Noëlla Morantin's chai & cellar

Thésée, Touraine Loire

It’s been a while since I first met Noélla Morantin, this was years ago in a time she hadn’t yet started her own domaine and was working with Japanese vigneronneJunko Arai just on the other side of the Cher river in Pouillé,
producing remarkable organic wines in the terroirs on the slopes and plateau above
Pouillé. The issue once you set up a domaine in a area where you’ve got no family roots and/or no heavy financial backing is to find/finance a centre all the while building the vineyard component of this domaine with the appropriate instruments, and Noella followed the usual way, renting for several decades a wine farm belonging to Catherine Roussel (previously Clos Roche Blanche), I loved the location in La Tesnière and Noëlla sure did but she had to leave and build her own centre.

The place is still work in progress and they are likely to range items in a way, with an area for the labelling, the bottle storage, everything. The warehouse/chai was built recenty, if I recall it was completed in july, just in time. Noëlla explained that from october they are going to employ Lucie on a 80 percent worktime foundation, doing different things, basement work, labelling, tractoring (soil management)… They’ll also employ a partime worker to help for pruning in winter.

Philippe loading the gamay

Just to have you envision the hidden gems in the backyards of many houses in the area, examine the cellars on the left (I was really tempted to jump and sneak into these cavities): they belong to a private house sitting along the primary street and that is on their property lot, sitting against the hill right after their garden. The men and women who live there with their 4 kids don’t make wine but you guess that not so long ago at the century these cellars were some sort of household chais where wine was made by the owners from their own parcels above the hill. Have a look again on the stays I found in this kind of abandonned micro-cellar a few years back. The region has certainly hundreds of cellars that are these that sit forgotten in the backyard of older homes.

Unlike with the sauvignon, Noëlla and Philippe (who had been helping that day) provided a drink and something
to consume to the small group of pickers before taking care of the destemming of the gamay. This was noon or 11 and the pickers were pleased to celebrate with some tasty charcuterie and these wones. If I recall the white was her Old Vines Sauvignon LBL [a parcel previously belonging to les Bois Lucas] and the red was a delicious Gamay, both from 2016 if I’m right. That was another beautiful day under the porch rook, I’m convinced this place will see a lot of great bottles opened…

A visitor
Two seasonal employees who
had also spent the afternoon picking were helping load the media, Brian the bearded man (known as the “biker”) and Thomas, his 16-year-old brother-in-law. The quantity of grapes was just about the same than the pneumatic-press capacity in order to be able to put them all in exactly the exact same batch and they had to fork the right and left.

A couple weeks after I visited Noëlla again as they had just brought the load of a parcel of gamay in. These are grapes purchased to Mikael Bouges. This was the last jour de vendange, the last harvest day, be it from her own vineyards or the purchased grapes (that she chooses herself with her choosing team). Past the frost losses that of course complicate the job, the harvest unfolded under a excellent weather, there has been virtually no rain during the harvest season and the conditions were fine for the pickers (no heat to endure), there were just a few cold mornings.

Using as a support the vertical cliff where the old cellars tunnels had their opening, they built this wooden warehouse with a porchroof. The lot in front of the hillside still allow for machines or trucks to move around outside and was large enough to house this construction. Here they were unloading a truckload of Sauvignon for pressing. You can see on the right where the vertical hillside stands, and you may imagine that there are these cellars all along the village, in the backyard of the homes along the street. Most owners nowadays do not really use them, but the few remaing vignerons in Thésée use them, like Bruno Allion for instance. Incidentally, Thésée is now home to quite a few natural-wine vintners, with along with Bruno & Noëlla, Damien Menut, Joël Courtault, Olivier Bellanger, Vincent Ricard and a couple of other domaines I didn’t profile yet, like the one of Tardieux-Courtault…

The roomy chai

The gamay is being destemmed, Noëlla tracking the destemmer and Phillippe with a employee unload the boxes, the destemmed grapes going up
via the coveyor belt to the Grenier fermenter. The maceration in there will continue under CO2, with sometimes juice being pumped on the top to humidify it and also to bring some oxygen to the load. No pied-de-cuve, it will start ferment. For the CO2 they put some and the ensuing fermentation will create its own and protect the wine from the outside. The destemmed grapes are ket aside like after the must, they’ll carry all that to the state-appointed distiller (for free, the administration considers this like a compuslory tax), that is why they brought the tractor outside.

When of the pickers had abandoned, Noëlla and Philippe prepared the tronconic wooden fermenter for the gamay. This is their first vinification season in this new centre, very exciting to work in basement and one building. The chai is well designed with these cellars allowing a simple transfer of the juice/wine to the barrels and opening on exactly the level. I spoke to Philippe about the layout of this facility and he explained that using that warehouse built against the hill made things thant building such as élevage cellars a building from scratch. There was already some 150 meters at the basement tunnels that needed some minor improvements.

By chance this portion of Touraine is hot there and a real-estate market are loads of opportunities, both to get a house to call home and to get a business, given you’ll think about doing some fixing and repairs to adapt the buildings. Noëlla was searching for a while and she and Philippe discovered this place in the middle of Thésée, just on the other side of the Cher river with this cute one-lane bridge (pic on left). You reach the winery via a 100-meter-long lane from the main street (named Rue Nationale) and you arrive to two large cellars dug in soft sandstone in the face of the hill, in front of which they built the centre.
Asset-image at-xid-6a00d8341c018253ef01b8d2b317c4970c img-responsive” alt=”1noella_morantin_philippe_cellar” name=”1noella_morantin_philippe_cellar” src=”http://fotservis.typepad.com/.a/6a00d8341c018253ef01b8d2b317c4970c-640wi”>Noella & Philippe in the new basement

Looking at Noëlla manouveuring her tractor, I could not but think about one of the first picture I got from her back at the time when she had been working for Junko Arai’s Les Bois Lucas from the mid-2000s, this was on the other side of the river on the plateau, andshe was perched atop what seemed to be a enormous straddle tractor (plus a very old version), going all along the rows in the middle of a parcel. She sure has now already a good experience with these machines and feels at ease in the wheel…

This older Renault 60 has a total width of 1,20 meter and Philippe & Noëlla use it to mow the weeds, move the must (which will be distilled, it’s some sort of compulory tax in France), do some other things but for the majority of the vineyard work they use their straddle tractor, it’s a Loiseau, not the one that belonged to Junko but less or more of the same age. They will not keep the farming gear here in (or outside) the new chai, they’ll store it in the basement she devotes to Huguette in Pouillé (scroll down this page to find the basement), there’s lots of space not only in the basement but also in an open barn in the courtyard of the farm, plus it’s closer to the parcels.