la gramiere

La Gramière today only on Garagiste! Get your 2011 while you can!

Green Light Go

Dear Friends,

Red Light.

Green Light.

Go, Dog. Go!

If you are running like a hound toward vinous enlightenment, this wine is all that you require in the file: The Essence of Hard Work (not to mention the essence of authenticity).

Any wine that introduces itself with “Welcome to our dream!” deserves a second and third nibble – La Gramière deserves even more.

The life and passion of Amy Lillard and Matt King, the couple is so immersed in their wine (plucked from an exceptional parcel near the famous Pont du Gard), the tariff we part with to experience a year of their toil (in bottle) seems trivial by any standard.

Is a year of your life worth $16.99?

I would think that answer is a resounding YES.

From winter work, to bud break to endless hours in the vineyard and eventually to harvest, crush and beyond, the perfume of Castillon du Gard comes to your door in the form of a green labeled Burgundy/Rhone shaped bottle that you can twirl, spin and stare at...but you should also open.

With nary an additive in sight (except for the addition of their entire landscape, ground into silt, pulverized and turned to liquid...with grapes of course), La Gramière continues to hone, mystify and perfect an act that they never intend to be perfect.

For Amy and Matt, La Gramière just is.

The 2011 version screams “Southern Rhone” with an elegance and purity of passion that leaves the massive alcohol and wood behind (two elements, in collusion, that have become the norm in CdP – by contrast, the 2011 La Gramière is 13.8-14.2% but it gives the impression of an even lighter percentage). A blend of Syrah and Grenache gown 100% naturally, hand-picked and vinified in cement (without any commercial yeasts, wood or other), my comment above regarding their landscape in a bottle is discernable from the first whiff and sip.

The purest and most playful La Gramière yet, the 2011 is like so many CdR and CdR Villages examples of the vintage – fantastic aromatics (of the fruit and of the land) meshed with a palate that asks for additional tastes and sips without tiring the taste buds or your patience. It is long on the palate and fresh on the back end – the taster is left with a smile instead of indecision. The 2011 is a southern wine you can drink at will - a certain joy will proceed to your lips and to any number of nights you wish to kick back your heels.

After the final drops of my bottle have been emptied (over 72 hours), the greatest compliment I can bestow upon this wine is that is exists without an agenda – it does not wish to play games or have you believe a famous consultant created it on a computer first, in the vineyard second. It tastes and smells the way southern wine did decades ago and it reminds me of a number of surprising finds that I stumbled upon while traipsing the back hills of France in the 1980’s (before luxury cuvees and the score chase became more important than what the elder statesman of the region had to say).

The 2011 La Gramière deserves more than a passing fancy – it deserves an extended stare and even a moment of semi-boastful reflection considering how high their standard has been raised in such a short time...

Do you like my hat?

I do...I like that party hat!

This parcel is directly from the winery cellar with the finest provenance available.

FIRST COME FIRST SERVED up to 36/person until we run out:

2011 La Gramière 750ml (Meridionale/Castillon du Gard) - $16.99

To order: simply reply to this email or send Nicki a note (be sure not to change the subject line in your email or your order may get dropped to the end of the stack if Nicki can’t find your request!) [email protected]

Harvest 2012 has begun! Vendanges 2012!

Monday morning was the day, the first day of harvest 2012.  Amazingly we started out with a big crew, we were 20 at lunch!  Our ever-faithful crew of friends showed up in force along with more friends visiting from Norway and a new friend from Canada via London!

We decided to pick our Syrahs on Monday and Tuesday, the Côtes du Rhône Villages was ready, and the Vin de Pays not far behind.  The skins were starting to get a bit soft and there were the first signs of botrytis, so the time was at hand.  The grapes were just beautiful and we are very happy to have them in the tank.  We're now waiting a few more days for the Grenache to ripen, but it's getting there, the skins are much less bitter and they are tasting great so hopefully they'll be ready by the weekend when we have more friends and family arriving to help!

Here's a little film I made of the syrah in the tank! 
Fermenting syrah par lagramiere

We did it! One more day to go...

Wow, I am humbled, amazed and ever so greatful for all of the contributions to our Kickstarter project!  Thank you so much!  Whether you donated, posted it on Facebook, tweeted it, what ever, we'd like to thank each and every one of you for all that you have done to help get the word out.  We had a great article on Epicurious, check it out if you haven't seen it yet.  There was also a fun mention on the blog Jalopnik, which brought a lot of visits from old car buffs! 

Now we're going to get to work!  I'll be meeting with the sign people this week to get our logo painted on the site of the truck, that's number one.  (the sign you see on the side there is supposed to be hanging on the front of our house, we stick it on the side of the truck with suction cups each time we set up!) Then we'll be working on getting the floor replaced and painting the inside of the truck.  Not very exciting, I know, but it must be done!  Then we'll get to the fun part, deciding how to fit the equipement inside the truck.  We'll be working with a local used kitchen supply company who is going to help us find just the right equipment for our super truck!

