Nicolas Joly

The man

If there is one icon, one oracle, one representative figure in biodynamic wine production it is Nicolas Joly.  After all, this man wrote the book on biodynamic wine...no, literally...in fact he has written two essential treatises on biodynamics: Wine From Sky to Earth, aimed mainly at wine growers, and Biodynamic Wine Demystified, which strives to make the concepts of Biodynamics more understandable to the lay wine-lover.  Both can be found in the Literary Elucidation section of this blog.

Nicolas Joly is an ardent, some would say almost fanatical follower of Rudolf Steiner's Biodynamic Principles.  It is not hard to understand what drives his passion for this nature-intensive system, when one understands his objective.  Joly, first and foremost, wants to create wine that is truly expressive of its Terroir.  One almost gets a sense that he would rather create a slightly imperfect wine with exceptional character that has been produced naturally, than a "perfect" wine that has been tortured into submission in the cellar through over-manipulation.  In his own words: "I don't want a good wine, but also a true wine."

Here a bit of history.  Joly came to the wine-world from a banking background, having studied finance at Columbia University, and subsequently worked as an investment banker in New York.  In 1977 he left banking to take over operations at his family wine estate in the Loire Valley.  From the beginning, Joly was sensitive to what he saw as failings in the French AOC classification system.  In his view, the scheme created in the 1930's to preserve wines that express precise locations and vintages by way of legal guarantee, was no longer fulfilling its intended goal.  In Joly's view the destruction of the AOC system began with the proliferation of herbicides and subsequently other chemicals in the vineyard, which robbed grapes of their ability to show the unique characteristics of their environment.  To compensate for this loss of terroir, wine cellars were transformed into factories where inferior grapes were to be endowed with interesting characteristics through artificial methods such as the use of "designer" aromatic yeasts.  When Joly read Rudolf Steiner's works on Biodynamic farming, he was convinced that applied to the vineyard, this was the road back to creating "real wine," thereby restoring the intent of the AOC system.   Since 1984 Joly has been doing his part to facilitate this restoration by using 100% biodynamic methods in his vineyards.

The Vineyards and Wines


Joly's estate Chateau de la Roche aux Moines has a long and storied history.  Located in the Savennieres region of the Loire Valley, the vineyards were planted in the 12th century by Cistercian monks and have been under continuous cultivation ever since, making 2011 the 881st consecutive vintage.  Quite the heritage!

Today Nicolas Joly, along with his daughter Virginie, oversees production of three wines from these estates.  All, of course, white and from the Chenin Blanc grape.

The first of these is the flagship Coulee-de-Serrant, which shares the extremely rare distinction, along with the vaunted Romanee-Conti of Burgundy, and Chateau Grillet in the Northern Rhone, of being a single vineyard AOC.  The 30-45 year old vines cover only 7 hectares on steep south/south-east facing slopes, yielding only 20-25 hectoliters per hectare.  Harvest is carried out in 5 passes over 3-4 weeks, in order to insure that grapes are at their absolute peak of ripeness, Joly believing that only at that point can grapes produce wine with powerful terroir expression.  The wine is wood-aged with no more than 5% new oak being employed.  Total production is about 20,000 bottles per year.

The second wine, Clos de la Bergerie, is the produce of the larger Savennieres Roche aux Moines AOC.
A bit younger, the average age of these vines is 25 years, grown on east-facing slopes, with yields at 25-30 hectoliters per hectare.   Again, only wood aging, with less than 5% new oak is used.  Production is about 10.000 bottles.

Vieux Clos is the third wine, produced under the more general AOC Savennieres.  Yield are a bit higher at 30-35 hl/h, and both wood and tank aging is used.  About 15,000 bottles are produced per year.

One concept Joly is very particular about in his vineyards, is diversity.  All of his vines are propagated using the Massale method, where cuttings are carefully selected from the best and oldest vines, rather than the more common modern use of clones.  This, Joly feels, produces a diversity in the vines that ensures real aromatic complexity without having to resort to artificial means in the wine-making process.  To the same end he also believes in encouraging the formation of botrytis as an essential element.  In keeping with Joly's careful nurturing of the vineyard, work in the vineyards is carried on only by hand and horse.

In the cellar, Joly believes first and foremost in simple wine-making.  In fact, he really sees himself less as a wine maker, than as he calls it, a "nature assistant."  He sees the cellar not as a laboratory, but as a "womb" where the midwife simply listens and waits to see what happens, employing only few and measured actions.  Some of these actions include stirring of the lees, racking, and so forth, but never artificial manipulations such as adding commercial yeasts or micro-oxygenation.  In this way wine will be what it should be; a reflection of the "information" taken from the earth through careful nurturing in the vineyard, and therefore a sincere expression of terroir.

If you are lucky enough to get your hands on any of these  bottles of superlative Savennieres expression, you may also want to heed Nicolas Joly's advice on the optimal and most natural way to drink his wines.  Believing that oxygen enhances and brings out the full character of biodynamic wines, he recommends decanting.  He is also of the school of thought, as am I, that good white wines are usually drunk far too chilled to capture their most interesting aromas.  He recommends drinking at around 57 degrees F.