, JB and Bénédicte wanted more than an organic conversion, hiring famed biodynamic consultants Lydia and Claude Bourguignon. In addition to the conversion (the estate is now certified organic), JB quickly starting ripping out vines to replant three hectares of indigenous Provençal grapes and is planning to rip out an additional five hectares including all of the estate’s Cabernet Sauvignon. Much of what has been ripped out was planted on richer soils on the edge each parcel,  now left bare or replanted with olive and fruit trees. Convinced that white wine has a huge potential on his white clay and limestone soils, Jean Benoit has currently planted three plots with a dizzying array of white grapes: Terret, Ugni Blanc, Vermentino, Sauvignon Blanc, Semillon, Marsanne, Carignan Blanc, Macabeu, Bourboulenc, Grenache Gris, Clairette Rose…

They are also replanting thousands of replacement vines in select parcels suffering from esca and/or overproduction and adding palissage for the Syrah vines that desperately need them. All new plantings are selected between three pépiniéristes to ensure as much diversity as possible. For vines destined for estate production, JB works every other row superficially while planting the other with cover-crop and letting it rest a year. For those still destined for the cave cooperative, only the edges of the rows are worked with a mechanical disk. Finally, the biggest project is to create terraces in one of their main plots where years of chemical abuse, erosion and tractors have warped the rows, making it impossible to work the soils without switching devices or vehicles mid-row. What a tremendous undertaking: five years of hard work and this is just the beginning!

After five years honoring their inherited contract with the cave cooperative, in 2020 Jean Benoit was able to vinify a small amount of rosé and a scant 2000 bottles of a delicious red wine called “La Providence”. From a small makeshift cellar in their barn, roughly 20 times more wine was vinified in 2021, an atypical and rainy vintage that led to blocked maturations and low concentration. Grapes were hand-harvested and fermented with native yeasts in various vessels (fiberglass, stainless, concrete) but mostly in old Burgundian barrels. The barrels saw two bâtonnages a day and were racked after malo; depending on volatility levels, sulfites were added to some but not all vessels. It’s unclear what blends will come out this complicated first vintage, but from what we’ve tasted the goal is to make elegant, structured but not over-extracted reds that break the regions’ conventions while (perhaps by) respecting the terroir. Everything will be bottled in Vin de France, perhaps not so crazy in our world but pretty damn ballsy in the ultra-chic, celebrity winery milieu of 2020’s Provence.

Although the Latour-Labille family has been making wine since 1792, Vincent Latour began turning heads in Burgundy after the release of his 2006 vintage when he was nominated as winemaker of the year by the well-respected local magazine, Bourgogne Aujourd’hui. He has also been recognized several times as the best new/young winemaker in the Côte de Beaune and in the Côte de Nuits as the result of an annual blind tasting hosted by local vignerons.

Vincent is hand-crafting exceptional Meursault from eight hectares of vines. His father used to sell off their grapes, but when Vincent took over from his father in 1998, he decided to bottle all of their production, roughly 4,000 cases. Vincent made some improvements over the years, including using whole cluster fermentation, integrating demi-muids and foudres into the mix, and a longer élévage. A mix of used and new demi-muids, barrels, and foudres are used for aging in order to have better control of the oak influence. Work in the vineyard follows lutte raisonée methods and native yeasts are used for fermentation. After pressing, must goes into 600L barrels or foudres. 

The name of the winery was changed from Latour-Labille to Domaine Latour starting with the 2010 vintage.

