From Brooklyn to the Loire(2)
By 2009-3-6 19:20:52
In New York, Laurent was among the happy few who could get to work after a short walk, his home and Ici being very close. Here in the Loire, he managed to keep this priviledge and you can see on the other side of the woods the old farm where he rents his living quarters. Back to the beginning : last summer, his plans to change the course of life led him to come a few weeks in the Loire with his friends/vignerons, the Puzelats, Hervé Villemade and others. Here he was, in the Loire, visiting these people who were behind the wines that he loved and who were the best counsels he could dream of now. There, he realized that maybe, jumping on the other side of the fence and become a vigneron was feasible and anyway a highly desirable, and heart-racing adventure. Here were people that could offer all the help and advice to learn and progress. The vineyard and the real health (not chemically controlled) of the vines and grapes being particularly central for these vignerons who applied an organic/biodynamic farming management, he understood that he had to begin with the basics, the vineyard tasks. Didier Barouillet and Catherine Roussel (Clos Roche Blanche) happened to need someone in the vineyard, and Noëlla Morantin, who was setting up her winery on vineyards rented from Clos Roche Blanche needed also someone for her 8-hectare surface. This was it, Laurent had the job even if split on two employers, and he jumped at the opportunity.
Pruning a 5-year Sauvignon When I arrived at the house in my old Citroën, Laurent had already left to work in the vineyard. 
There's a message on my phone for directions on how to reach the vineyard from there by foot (the other option being driving the car down the slope toward the Cher and up again to Clos Roche Blanche). It is simple as real things can be : take the vineyard at the end of the courtyard, 
go straight between two rows and follow the woods at the end to the left. At one point you'll see a narrow path going down the slope under the trees on your right, follow it, careful on the sliperry stretches and on a couple of old disrepaired wooden bridges on the now-empty streams and when you reach an open prairie on the other side of the coulée, take it and you'll reach the vineyards with the antifreeze tower in the middle. A coulée (literally flow because that's where the rain streams flow) is a small valley, often covered with woods because it is too steep to be plowed, which is going down from a plateau to the river further down, in that case the Cher river. This small walk took me maybe 10 minutes and it was a poem, a travel in time. It looked like what I imagine paths looked like in the Middle Ages, humbly finding its way through the mighty nature. The oblique morning light through the bare trees on the green mosses and fallen trunks would have made my day by itself and I think that this walk deserved a couple of pictures, here on the left for the path through the woody coulée (click to enlarge), and on the right when the view on Clos-Roche-Blanche vineyards breaks through the woods. Laurent Saillard says that he used to run around Prospect park with his dog Panache in Brooklyn, but I'm sure that this daily walk through the coulée to go to work compensates. Walking a few minutes from home to the workplace is a rare luxury, here like in New York.
Checking Noëlla Morantin's 70-year-old Cot
From wineterroirs.co