Olivier Horiot Visits This visit with Olivier Horiot took place in July 2013. Words by Jules Dressner, photos by John Kafarski and Jules Dressner. Though we've been working with Olivier Horiot for a few years now, it wasn't until our fairly recent interview at L'Herbe Rouge last February (see above) that we began to truly realize how funny, clever and talented the guy is. Watch this video to understand his epicness: I laugh out loud every time I watch this. The contrast between epic war movie music and Olivier's mellow demeanor undoubtedly makes it a postmodern work of juxtapositional art. Historians will look back upon this fondly! We began the visit by driving to Les Escharere and Valigrain, two neighboring parcels. As you can hear from the audio, it was a very windy day. Escharere is the first parcel you see, followed by Valigrain.
Upon arrival, Olivier started chatting up his neighbors about everyone's big worry in 2013: hail. His colleagues were checking for any damage from a recent storm, and had luckily been spared. It's hailed 3 times on this grouping of parcels this year. Due to late flowering, the damage hasn't been too bad. "It sounds strange, but we're getting used to bad weather." Here are some pics of recent hail damage from Escharere's Chardonnay.
Escharere consists of Pinot Noir and a bit of Chardonnay on marl.
"The marl gives a roundness to the juice you don't get in other areas." The best grapes from this parcel are blended into Métisse, and the rest are sold to a VERY FAMOUS house that will remain anonymous. Just below, the 30 year old Valigrain vines feature a more Southern exposition and a steeper coteau.
"The soils here are always drained due to good exposition, so the vines are always balanced." This is especially important since Les Riceys is one of the rare parts of Champagne with a continental climate, leading to very cold winters and scorchingly hot summers. Along with Pinot Noir, a small amount of Chardonnay and Pinot Blanc is co-planted in these soils. During harvest, Olivier's team perform 2 to 3 passes: one for the Valigrain Champagne, one for Rosé de Riceys and a last one for the Coteaux Champenois Blanc. Olivier works all his soils with a tractor, letting grass grow every other row. His soil is fluffy and soft, while most of his neighbors' are rock hard. He's also very vigilant in keeping yields low, keeping only 6 to 8 bunches per cane. "50 hl yields are the maximum if you want to produce a quality rosé. The soil is very fertile here, so it's easy to have really high yields." We then set off to Olivier's second major site, En Barmont.
A little bit of hail here, but no damage. "It still really stresses the vines." While admiring the view, Olivier filled us in on some of his region's particularities. With 866 h planted in vines, Les Riceys is not only the the biggest viticultural village in Champagne, but in all of France! It's also the southernmost appellation of Champagne, smack dab on the border of Burgundy. In fact, the border actually splits the village of Les Riceys in half! Olivier lives in the Champagne part. After hanging in En Barmont, we drove to a new parcel on a 45% incline.
Les Riceys has a large amount of the style of stone house pictured below.
These are very typical in the South of France (especially the Rhône) and all but absent in other viticultural regions of France. No one really knows why they are so prevalent here. The final parcel we visited is called Les Prémalins.
This is where Olivier has planted the ancient grapes of Champagne: Arbane, Pinot Meunier, Petit Meulier, Pinot Gris and Pinot Blanc. He's also experimenting with all types of training systems to see what happens. After a much appreciated tour of the vines, we visited the Horiot's recently renovated cellar. The ground floor serves as a pressing room.
The gravity press is a new addition, as well as the concrete tanks, which permits Olivier to not use temperature control.
While we were checking the ground floor out, Olivier's son popped in and showed us his bad-ass Horiot T-shirt! I also spotted this inspiring manuscript.
Titled Harvest 2012, Advice for Vinification, it contained many nuggets of wisdom: which yeasts to use, how much sulfur to add (and when!), what to do if you have rotten grapes in the mix... It was all in there! While the ground level already existed, the Horiot's dug out a completely new underground cellar.
We tried a few things from barrel, including still Chardonnay from Escharere destined to make Champagne, as well as Pinot Blanc and Arbane from En Barmont. Olivier only has 303 plants of Arbane, which tends to produce only one barrel a year. We also got to try the Pinot Blanc and Chardonnay from Valigrain that make the Coteaux Champenois Blanc and some rosé still in its carbonic state. Olivier used to conferment his wines, but now vinifies everything separately. After visiting the cellar, we set off to the local hang run by Olivier's sister.
We got to taste another shade of Champagne's bubbly side: Belgian beer!
We also ate lunch and talked about all types of interesting things. Did you know that Les Riceys is the only region in the world where you can make 5 radically different wines from the same parcel and have all of them pass as AOC? Count em': Rosé des Riceys, Blanc de Noir Champagne, Champagne Rosé, Coteaux Champenois, Coteaux Champenois Blanc. BooM! Did you also know that you are legally allowed to use Arbane, Petit Meulier, Pinot Blanc and Pinot Gris to make AOC Champagne? And that out of today's 15 000 active Champagne producers, only 18 use grapes other than Pinot Noir, Chardonnay and Pinot Meunier? Or that only 17 producers still make Rosé des Riceys? Or that the Horiots have 100 h of fields in their family's property, and are in the process of getting cows for milk, meat, fertilizers and biodynamic preparations? So many factoids! We ended our visit with great conversation about carbonic maceration. It boiled down to carbonic maceration potentially hiding or "killing" terroir when a wine is young, but that it shows itself if you let it age. The Rosé des Riceys is the perfect example: "The thing with these sans souffre carbonic wines is that people are bottling them very young, at their most unstable state. You need to age these. Our rosé barely has any sulfur, and the more they age, the less they need it."