We're getting dangerously close to August, a month where most of France is on vacation and it's hard to get anything done, but we're going to try our best to get a good chunk of it done before harvest.  That way we'll be able to have the truck out in the vineyards with us while we're picking! 

I've been emailing back and forth with one of our backers Professor Bill O'Riordan who is a genious when it comes to anything electrical.  Bill is going to help us figure out how we can put solar panels on the roof and use old car batteries to hold the charge, then we might even be able to run our kitchen equipment and lights off the grid. Now that would be very cool.

Any money you donate at this point will go towards powering the La Gramière super truck from the sun, that's not a bad bonus now, is it?

Once again, thank you to all participated in this fun campaign!! We are so very greatful!  Hopefully we'll get to serve you all a glass of wine when you come to visit the truck in person!!

 

 

 

 

 

Half way there!

Wow, this has been so amazing, three days into our campaign and we are half way there!  We're just a bit shy of $4000, THANK YOU!!!!  Thank you so much to all of you who have already donated and thank you to those of you who have helped get the information out!  If you're considering donating, remember, every little bit helps we are so grateful for any amount, $10, $20, $5! whatever you feel like chipping in.  Remember we don't get any of the money if we don't reach our $7500 goal!

So here's a big thank you to all those who have donated so far: OMS&MR, Beverly, Catherine, June, Scott, Alys, Russ, Jane, Ryan, Dave&Heidi, Cindy, Doug, Elise, Glenn, Max, Mellie, Tom, Dominique&Michael, Kathy&Pete, Joan, Molly, Cynthia, Thomas, Marianne&Terry, Maggie, Rémy, Jean&Harold, and Katharine!  Your contributions are greatly appreciated! 

Here's a great photo that our friend Joe McLean of Promo Vinum took of us the other night at the evening market in Saint Quentin la Poterie (our village!).

La Gramière on Kickstarter ~ help us reach our goal!

Hi Everyone!  We've come a long on way restoring the truck, but we still have a long way to go, and we've run out of money.  So, I decided to put together a Kickstarter campaign.  For those of you who don't know what Kickstarter is, it's a popular crowd funding site where you can give money to help people complete a projet.  There are lots of great prizes at the various levels of giving, so please take a look at it!

My video is pretty funny, I tried to learn how to edit on i-movie but found it so confusing that I just pieced it all together! You do get a tour of vineyards, house and winery though, and of course a full view of the truck! I'm not going to go into a lot of detail here, since it's all waiting for you at Kickstarter.

We've already raised over $1000 towards our $7500 goal.  This money will be used to redo the seats, paint the interior, fix the floor, and then put in as much of a kitchen as we can!  It probably won't cover everything, but it will give us a great start!

So, if you can give a little towards our fun little project we would greatly appreciate it and we put you picture in the truck, and send you some fun stuff too!

A huge thank you our friends who have already pledged money: Elizabeth, Tim, Lance, Derek, Robert, David, Andrew and Catherine!  I hope to be able to thank all of you in person someday!

 

Keeping things fun at La Gramière~!

I have a short attention span.  In fact if was I growing up now, I'm sure I'd be tagged as mildly ADD or ADHD or whatever they're calling it now.  Instead I grew up as a happy, creative kid, that needed a bit of "direction" from time to time. Since buying vineyards 8 years ago, I've been forced to stay in one place and to focus on the project at hand instead of flitting around from project to project.  Which at times has been very trying for me.  In the beginning I blogged a lot, it was a fun way to communicate with the outside world, but year after year I felt like I was saying the same things; if it's January it must be pruning, April budbreak, July bottling, September harvest and so on. The novelty wore off, so I little by little have stopped blogging virtually all together.  But today is different, today I have a new, fun project and I want to share it with you!

Drum roll please!!!

Announcing the new La Gramière Super Truck!:

Well, it's going to be anyway...

We bought it way back in January and ever since then it's been at the mechanic's getting some required work before it will pass the 'road worthy' test here in France.

This is what it looked like a couple of weeks ago:

And this is what it looks like today!  It has passed the test and is now ready for the road, and a new paint job!

I know, not much different than the first photo, but now all of the lights and turn signals work, it has two new tires and all the little kinks have been fixed!

The next step is to paint it and make an opening on the side so that we can serve wine from the inside to our customers standing at the bar on the outside!  It's going to be a mobile tasting room of sorts.  We're going to do evening tastings with tapas and wine, sometimes in our vineyards as the sun goes down, sometimes in the surrounding villages!  We are also going to be inviting guest "vignerons" to pour their wines along with ours, and guest chefs to cook for us!  Sounds fun doesn't it?

When we're finished painting and converting it I hope it will look something like this, with a little more color, but it gives you and idea:

I promise to post more pictures as we progess!  But plan on coming out for a glass of wine and some yummy treats this summer! 

