Classic Drinks this week welcomed to Dublin the renowned Burgundian Michel Laroche whose wines the company is now distributing in Ireland.  For the past 20 years the agency was held by Galvins.

Michelle’s visit to Conference Centre Dublin brought back memories of a
sunny evening in October 2006 when  I stood on a little hill and took in a view of the entire area of Chablis.

It was not difficult, for Chablis in Northern Burgundy, is an area of just 7,500 acres, each of which is carefully mapped and slotted into a hierarchy that would do justice to the caste system of India.

Just below us lay the aristocratic Grand Cru, all on one side of a south-west facing slope and comprising just 100 ha. To our left and right, facing South were the 40 ha of Premier Crus vineyards, each facing almost identical north-facing slopes which are classified as just ‘Chablis’. Finally on the plateau of every hill, lay the largest vineyards in the area, collectively named ‘Petit Chablis’, but in fact anything but ‘petit’.

Why vineyards should produce wines which sell at a multiple of those produced by neighbours only a few hundred yards apart, is down to what the French call ‘terroir’. To some, it is the essence of fine wine production, the miracle of a tiny vineyard possessed with the micro climate and soil to create superb grapes and stunning wine. To others it is a typical French wheeze designed to command premium prices through scarcity.

Chablis thrives on terroir- and with good cause. Its vineyards sit at the edge of the Paris Basin, a stretch of Planet Earth which extends from this tip of Burgundy to the village of Kimmeridge in Dorest, England. The soil in this basin is made up of limestone, clay and fossilized oyster shells, and it works wonders for the chardonnay grape, giving it that steely, gunflint bite that is unique to Chablis.

There is however, a catch.

Because Chablis is about as far from the equator as you can make good wine, the winters are long and hard and the summers often bake. Until the 1960s, wine making in the area was plagued by Spring frosts which lasted into May and unpredictable summers. The result was a very risky business for wine makers. Then came technology which allowed producers to tackle the frost problem in two ways. They lit small kerosene stoves called ‘smudge pots’ which raised temperatures just enough to prevent the grapes dying or they sprinkled the vines with water which formed a cozy  ‘igloo’ around the grapes. Both systems are still used to-day.

At that time, Michel Laroche and his father Henri, spotted an opportunity and began to buy up the best vineyards in Chablis with the result that they now own most of the Grand Cru and a big slice of the Permier Cru. Harvests became more predictable and it became possible to make real money. The Laroche family invested their profits in a modern winery and built a brand which is a leader in Chablis to-day.

They were not alone of course, as the many other Chablis houses on today’s market verify. Once Chablis took off, everyone wanted more of it and while the Grand Cru vineyards remained sacrosanct, the same could not be said of Premier Cru whose area was extended to cover 40 vineyards. This of course led to a ferocious argument which has hardly been resolved to-day.

Even greater expansion took place up on the plateau where the original 200 ha. of Petit Chablis experienced something of a Big Bang and now covers no less than 1,800 ha. That however, would seem to be that. Of the 2,600 ha which lies within the appellation 2,300 ha have been planted with grapes.

The distinctiveness of Chablis is not entirely due to terroir as much also depends on what happens in the vineyards and winery.

All Laroche vineyards are managed without recourse to manufactured fertilizers and natural predators are introduced to control pests. Grapes are hand harvested and care is taken to handle the bunches very gently on their journey to the winery where they are softly pressed in one of three Bucher pneumatic presses with samples monitored in the in-house lab. Grand and Premier Cru wines are fermented and aged in a blend of oak barrels, casks and vats while other grades go into stainless steel tanks. Chablis is the one wine region of France  in which chardonnay may not have any oak contact and producers are divided between the ‘no-oak’ and ‘must use oak’ factions. Laroche is somewhere in the middle, aging a percentage of the wines in oak and blending them with wines stored in stainless steel.

Laroche produces a range of high quality Chablis wines, which are distributed in Ireland by Classic Drinks. They include Domaine Laroche Chablis St. Martin , Domaine Laroche Chablis Premier Cru Les Vaudeveys , Domaine Laroche Chablis Premier Crus Les Fourchaumes Vieilles Vignes  and Domaine Laroche Chablis Grand Crus les Blanchots.

The family also has vineyards in the South of France, South Africa and Chile and fine Pinot Noir from Punto Alto was served at the lunch alongside the Chablis .

Michel Laroche has been a devoted champion of screwcap since the beginning of this century and now bottles his Grand Cru wines with these closures. ‘Initially we bottled 50% of the wines in screwcap and the remainder in cork. As time has progressed we have found that the wine sin the screwcap bottles have remained more fresh’, he told us.

Laroche wines come from a house that is dedicated to quality, has invested in modern viticulture and wine making technology, respects and environment and appreciates its heritage- a fact  symbolized by the presence in its cellars of a massive oak wine press used by the Cistercian monks who first brought winemaking to Chablis 1,200 years ago.