Thanks for the cogent summary Chris. I’ve been baffled through this entire conversation how anyone could read your site and not conclude that what Baumard does is cryo-extraction. Thanks for your very direct statement on that.
The inability (unwillingness) of Florent to answer the simple questions you and others have posed is telling. However, as you say, given the polarization on this issue, the debate is likely to drag on.
Do you think it likely that the authorities will open an investigation?
Thank you Chris for this factual post. I really appreciate your work and writings on your site, especially about Loire and Muscadet, since I am a big fan of the wines of the region.
I feel that we will never know the truth about the sugar level of Baumard’s tries in 2012…
Your comments are pretty naive.
A few links leading to articles by perfidious Englishman (of which there seem to be no shortage, as we’ve seen from this thread!) doesn’t really prove much of anything…
It really helps to post facts, for a start, and then try, at least, to put things into perspective.
I could post links making Americans out to be obese, gum-chewing, gun-toging, neo fascists. Of course, this is an absurd charicature. As have your posts been on this thread.
Alex, I think that you are taking way too much offense. As I read his posts, Doug wasn’t singling out French winemakers. Rather, he was saying that people will break rules and take disapproved shortcuts wherever they can profit by doing so. That includes Americans, French, and everyone else. To say otherwise would be naive. Resorting to negative national stereotypes, even in the tangential manner that you did so, is really unnecessary.
I am somewhat curious as to which poster in this thread you think is a dishonest Englishman, as seems to be your implication.
Alex, are the French courts and officials involved in the cases I referenced also perfidious? I guess they might have made up all of those accusations, in which case posting facts about anything must be nearly impossible. Anyway, this is certainly not worth going on with, so go ahead and post your senseless, offensive response and we can be done with it.
This thread made me reflect on why I don’t support Baumard (and arguably, why I think others shouldn’t as well) even though it is perfectly tasty. Mostly, I think it’s because I believe he’s wrapped his production process around an approach that is fundamentally industrial and not about what Quarts de Chaume fundamentally “is” (an agricultural product concentrated by the natural and highly variable conditions that lead to botrytis and hopefully culminate in a wonderfully sweet and nuanced wine).
This brought to mind the following statement by Terry Theise which, although part of his 2012 German wine catalog, seems to be perfectly relevant statement with regard to the battle between Baumard and his peers in QdC. If this really doesn’t belong here, I’m happy to have Todd move this to a separate thread. But, personally, I think it goes to the heart of this discussion, if not the specific details about whether what Florent has done with the 2012 is legal:
In most areas of my life I’m a live-and-let-live sorta
guy. But I have a dog in this race. I sell what I know to
be authentic wines, and they compete in the marketplace
against inauthentic but speciously seductive wines, whose
clientele delude themselves into believing they are “wine
lovers.” Mind you, it’s fine to like whatever you like, and
I guess it’s reassuring to know your favorite wines won’t
ever surprise you. You can now put “wine” alongside
everything else you hope won’t ever vary; parboiled rice,
Doritos, laundry detergent, all the mundane necessities of
a mundane life. That wine is a way out of the mundane is
something you don’t know, because you’re pushing away
the possibility. That is also your privilege, but it’s a waste
of opportunity, a waste of wine, and a waste of life – and
it’s my privilege to say these things.
“Things.” Oh yes, things are what these products
are, because they’ve had whatever life they may have been
born with institutionally sucked away. These things,
whatever they are, are not wine. At most they are concepts
including traces of wine. Wine-like substances. Beverages
containing wine. And lest we forget, lifestyle merit-badges
of one’s financial status. “If you want to know what God
thinks of money, look at who he gives it to.”
You might think my dudgeon is excessive, or
uncalled-for, or that I’m swinging at much too easy targets.
You have a point, but I wonder if you’ve lived nearly thirty
years of your life trying to compete against these enhanced
leviathans calling themselves wine, especially with the
small delicate beings I sell and am fond of. Eventually you
come to know the real competition is in the marketplace
of ideas, and the first order of business is to identify the
bogus, and expose it.