2020 Vintage Notes from Allen Meadows, Burghound, June 2022:

The always laconic Vincent Latour runs this 8.7 ha domaine that consists of 7 ha planted to chardonnay and 1.7 ha planted to pinot noir (see Issue 86 for the 2020 red reviews). The domaine has existed since 1972 under the name of Domaine Jean Latour-Labille et Fils. Vincent joined his father in 1998 and then in 2010 the name was changed to its present eponymous incarnation. Latour described the 2020 growing season as "having some similarities to the 2019 season in that it was markedly hot and exceptionally dry. As such, we had very little disease pressure, in fact we made only 5 treatments the entire season, which I can assure you is very few. We began picking with the pinot on the 27th of August and then began with the chardonnay on the 29th. Yields were quite good without being really high at between 50 and 60 hl/ha and very reasonable potential alcohols as they ranged from 12.5 to 13.5%. I like the 2020 vintage quite a bit and particularly in white." Latour noted that that whites were bottled in December 2021. (Bowler, www.bowlerwine.com, NY, USA).

Fun and fancy free - Le Babbler is meant to inspire one to babble on and on about anything that brings joy. The wine comes from Château Lauduc, owned by the Grandeau family for four generations. The vineyards and winery are just ten kilometers from downtown Bordeaux in the Entre-Deux-Mers region. The winery is certified sustainable by HVE and after successful trials in 2018, they began the organic certification process in 2019. Only organic products are used for vineyard management. The vines average 35 years-old and are grown in limestone clay, siliceous, and gravel soils that give the wine a lot of freshness and balance. Once harvested at their best maturity, the vinification is handled in the modern cellar with thermo-regulated stainless steel tanks used to extract soft tannins and deep color, respecting the fruits’ true expression. In the bottle, you’ll find poetry, art, and inspired conversation.

Weingut Jürgen Leiner is a great example of the new generation of wine estates pushing the boundaries of ecologically minded, terroir-driven winemaking in the Rheinland after decades of technocratic efforts in pursuit of high yields and ripeness. Located in the Kalmit nature preserve in the southern Pfalz, at the edge of the Pfalzerwald (Pfalz forest) about thirty minutes’ drive north of the Alsatian border, the Leiner estate produces only a modest 120,000 bottles of Riesling and Burgundian varieties. They are Demeter-certified biodynamic; members of Slow Food; and most excitingly, recent inductees into Respekt, the exclusive and influential consortium of biodynamic winemakers in Germany, Austria and Northern Italy. 

Sven Leiner explains:  "We know from years of personal experience and observation that the biologically dynamic farming method addresses all the right issues and fosters a harmonious interrelationship of the various parts of the ecosystem. Soil, as we understand it, is a living organism that we aim to revitalise by applying our own compost, organic teas and natural preparations. Our vines respond with healthy and balanced growth. Plant diversity has come to play a crucial role in the fertility of our vineyard, as it not only provides essential nutrients to our vines, but exerts a stabilising effect on the soil life. In fact, it takes a species-rich soil ecosystem, including bacteria as well as beneficial fungal mycelia, earthworms and a variety of insects, to ensure that an efficient nutrient cycle is in place. We ‘intervene’ simply to keep this natural process going. A wide array of plant life also cuts down significantly on the use of natural fertilisers. As passionate advocates of an ecologically sensitive approach to vineyard management, we have grown our vines using biodynamic practices since 2005. Our firm belief in biodynamic viticulture earned us Demeter Biodynamic certification in 2011 without a transition period."

The soils at Leiner are a complicated geology, generally loess and loam mixed with limestone, but there is a distinct terroir of colored sandstone (bundsandstein) on the Pinot site and another special soil in the Riesling vineyards with an awesome German name: landschneckenkalk, or literally “land snail chalk.” Sven ferments his wines with natural yeasts, and experiments with longer lees and skin contact. The Rieslings imported by Bowler are vinified in steel, and the Spätburgunder "Handwerk" is aged 9 months in large fuder. The wines are “natural” in soul, but also perfectly clean and pure. Every label has a different insect from the vineyards on the label, a celebration of the life found among the vines. The Rieslings possess a riveting dynamic energy and lip-smacking fruit. The Spätburgunders, which clearly reflect the ambient warmth of the southern Pfalz, are among the freshest, most enticingly ripe and delightful Pinot Noirs in our collection.