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2023 Harvest Reports Are In!
2023 Harvest Reports
<p>The 2023 vintage was certainly a mixed bag throughout Europe, particulaly in Italy where climactic hardships wrecked havoc troughout many regions. Whether is was a good or a bad year for the producers we represent, these harvest reports prove, as always, just how tireless and daunting their work is.</p>
<p>We are extremely fortunate to be able to represent this hard work year-in, year-out. So as we start our new year, let's give a big cheers to those who get the wine in our glasses! </p>
<p><a href="https://louisdressner.com/harvest-reports">You can go read all 31 2023 harvest reports here. </a></p>
Article
How does The New Website Work?
This is very exciting stuff!
<p><u><strong>Desktop vs Mobile:</strong></u></p>
<p>We know it's 2020 and people use their phones a lot. So we've worked hard on ensuring the site functions well on mobile (especially compared to what it once was). Having said that, desktop is the recommended way of perusing the site.</p>
<p><u><strong>Glossary:</strong></u></p>
<p>At its core, this has always been a website written for wine professionals *attempting* to glean information on the wines we import (and hopefully see a picture of the vigneron's dog). Since the language can be so technical, we've added an <glossary term="glossary" title="1427">interactive glossary</glossary> to the text for those unfamiliar with the baffllingly complex world of wine terminology. Even if you're a seasoned pro, it will frankly teach you a thing or two. And if you'd rather read the content without the glossary, simply head to the main menu bar and turn it off. </p>
<p> <u><strong>Our Wines Section: </strong></u></p>
<p>In the new "Our Wines" section, we've offered a variety of filter categories for you to explore and discover all the cuvées we import. These filters can be combined together to narrow down results. If you hit a wall, simply erase one of the filters or clear all filters. </p>
<p><u><strong>Actual Information About the Wines:</strong></u></p>
<p>Speaking of the wines, the number one complaint we would get from customers was the lack of technical information on the wines themselves. It's not a coincidence that we spend the vast majority of our energy focusing on the people behind the wines and their dogs; it's what we dig about what we do.</p>
<p>Having said that, 95% of the wines we import now have EXTREMELY detailed technical information, dare I say the most technical anywhere on the internet. Please enjoy now while they are up to date, knowing that half of these will probably be totally wrong by next vintage. </p>
<p><u><strong>Search:</strong></u></p>
<p>If you know what producer or wine you are searching for, the search should quickly autofill what you need. Go ahead, give it a whirl.</p>
<p><strong><u>Hyperlinks:</u></strong></p>
<p>Everything on the website has a hyperlink now. This means you can easily share a specific producer page, article, wine or filter combination with anyone. </p>
<p><u><strong>Copy/Paste:</strong></u></p>
<p>If you need to copy/paste anything, the glossary needs to be turned off for the text to paste correctly. Also, if you are going to straight up use our writing verbatim, PLEASE credit us when doing so. Seems obvious but we see it happen all the time. </p>
<p><u><strong>A Shit-Ton of Written Content:</strong></u></p>
<p>The articles themselves can often be very long, and for this reason we developed a Propriety Pop Up System™ where you can easily scroll through various articles/wines and "pop out" to efficiently look at the rest of the content.</p>
<p>We've tried our best to pack as many dog pictures as possible in there, but the digital ink has been spilled: the cumulation of decades' worth of writings from Joe, Denyse, Kevin and Jules is here for you to read. A huge part of the work with this new website was to find better ways to condense and extract essential information you need without getting lost in all that BORING text. </p>
<p>We still think you should check it out. Don't worry, there are plenty of pictures. And you might even find the writing interesting. Or funny. Or both. </p>
Article
EXPLORE
Mattia Carfagna Producer Profile
<p>We first met Mattia Carfagna in 2011, when a small group of us were marooned on the island of <span class="zalup"><span><glossary term="Giglio" title="491">Giglio</glossary><span>.</span></span></span> At the time, Mattia was working at the Altura winery with his father Francesco and cooking at their seasonal family restaurant Arcobaleno. To this day, I vividly remember the fresh anchovies he served us with the 2010, 2009 and 2008 Altura <span class="zalup"><span><glossary term="Ansonaco" title="106">Ansonaco</glossary><span>.</span></span></span> We’d see him again in 2015 at our New York City October trade show, then a few years later in Paris, where he’d decamped to go cook professionally. By then, he'd left the kitchen to start importing specialty Italian foods.</p>
<p>Over constant, lengthy road trips from Paris to Italy to re-up on goods, Mattia began making a habit of visiting his vignerons friends in the <span class="zalup"><span><glossary term="Auvergne" title="128">Auvergne</glossary><span>.</span></span></span> Quickly falling in love with the region, he originally envisioned having a second home there. Then, in 2019, a chance opportunity came from his friends Catherine Dumora and Manuel Duveau of L’Egrapille: having recently separated, the couple were no longer using their communal <glossary term="Cellar" title="254">cellar</glossary> and asked Mattia if he wanted to rent it along with some adjacent land for 250 euros a month. That same year, Mattia made a tiny amount of wine in the <span class="zalup"><span><glossary term="Auvergne" title="128">Auvergne</glossary><span>.</span></span></span> His sister Irene poured it for us at Altura’s table during the 2020 <span class="zalup"><span><glossary term="Dive Bouteille" title="395">Dive Bouteille</glossary></span></span>. Our interest was piqued.</p>