If you’re a young wine pro reading this – and thanks
if so! – then I wonder who you have to help you find a way
through the noise and the tall grass. Everything seems so
equal, especially in the flattened terrain of the internet.
Wine writers these days often want to be democrats,
egalitarians, but wine is not that way. Some wines waste
our time. Some wines are greater than others. Yes, any wine
is worth drinking if it is authentic and true, and chasing
after greatness based on some perceived Divine Right Of
You is counterproductive. But it’s also callow to ignore the
centuries of trial and error and the understandings that
arose and were codified. Everything is not equivalent, not
in wine, not in nature, not in life.
Jim, that quotation sums it up very well for me also. That’s why I am not a fan of this and several other winemaking “tricks”. As I mentioned before, I have always found the quality of Baumard’s wines to be very high, but to me, that is not the only matter of importance with wine.
Apologies for not replying sooner, but work commitment have kept me offline until now. Thank you for taking the time to reply in such detail. As the person that c&p’ed the quotes from your blog, please be assured that there was no intent to mislead or intimate your opinion on the matter either way. Your conversations with Florent were a unique window in to the cellar practices at Dom. Baumard. As such, I thought quoting what you had posted on your blog would help improve the collective understanding here.
As it turns out, even you did not come away with a complete understanding, as I am surmising from the further explication Florent deemed important enough to cause him to draft his Cold Pressing letter. In the specific passage contained in this letter, quoted above in Post #74, Florent clarifies by saying, “Only these grapes, that have remained in their natural state, are pressed as normal and the juice extracted. The frozen, immature, berries are unpressable.” When I read you blog entries related to this issue, there was no such distinction that I could make out.
This would seem to lend credence to the importance of the distinction that Florent has struggled to make between what everyone has lumped together under the heading cryo-extraction and the specific distictions that Florent tried to make with what he refers to as cryo-selection. He also cites the following related scholarly precedent that indicated (to me) that Florent is not simply trying to obfuscate the facts, but rather, trying to illuminate what is a mostly misunderstood nuance of this cellar practice.
From Baumard’s Cold Pressing letter: “Pressurage à froid, or cold pressing, was discovered by Monsieur Pierre SUDRAUD, Director of the Laboratoire Central de Bordeaux à la Direction Générale de laConsommation, du Contrôle et de la Répression des Fraudes, and Monsieur SergeCHAUVET, an inventor at the same posting, an expert on the wines of Sauternes. Initially called Cryoextraction Sélective or Cryosélection, the concept of Pressurage àfroid was introduced in June of 1986 at the 26th Congrès National d’œnologie heldat Saumur-Fontevraud.”
I would agree with previous posters that you can’t change what you are doing just by changing the name.
It appears to me, that Florent is simply using what he believes is the most accurate term for this very advanced winemaking technique, while those following seem to have a difficult time grasping the distinction that Florent is struggling to explain, and thus has required increasing levels of precision for him to communicate effectively. This is an especially challenging task, when those most critical of the process have zero first-hand experience utilizing this selction technique to make wine.
Unless you have actual evidence to the contrary, I think the only fair thing to do, is to take the man at his word. If some vinious injustice of epic proportions has been foisted on an unknowing public, then I do believe there are governing bodies in place to mete out justice, if indeed deserved here. All of this mud slinging about a winemaking technique that few have any actual experience with, does not serve the greater interest of having more exceptional wine to consume. It may however serve the interest of a small group of individuals who are either envious and/or resentful of the incredible success this winery has enjoyed, which they may feel has overshadowed less prominient vignerons deserving of similar adoration.
