Spilt Wine

4. Nine Days Earlier

Nine days earlier
Wednesday 19 March 1986

"Merde!" Louis cursed after he had spat the wine to the gravel beside the row of barrels and a dribble rolled down his chin onto the front of his shirt.

"Merde?" I questioned after swallowing my tasting sip. Then nodding, I added, "Yes, just the slightest hint, but this adds to the complexity and character of great Burgundy. This one is far too good to spit out."

"No, no, not that." Louis laughed, smudging the dribble with the back of his hand. "I just dripped and made messy my shirt. But I agree, the wee bit of barnyard makes the wine much more good."

"Your English has improved since my last visit, Louis, but we can speak in French so you're more comfortable."

"No, no, I must make practice. We keep in English."

"How much of this can you sell me this year?" I swirled and nosed my glass again. "It reminds me of the '64 and '69 I tasted here with your father. Amazing wines. I still have a few of those in the cellar."

"I have make fourteen pièces of the Clos de Bèze last year, so twelve must go to Grotkopf. He let me keep again only two, and you know one is between my brother and sister and me. That leaves only one for you, same as last year."

"Why are you still selling most of your best wines to Grotkopf? We've discussed this before, Louis. You know how they destroy your wine, blend it with the stuff from their own vineyards. What they turn out is technically correct, but the quality, the finesse and the spirit of your wines are lost in their soup."

I curled my lip and continued. "If these were my wines, if I owned this domaine, I would stop selling to Grotkopf. You know, and everyone out there knows," I said with a big sweep of my wine glass toward the cellar steps. "They know your vines are the best sited on the slopes. Your wines are not soup ingredients, not bulk wine. They deserve so much more."

"I know this, I am many time tell Francine and Pierre. They all the time me told – no told me, I am backwards again. They told me they want the sure money every year, not the risk of not selling."

"Are they both still in Paris?"

"Oui, and both still all fact and figures. What do accountant or lawyer know or care about the art of creating fine wine?" With his usual Gallic shrug, Louis added, "They got their wine and their money every year, what do they care? You know it is not so easy since Francine married the son of Grotkopf."

"And the Clos-de-la-Roche and the Bonnes-Mares back there? Is it the same story with them again this year, mostly committed to Grotkopf?"

"Yes, the same, but with Clos-de-la-Roche, he gets only five pièces. I make only seven plus some bidons. The two rows we replanted, we make still as Morey-Saint-Denis. Maybe next year it will be good again to put in Clos-de-la-Roche," Louis added with another huge shrug.

In this manner, we systematically roamed through the dank cellars, with Louis removing bungs, thrusting the pipette through the hole, and thumbing it to draw samples to our glasses. We had worked our way through the Village wines and the Premiers Crus, and now we were finishing the finest barrels of the tasting, the Grands Crus.

Louis and his siblings inherited the estate from their father, and under French law, it had to be divided into equal shares among them. They had decided to do the modern thing, and instead of splintering the scattered vineyards into even smaller pieces, they formed an agricultural company and divided the shares. Louis was as passionate about wine as his father and grandfather had been before him, and he wanted to carry on with growing and making great wine. Francine and Pierre had no interest in wine other than in drinking it, so they left the château, cuverie and cellars for Louis to run and to share with each of them a third of the annual profits. Part of their agreement was that each would get a third of a pièce, a third of a barrel, about a hundred bottles of each of the three Grands Crus: Bonnes-Mares, Clos de Bèze and Clos-de-la-Roche.

I shook myself out of my reflections when Louis said, "We go now to lunch." He tapped the bung back into its place in the barrel, and we headed to the stone stairs, tilting the hanging electric lamps off bare wires to darken the cellar as we went. We were silent as we emerged at ground level and waited for our eyes to adjust to the brightness of the midday sun. Louis rattled and twisted the huge key in the lock of the solid oak door, gave the door a heavy thump with his shoulder, and satisfied, we headed across the courtyard.

"You've finished your pruning, Louis?" I asked, raising an arm toward the rows of vines in Les Millandes at the edge of the courtyard. "How was the damage from the deep cold spell?"

"Yes, I finish the start of mars – I have to remember to say March. The start of March down here, and last week at the top of Genavrières and Monts Luisnats. I have a bit of cleaning to do, but not much. We have good chance with the froid, the cold. Only damage some young grafts at the bottom parts of the vignoble where there was no snow for protecting. Damage only on the Village wines and un petit coin, a little corner of the Premiers. None on the Grands Crus." Louis motioned toward the gentle slopes above the village. "We have bud break in two weeks or less, I think."

Louis fell silent as we walked across the courtyard, so I reflected. Tense time, bud break. If it happens too early, a late frost can destroy much of the year's crop. I ran my recent marketing write-up through my mind as we headed toward the kitchen door.

Domaine Ducroix sits at the edge of Morey-Saint-Denis, a small village sandwiched between the great vineyards of Chambertin and those of Musigny in the heart of the best red area of the Burgundy. From it, the twenty-one hectares of vineyards are all easily accessible to work, though there are thirty-four plots scattered along three kilometres through three communes and across nine appellations. Splintered vineyards like these are common in the Burgundy, a legacy of the division of property under the family inheritance laws spurred by the Revolution and refined by Napoleon.

In a good year, the estate can produce up to a hundred and ten thousand bottles, not many for the entire world ... I paused my thinking to refocus as we neared the door. "What have you changed, Louis? Your '85s are all so good, better than I remember from you, better than any since your father in the '60s and early '70s. What are you doing new?"

"It was nature, the year mostly, but we go with still more heavy pruning on the vines, less buds, more concentrée, and we also do more drop of some extra bunch in the summer. I have made this year only thirty-one hecto on the Grands Crus, thirty-six on the Premiers, much less than we are allowed. We do so many little things – tweaking as they say in Californie."

"The results are certainly worth it, but your production must be down even further because of this?"

"Oui, it is down a bit, between nine and ten per cent less than we are allowed."

"You need to increase your prices, then?"

"Bien sure, mais not so much as I want. Monsieur Grotkopf say the market is still a little, how you say? Soft?"

"He says that because he wants you to keep your prices low."