The recent favorable tasting notes of La Chablisienne got me wondering about wine co-ops. I know they’re not particularly en vogue these days, but it seems like a value minded co-op would have access to a lot of the best fruit in a given region and be able to keep production cost down. La Chablisienne seems to get a lot of love on this board. And, of course, there’s Produttori del Barbaresco. But that leaves two questions:
1- Do you agree that co-ops are particularly well positioned to provide excellent wines at good prices?
2- What are the best high quality cooperatives out there that we should be seeking out?
Bonus question:
3- Would you recommend co-ops as good introduction to drinkers trying to get a “lay of the land” of a given terroir?
Looking back, I also had decent vin jaune from Fruitière vinicole de Voiteur.
Champagne is kind of a different beast… the two big ones (Nicolas Feuillate, Jacquart) are decent but not amongst my favorites (never tried their top cuvées though). I only tried one De Saint Gall and wasn’t particularly impressed but I never tried Cuvée Orpale. I tried H Blin at a wine fair and liked it but it’s hard to source around here. Mailly Grand Cru has some good reviews but I never tried it. And we only get the basic bottling of Beaumont des Crayères and it didn’t strike me as particularly interesting. That’s all I can think of… I hope others have tasted through more of their various cuvées!
My stock answer was always the Produttori del Barbaresco, followed by Freie Weingartner Wachau and La Chablisienne. But I haven’t had many Domane Wachau since Freie Weingartner Wachau changed name,
Cantina Produttori Nebbiolo di Carema is my current love when it comes to a grower cooperative producing benchmark level wines consistently. I adore lighter style Nebbiolo and apart from their scarcity in the retail market, I find them “world-class”.
Have an admitted soft spot as the cantina is 20 minutes down the hill from our house. These wines are not only great in quality but ex-cellar pricing is crazy cheap. 12.70 euros for the standard Carema, 17.90 for the Riserva and 28 euros for their special “60th” bottling (from specific parcels and/or vineyard). Picked up a 6 pack of the 60, but won’t even think of cracking a bottle for a number of years.
I agree with all of John’s answers. The vast majority of co-ops produce mediocre wines for their regions. There are some very notable exceptions, though. Some produce decent wines that are relatively inexpensive (La Chablisienne), some produce surprisingly good wines (Produttori del Barbaresco and especially Cantina Terlano).
Barbaresco, Carema, Chablisienne as mentioned. The coop of le Mesnil is also quite good, IMO, though prices have risen quite a bit and I now question the value compared to similarly priced growers.
Not as great, but not that far behind in quality. An when you take into account that the co-op’s Riserva is cheaper than Ferrando’s Etichetta Bianca, the co-op certainly offers a lot better bang for the buck.
And as all the co-ops in my top 5 have been already mentioned (Produttori del Barbaresco, Cantina Terlano, Domäne Wachau, Cantina dei Produttori Nebbiolo di Carema and Chablisienne), the thread can be closed now.
I think you guys are really generalizing this. There are way too many great wines to count coming from Coops in France and Italy (especially France). NOT everything that comes out of these coops are tank fermented plonk meant for grocery chains. There are A TON of small growers who use the local coops to produce their wines, many in small barriques, that make wonderfully expressive wines. I had a wine shop for many years called VIN DE PAYS, and used to travel to Southern France every year visiting the coops looking for bargains (we were 500 wines under $15) and always came back flabbergasted over the great wines we would find.
The problem with co-ops is getting grape-growers to work as if their name was on the label, even if it’s not. We visited a co-op in the South Tyrol/Alto Adige recently, they talked about how they work with growers throughout the year to improve quality, not just paying x amount per ton at harvest. In my experience the South Tyrol is the only wine-growing region where co-ops are consistently very good. The very distinctive regional culture may well have something to do with it, too.
To Oliver’s point, I had a decent Kurtatsch the other day, brought in by NBI. Was surprised to see that it was a coop, but they seem to require efforts like hand harvesting that a true estate wine would make.