Having made some indication of my misgiving as per the technique Baumard is using, I would not say I am against cryo-extraction per se. Its use has unwittingly been perfectly acceptable to me as I know I have tasted many wines and enjoyed them, long before I had realised they had been made with a little help from cryo. In particular I am thinking of Doisy-Védrines, the proprietor of which Olivier Castéja is very open about his use of cryo-extraction to improve a little his harvest. My view of how Olivier uses it, however, is that he takes hard-won botrytised fruit, true to what Sauternes is, and removes a little water. How much I don’t know, as I’ve never asked him, but if I see him at the primeurs in a few weeks I will certainly do so.
I’m having a hard time understanding the distinction you are making here. You say you don’t have a problem with cryo-extraction as done by Olivier Castéja, but you do when Florent Baumard takes a similar approach. Are you saying that Baumard’s fruit is somehow not as “hard-won”; meaning you believe Baumard is taking unripe fruit and making wine, whereas Castéja is only using perfectly ripe fruit? If Florent is separating out the ripe from unripe fruit prior to pressing, then I’m at a loss to understand what real differences there are between the two vignerons’ winemaking efforts and why you are trying to intimate one is somehow less ‘authentic’ than the other. You also seem to be saying Florent Baumard is not being true to what you feel Q de C is or should be. Can you please expand on this?
As for what Baumard does, this is a little more difficult to define, as information is not forthcoming. Nevertheless, Florent told me last year that he has, in at least one vintage, removed more than 80% of the volume using cryo-extraction. When I wrote that up I emailed him to clarify as I found the figure so unbelievable. 80%! Yes, I am sure many vintages are less than this, but I do not have the data to say what the figures are for other vintages, not for want of asking I should add. Even accepting data is limited, the technique does not seem here to be fine-tuning, but is the major process by which the wine is made, in at least some vintages.
If you are using cryo-selection to help separate the ripe from unripe fruit, it would seem that a degree of volume loss is inherent to the process. In years when the weather does not allow for even ripeness in the vineryard, it should follow there would be an accompanying higher percentage of volume loss. Whether you agree with Florent’s characterization of cryo-selection as analogous to an additional trie, or simply as an adjunct to work perfromered at the sorting table, there is going to be some loss of volume that happens as a result of those actions. Not sure what you are hinting at about “fine-tuning” vs. “major process”, but it sounds like you view this as some sort of impropriety. For me, I see the process as a method of gaining greater efficiency in the sorting process for a grape variety where uneven bunch ripeness appears to be a common problem.
But here is the rub. > Cutting through all the obfuscation (because this debate has been all over Twitter as well as on this forum and the willingness to confuse and obscure the real issue seems full of intent at times), the debate isn’t about the rights and wrongs of cryo-extraction or cryo-selection or whatever you want to call it. It is about how a wine is represented to consumers…
Really? We have posters here declaring that they have no interest in Baumard wines, specifically because they are utilizing cryo-extraction. I doubt those objections would change, were the wine in question to be labeled with disclaimers about the use of cry-extraction. The argument against the winemaking practice seems to be more rooted in a perceived offense to a process some believe detracts from Baumard’s ability to claim they offer a legitimate or authentic expressions of the ideals they asssociate with being Q de C. While I may personally see that as as silly notion, given the crazy good quality of the wines in question, that is a choice they are free to make.
…the Baumards at present have declared (this is second-hand information from Jim’s blog) a significant volume of Quarts de Chaume in the 2012 vintage, a wine which will be highly priced (for the Loire, for a sweet Layon wine), and in order to do be sold as Quarts de Chaume the wine must meet certain criteria.
Given the fact that you are not an INAO official, nor do you have any authority to validate the standards they are charged with upholding, you can only speculate about that which you believe does or doesn’t comply with published requirements for making AOC labeled Q de C. As public as this matter has now become as a result of Jim’s little witch hunt, I feel it’s likely that the proper officials will take steps to insure the Q de C regulations were followed as required. Until such judgment has come to pass, nothing is being accomplished, other than besmirching the reputation and good name of an otherwise highly respected producer.