<p>We’d meant to get in touch but got somewhat distracted by the pandemic and resulting lockdowns of March 2020: a time that upended and changed everyone’s life one way or the other. For Mattia, with no restaurants to sell to, his food business was done. Strapped for cash and needing to leave Paris, he and his girlfriend Chiara decamped to the <span class="zalup"><span><glossary term="Auvergne" title="128">Auvergne</glossary><span>,</span></span></span> where for over a year they lived in Catherine and Manu’s <glossary term="Cellar" title="254">cellar</glossary> with no electricity, using gas burners to cook and showering without hot water. During that time, Mattia started tending the tiny <glossary term="Plot" title="1133">plots</glossary> of land he was renting as well as asking local owners if he could rent their abandoned <span class="zalup"><span><glossary term="Parcel" title="760">parcels</glossary><span>.</span></span></span> Some said no, others yes. That year, Carfagna managed to start working nine tiny <glossary term="Parcel" title="760">parcels</glossary> owned by seven separate owners, all very old vines and previously abandoned.</p>
<p>Totaling little more than a single <glossary term="Hectare" title="523">hectare</glossary> combined, most of these micro<span class="zalup"><span><span>-</span><glossary term="Plot" title="1133">plots </glossary></span></span>are within a <glossary term="Cru" title="1152">cru</glossary> of the <glossary term="Auvergne" title="128">Auvergne</glossary> <glossary term="AOC" title="108">AOP</glossary> called Châteaugay. There is no <glossary term="Basalt" title="145">basalt</glossary> here, though volcanic chunks of <glossary term="Peperite" title="1485">peperite</glossary> mark the <glossary term="Clay" title="301">clay</glossary> heavy <span class="zalup"><span><glossary term="Terroir" title="1026">terroir</glossary><span>. One <glossary term="Plot" title="1133">plot</glossary> within </span></span></span>Châteaugay happens to be purely <span class="zalup"><span><glossary term="Limestone" title="596">limestone</glossary><span>,</span></span></span> and a final <glossary term="Parcel" title="760">parcel</glossary> in a nearby village grows on <glossary term="Basalt" title="145">basalt</glossary> soils (it's also completly surrounded by the suburban housing of <span class="zalup"><span><glossary term="Clermont-Ferrand" title="302">Clermont-Ferrand</glossary><span>,</span></span></span> with the city visible from the vineyard). </p>
<p>An inestimable amount of work was and continues to be needed to get the land back into shape; during a January 2023 visit, we saw one <glossary term="Plot" title="1133">plot</glossary> so completely overrun by thorns and shrubbery you had to squint to see the vines. For Mattia, this is a labor of love, passion and patience - honestly, it has to be seen to be believed. From these <span class="zalup"><span><glossary term="Plot" title="1133">plots</glossary><span>,</span></span></span> a <glossary term="Gamay d'Auvergne" title="1308">Gamay d’Auvergne</glossary> called “Le Serail" is produced. With vines averaging 80 to 100 years old and <glossary term="Yield" title="1129">yields</glossary> at a measly 10-1<span class="zalup"><span>4<glossary term="hl/ha" title="528">hl/ha</glossary><span>,</span></span></span> production is unsurprisingly very low.</p>
<p>Knowing he could not survive producing just one wine, in 2020 Mattia reached out to <glossary term="Vigneron/Vignaiolo" title="1089">vigneron</glossary> friends across France for grapes to make supplemental <span class="zalup"><span><glossary term="Cuvée" title="363">cuvées</glossary><span>.</span></span></span> This landed him in the <span class="zalup"><span><glossary term="Hérault" title="525">Hérault</glossary><span>,</span></span></span> where Jeff Coutelou helped him buy fruit. In 2022, chance struck again: through Coutelou, Mattia was able to rent 3.5 <glossary term="Hectare" title="523">hectares</glossary> in the <span class="zalup"><span><glossary term="Languedoc" title="579">Languedoc </glossary></span></span>on the hills of <span class="zalup"><span><glossary term="Faugères" title="1387">Faugères</glossary><span>.</span></span></span> A 3+ hour drive from Châteaugay, Coutelou’s team tends the vines year-round, with Mattia present for crucial moments like <glossary term="Pruning" title="834">pruning</glossary> and <span class="zalup"><span><glossary term="Harvest" title="521">harvest</glossary><span>.</span></span></span> From the <span class="zalup"><span><glossary term="Languedoc" title="579">Languedoc</glossary><span>,</span></span></span> he mostly farms <glossary term="Viognier" title="1111">Viognier</glossary> and a smaller amount of <span class="zalup"><span><glossary term="Grenache" title="508">Grenache Noir </glossary></span></span>and <span class="zalup"><span><glossary term="Muscat Petits Grains" title="699">Muscat Petits Grains</glossary><span>.</span></span></span> The grapes are trucked back and <glossary term="Vinification" title="1104">vinified</glossary> in the <span class="zalup"><span><glossary term="Auvergne" title="128">Auvergne</glossary><span>,</span></span></span> with an “Italian style” <glossary term="Maceration" title="610">macerated</glossary> white wine and a <glossary term="Grenache" title="508">Grenache</glossary>/<glossary term="Viognier" title="1111">Viognier</glossary> <glossary term="Blend" title="168">blend</glossary> produced at the time of this writing.</p>
<p>Mattia’s means in the <glossary term="Cellar" title="254">cellar</glossary> are limited to <glossary term="Fiberglass" title="445">fiberglass</glossary> and an an old <glossary term="Concrete" title="325">concrete</glossary> <glossary term="Vat/Tank" title="1140">tank</glossary> for the time being, though he hopes to grow and evolve the types of <glossary term="Vessel" title="1160">vessels</glossary> and <glossary term="Vinification" title="1104">vinification</glossary> techniques over time. Each year the wines are made by instinct over formula, with the names and the labels often changing to reflect the unique aspect of the <span class="zalup"><span><glossary term="Vintage" title="1109">vintage</glossary><span>.</span></span></span></p>
<p>For more information and pictures of those crazy aformentioned vines, please read our visit recap below (COMING SOON).</p>
