At the Red Help 2020

Au Bon Secours Rouge 2020,

Babass

Sébastien Dervieux, Babass to his friends, is a warm-hearted character who practices the art of additive-free winemaking in the sweetness of Anjou. His vineyard is in Rochefort-sur-Loire, his cellar in Saint-Lambert-du-Lattay, and his headquarters in Beaulieu-sur-Layon. Through him, the work of the Hacquet family, pioneers of natural wine after the Second World War, is perpetuated, some of whose plots he has taken over. This legacy is expressed, among other things, in the Joseph-Anne-Françoise cuvée, whose appellation brings together the siblings' first names. The terroir is located on the last foothills of the Armorican Massif before the Paris Basin. It is a region of small hillsides; The Loire, very close, exerts a strong influence, as does the ocean, which is about a hundred kilometers away. The vines are neither too hot nor too cold. The particularity of this region is the schist, either degraded (giving clay) or not degraded in places. This terroir produces mineral wines, the climate of the wines rather "on the fruit" and moderately full-bodied. The plots are in a single block, planted with traditional Angevin grape varieties: 1.4 ha of Grolleau, 0.9 ha of Cabernet Franc, 1.2 ha of Chenin and 0.7 ha of Gamay. All the vines are cultivated in certified organic. The harvest is manual. In the winery, fermentation is natural and the wines are without sulfur or other additives ("apart from sometimes a few drops of sweat"). The red wines, including some single-varietal vintages, are macerated in whole bunches. The whites are pressed slowly in a vertical press. All the wines are aged in fiber vats and are neither filtered nor fined, simply racked if necessary and without abuse.
"My wine is the wine of a little guy in his little corner with his little grape varieties," says Sébastien modestly, who also declares that he makes grape wines, forged by the climate of the vintage, the terroir, the grape variety and his decisions (good or bad). His approach is not to distort this balance with magic powders that lead to standardization. His Cabernet Franc reds are round, peppery and fleshy; his Grolleau reds, pure fruit, are fresh and easy to drink.
This recent cuvée from Babass, without additives or filtration, is based on Gamays planted on schist terroirs in 1959 and 1960. After manual harvesting, the grapes macerate in whole bunches for about ten to fifteen days depending on the vintage. The devatting is manual, followed by slow pressing in a vertical press. The free-run and pressed juices are blended immediately, after which the wine is aged for five to eight months on fine lees. The wine is wonderfully gurgling, fluid and drinkable, fruity and crisp, with fresh acidity and a lovely aromatic palette of red fruits, earth and spices. A very fine Gamay.