Visiting Joé Chandellier (Souvignargues, France)
Notes notes notes! Read on, erstwhile companions. But know this: the 2023 Nowy and 2023 Trois Terres are in stock in NC today, and are extravagantly delicious. I encountered the former wine at an absurdly crowded hipster spot in the 17th arrondissement, just 48 hours after leaving Joé’s house. The excitable waiter was visibly impressed that I imported Nowy to the USA. They were pouring it BTG, for perfectly executed comfort foods like cheesy toast with frisée lettuce, al dente butternut squash with chestnuts and watercress, and chunky fatty rustic sausages.
The waiter had a haircut like a lego person, and the wiry energy of an animal that needs to sprint to stay sane and focused. He navigated a maze of tiny tables wedged into every conceivable corner of space, a bistro stuffed to twice the dining density that a patron in our community would tolerate. In those spaces I feel like a titan, my 6’2” US dimensions suddenly exaggerated to a preposterous size. I bump everything and everyone. I take 24 seconds to navigate coats and sweaters and my estimable abdomen into the single square meter allocated for the enjoyment of my meal. Once seated, further movement is impossible. I feel the hot breath of neighboring diners lost in reverie, ⅔ of a bottle of Gevery-Chambertin into their evening. We avoid eye contact. I’m lost in a swirl of Gallic words.
The waiter grew up in Clignancourt, one of the best (in my opinion and his) neighborhoods of Paris, a truly multicultural enclave. I’d eaten Tunisian food for lunch in Clignancourt that day, in a shoebox-sized restaurant populated by an old man eating fish soup, a cook who called me “United States” and shared a bottle of the best lemonade I’ve ever tasted, free of charge, and a boom box that played the same devotional song on a loop for the entirety of my meal. Maybe for all of eternity. The place was perfect: five stars, no notes. I’d eat there every day if it was in Durham. If you see an old Parisian man dining in the back of a place in Paris, eat there. It’s a clear-as-day sign of excellence. Those black-clad ancient gentlemen in scarves tolerate no foolishness.
Speaking of foolishness, onto my wine descriptions:
In Montpellier, a sudden deluge is called an “épisode Cévengol.” The Cévennes itself is anything but tempestuous. I’m quite sure most wine pros can’t find this obscure northern corner of the Gard deportment on the map, and I don’t fault them for that. The place is quiet. Wine is made in Cévennes: Joé Chandellier’s hometown Souvignargues (spell that one three times in a row) contains nearly two dozen wineries, and it’s little more than a hamlet. A sleepy village. Stone, rural, charming. A roundabout, with houses.
The elevation isn’t dramatic, but Cévennes has hills. A plateau, which affects weather patterns approaching Languedoc’s capital city. The same low hills are the reason Joé can make wine of freshness in a warmer part of France. On the day I arrived, the sunlight was enchanting. Pure and brilliant and distinctly “south of France,” making the place a magnet for painters and vitamin D junkies. I wanted to loiter in the courtyard of the winery. Tasting anything in a dark cave was suddenly unappealing.
Two days earlier I’d been pelted by rain and generally blown around the streets of Paris by a bitter unfriendly wind that (almost) served as counterweight to the absolute excellence of every other vital aspect of life in that city. I can be happy with numb ears while wandering acres of organic produce in a street farmer’s market, traversing a flea market the size of a minor American city, drifting in and out of wine bars simultaneously shabby, casual, and fundamentally enlightening in their selections. It takes a lot of magic to enchant a city so cold.
I’d like to write an essay about cheese in Paris. For now, back to Souvignargues. Joé recently purchased a 19th century building in the town. It has high ceilings. In spite of the age of the property, working in the airy interior space is relatively easy. Chandellier installed large concrete tanks in a restored section of the cellar, and abandoned the use of fiberglass. Today all his wines are made in either concrete or wood barrels.
Joé started making eponymously labeled wine in 2019. Previously, he worked a four year stint at Domaine Mouressipe, under the tutelage of (since retired) winemaker Alain Allier. Joé and I first met in Allier’s distinctive cellar. This week, on the eve of driving out to Souvignargues, I was delighted to encounter a bottle of Mouressipe rouge on a restaurant menu in Montpellier. Foreshadowing. The wine was singular: cassis, black olive, exotic characteristics beyond the boundaries of my clumsy descriptive prose. Above all it was unlike another wine from recent memory, and in my trade that’s noteworthy.
Joé lives in Souvignargues. His 13 hectares of vines surround the village. The estate has grown from five hectares in 2019. He noted that expansion was necessary, in order to make wine with a good price-to-quality ratio. I’m grateful. Wine can be tremendously tasty from Cévennes. That said, if the bottles are 25 euros each, nobody will buy them. Joé is astute. And amiable! He seems to be an easygoing Mediterranean guy. Smiles a lot. Jokes that he naps every day after lunch. Who wouldn’t?