Oh, and we need a name for it, any ideas??

 

La Gramière at Garagiste Wine - today only!

Once again Jon Rimmerman of www.garagistewine.com  is offering our wine!  This time it's the 2009 vintage and he loved it. To order is easy just send an email to [email protected] and tell her how many bottles you'd like (anywhere from 1 to 36).  They'll take care of the rest, but you only have today to do it!

Here's what Rimmerman had to say about our wine:

Smile

Dear Friends,

I'm so happy to have made this wine a personal friend.

It cuts through the clouds – cuts through the sea of uncertainty and does so with the most honest and well-intentioned character one could imagine. It is there when I need it, listening, pondering and giving back only the most heartfelt advice.

In this wine, I find peace...which is saying nothing and everything at once.

In the same vein as my selection of Chambers St as the top retailer of 2011, you never feel as though La Gramière has an agenda – there is no motivation to sell anything and no motivation to win you over by promoting, marketing or wishing for something that could (and should) come naturally to those that choose to amble through an evening or two with a kindred spirit that eventually becomes a confidant.

In wine, that confidant is La Gramière.

With their tiny and special BIO/organic property, Amy Lillard and Matt Kling have made it ok to be a simple Grenache/Syrah VdT. They have changed the notion of “country-French” from a furniture aesthetic to one of winemaking bravado where rustic equals regal. The time spent in the vineyard and in the cellar, cajoling their offspring to a point where it can fly on its own, is almost unreal – worth far more in a monetary sense than they could ever recoup for their effort. 

Then why do it?

That question is answered as soon as you pull the cork.

Not that it is new news - we profiled this heart-warming Southern Rhone property (and story) last year but that was the 2008 vintage – a wonderful success in a year that required meticulous hand-picking and sorting grape by grape to achieve anything of substance (which they did with aplomb). 

This, on the other hand, is 2009 and I can predict with my usual fortune-tellers fairy dust that the 2009 La Gramière “La Gramière” (the winery’s top effort) will be among the most popular wines we bring to your table in 2012 – it is a rolling ball of lip-smacking, bursting-at-the-seems, fresh and downright delicious red fruit that you want to keep pulling from your holster again and again. It has sophistication beyond its years but also a naïveté that is equally alluring. The fruit is so natural, fresh and pure in composition, you taste it intertwined with the ripe vintage in such a way that the two are never confused (a nearly impossible achievement for any winemaker – i.e. this wine tastes like La Gramière first and foremost and the vintage second).

In the end, as with any bottle of wine you decide to engage in a relationship, however brief – a dalliance or a long-term proposal, it must speak to you, understand who you are and why you’ve chosen to be you...

...or it just tastes darn good.

With La Gramière, you have both.

This parcel is directly from the cellar at La Gramière, hand picked, packed, labeled and loved by Amy and Matt – from their hands to yours:

2009 La Gramière “La Gramière” VdT (Castillon du Gard) - $16.83
(to compare US pricing, you have to look at the 2008 vintage – this is not the NV wine)

FIRST COME FIRST SERVED at this tariff up to 36/person until we run out:

To order: [email protected]

 

Dropping fruit, preharvest

Here's another look at harvest prep:

 

We're not going to so this in all of our vineyards, just in a few spots where the vines seem to be over loaded.  We'll see if it has the desired effect!  Funny, I look like I just bit into a lemon!

2011 Harvest update

Well it's August 18th and we are gearing up for harvest!  Right now things are looking great, but we need the hot weather to hold out for another two weeks, and no more rain!  If we are unlucky and get rain in early September, we'll be scrambling to get the grapes in before they rot. If the weather holds, it could be a great vintage!  

Untitled from Amy Lillard on Vimeo.

 

A little powdered sulfur

For the vines, that is!  We got up at o'dark thirty the other day to do a "poudrage" on the vineyards  that 
are in flower.  A "poudrage" is simply blowing powdered sulfur onto the vines to protect them against mildew, but also to help with fruit set.  Grenache is a tricky varietal in that it often has problems with shatter.  Shatter means that the fruit doesn't set.  Often we'll have beautiful big bunches of flowers and then the tiny little grapes will just fall off after flowering. In 2010 many wineries in the southern Rhône lost up to 30% of their crops due to shatter.  Powedered sulfur is supposed to help with that, keeping my fingers crossed that it will.  That and the fact that the weather has been beautiful here, not much wind so maybe we'll be lucky and have a bumper crop this year!

We've done it only once before mostly due to the fact that it has to be perfectly still when you do the "poudrage" otherwise it just blows away, and the temps can't be above 27 degrees C for 24 hours after you do it or it creates sulfur gases and can burn the vegetation.  This time we weather was perfect and as you can see the powder just hung over the vines.  Here's to hoping for a bumper crop in 2011! 

Note my high-tec gear to protect my nose and eyes, getting sulfur in either would be quite painful!! A pretty good self-portrait, don't you think??