It would of course, be illegal to achieve that only after cryo-extraction; just to be clear, I am not for one second alleging that this is what has happened. Nevertheless, it seems fair to ask for some data on the harvested fruit. Jim has done this very publicly and got nowhere it seems, only a wordy response on the ‘attack’ on Florent’s website.
It may be “fair to ask”, but that does not mean the courtesy of a detailed reply (or any) should be expected. You aren’t owed any sort of explanation. Baumard does not work for you or report to you. You are both in the mutual helping business. If the perception is that you’re more interested in harming than helping his business, as might be the case if you start to behave like Jim Budd, then the changed reception should come as no surprise. In the case of Jim Budd, the badgering requests for more detailed information were little more than a thinly veiled effort to gather the rope to hang Baumard with. His reticence to talk openly with Budd (or at all) is understandable.
I have asked Florent the same questions, and these are the responses received…
It seems to me very sad, and also unusual, that Florent should not want to make public the sugar concentration at harvest. This is basic data for a winemaker, not top secret confidential information! It would have quashed any stories, based on pictures prior to harvest, and on data concerning harvest dates and the weather at the time, that the fruit harvested by Baumard had not achieved the sugar concentration required. In the face of continued non-disclosure of this information, I am certain that this debate will rumble on, until definitive information is revealed. That will then put an end to it one way or the other.
You have gone from being the guy at the local pub asking an acquaintance for a light, to one of the gathering mob of villagers with a pitchfork in one hand and an unlit torch in the other, asking for the same very thing again. Same question, different circumstances. I’m not at all surprised you got a less enthusiastic response the second time around.
Any information related to a business that doesn’t require public disclosure can be fairly viewed as proprietary. Whether a business chooses to share such information or not, is in and of itself, no indication of anything other than a lack of interest in sharing that information with you. Given the fact that Florent was so open about the cryo-selection process, my takes is that any reluctance to further share non-public information is moslty a function of Florent’s perception that the difference between yourself and Jim Budd have begun to narrow as the pot continues to be stirred.
A grape does not instantaneously transform from a completely unfrozen state to a completely frozen state. Maybe if it was perfectly homogeneous and the temperature perfectly homogeneous, but this is the real world. What you get is a bunch of frozen grapes, a bunch of unfrozen grapes, and a bunch of grapes halfway in-between. The only way to press the result and have it NOT be cryo-extraction is if you had previously discarded all the frozen and partially-frozen grapes. Baumard has given no explanation that I see how he accomplishes this task, which I doubt is even possible; pass each grape through an X-ray machine maybe?
Z.Acsan - based on on your continued stance, despite what seems entirely reasonable questions (to me at least) I think it is fair to ask ‘are you are in the business?’
Sorry if I’m not the only one to ask this…
A fair question, Bill; which I have no objection to answering here. For the record: I have no personal or financial connection to Baumard. I’m strictly a consumer/collector of fine wine. Very definitely not ITB.
Z, would you care to provide us some additional data about your background to help us understand what apparently gives you a more accurate understanding of cryo-extraction than Chris Kissack, Jim Budd, or the WBers participating in this thread?
If Florent is separating out the ripe from unripe fruit prior to pressing, then I’m at a loss to understand what real differences there are between the two vignerons’ winemaking efforts and why you are trying to intimate one is somehow less ‘authentic’ than the other.
I’m not sure I’ve seen any statement which clearly indicates that Baumard separated and disposed of the majority of the unripe fruit vs ripe fruit prior to pressing. I see statements which indicate that the unripe and therefore frozen fruit isn’t crushed, whereas the ripe fruit remains unfrozen and is crushed. This would imply they are together during pressing and separation occurs afterwards. The problem with this, as several people have pointed out, is that fruit isn’t going to uniformly freeze. The other issue, as has been noted several times, is that the average potential alcohol of the grapes involved in the pressing process need to be at least 18.5% before pressing. No distinction is made for frozen vs unfrozen.