In the barrel room of his small cellar, we tasted bottles that will become the 2024 Alluvions blanc and rouge/rosé, and an array of barrel and tank samples. Joé’s friend Valentin from Domaine de la Cadette winery in Vezelay joined us for the tasting. Also a nice guy, in a more businesslike way. A bit of Burgundian reserve. Judged by attire and frame, he could be American. It’s a notable contrast to Joé’s sprightly essential southernness.
2023 Joé Chandellier “Trois Terres” (currently available in NC, ask your PWI representative) is from fruit grown in sandy limestone soil. The wine is macerated whole bunch for seven days. It is unfined and unfiltered, and bottled with 25ppm of sulfur. Blue fruit aromas, plum, currant. The wine is palate-coating, mid-weight by universal standards, but dense for a Chandellier wine. It’s the kind of Cévennes wine where it seems possible to smell the garrigue of the surrounding wilderness in the finished bottle. Plus black olive and myrtille.
The 2024 Alluvions blanc and rouge/rosé will be bottled on the 21st of February. Yield was low this year, but better than the disastrous 2023 vintage, a year when hail wiped out (nearly) all of Joé’s grapes. The 2024 blanc was picked a little underripe intentionally, to avoid some of Viognier’s lush aromatic profile. The wine is aged on the lees in concrete, and bottled with 30ppm of free sulfur. It has a really nice palate feel. Mineral characteristics come through. The vines are planted in blue marl soils, in a site with southerly sun exposure.
The 2024 Alluvions red was the first time Joé has filtered a wine, which I consider to be a victory for rational consideration over dogmatism. Safety first! I love an unfiltered wine, but I also love unspoiled wine, and Joé agrees. Spontaneously fermented, 13,000 bottles made. The wine has a touch of tannin on the finish but is otherwise quite accessible. Equal parts Cinsault and Syrah, from 15-year-old vines. “The idea is to be between rosé and red,” Joé said. He accomplished this goal. I’ll drink it lightly chilled, the wine is in every way a thirst-quencher. Aged entirely in concrete.
2024 barrel sample Vermentino. These vines are grown on a sandy red clay plateau above Souvignargues. A place in the middle of the garrigue “forest” that embodies the region. The wine is made via direct press, with no débourbage. Fermented in barrel, aged on the lees, with no sulfur. The wine has an appley aroma. Excellent palate feel, with a pinch of bitterness at the end.
Next we tried the same wine, aged in an older Chablis barrel. It was more airy, tranquil, fresh. Profoundly different.
We tasted Joé’s 2023 white wine, from the hailstorm vintage. His yield was miserable: 3hl/ha. Grenache blanc, Vermentino, and Cinsault Noir. Direct press. The wine has some toasty oak aromas. It has spent 13 months in barrel thus far. It’s an asterisk.
We tasted a barrel sample from the “le Riberal” vineyard. A 100% Grenache parcel, planted in the coolest place in the village. As a consequence, the fruit is picked 10 days later than the rest of Chandellier’s harvest. He does a one-week maceration for this wine, whole bunch. The fruit is then pressed and put into barrels. Wild brambly berry fruit aromas. It is light in color and texture. 2024 was a colder, rainy vintage. The potential alcohol for this wine is in the vicinity of 11.5%. Joé did no pumpovers or plunging for his Grenache. He will add a little sulfur at bottling.
The 2024 Carignan/Aramon barrel sample is fruit that used to go into Joé’s Alluvions bottling. Aramon has thick stems and big berries, so he only does four days of maceration (at 20 degrees Celsius) to minimize color extraction. This fruit is headed for the Trois Terres bottling, and represents the more substantial style of wine made at this address.
We tasted a concrete tank sample of 100% Grenache harvested in 2024. The wine had gone through 15 days of maceration, and was made with no sulfur. At this stage it is slightly reductive. Lots of sweet fruit aromas are also present. Low temperature fermentation kept the wine full of pristine berry character.
A thumb print summary of methods at Joé Chandellier’s winery. All the fruit is hand picked into small baskets. Nothing is destemmed: all whole bunch. He uses pumping as little as possible. Sometimes Joé ferments crushed whole bunches, sometimes he does carbonic whole bunch fermentation (not crushed.) Everything is barrel or concrete tank. Sulfur is only added at bottling, and kept to a minimum. Wild yeast spontaneous fermentation is the norm.
Over lunch in his kitchen, Joé jokes about how some fundamentalists chastise him like he’s an industrial farmer for the small amounts of sulfur he occasionally adds to the wine. He’s saving the wine from spoilage. They act like he’s poisoning it. The world is a funny place. It’s best to see things up close. Joé made a simple meal, good local sausages in tomato sauce, potato gratin, tasty local bread. He talks about how you need to be a detective to find good bread in rural France, the kind made with excellent flour. Joé lives above his cellar. The place is lovely, but simple. It’s the antithesis of industrial agriculture. Dogmatists need to chill, and appreciate the beauty of working in this thoughtful, timeless way.