Welcome to the 40th episode of the Wine Makers Show, where we sit down with Olivier Bourdet-Pees, general manager of Plaimont: a cooperative in the Sud-Ouest located in the heart of AOC Saint-Mont. Plaimont produces many wines from indigenous Sud-Ouest grape varieties, in the Gers, where you can also discover a stunning monastery. In our conversation with Olivier, we dig into the importance of indigenous and forgotten grape varieties, the work behind their preservation, and the development of the cooperative model.
Antoine: Hello Olivier, thanks so much for having me here at the Plaimont monastery.
Olivier: It’s a pleasure to be here and to share this with you.
Antoine: We’re going to talk about lots of things today because there are tons of fascinating subjects around Plaimont. Before that, can you start by introducing yourself?
Olivier: I’m Olivier Bourdet-Pees, general manager of Plaimont. I was born in the Pyrénées-Atlantiques in the heart of the Jurançon appellation, another emblematic appellation of the Sud-Ouest wines. I was born into a family of mixed farmers, very small farmers, who have one little particularity: they’ve always worked in cooperation, always in the cooperative. I sense this story has followed me a bit, we’ll come back to it. I discovered this world of cooperation, of working together, of putting collective intelligence at the service of a project. My parents grew a tiny bit of vines in the Jurançon appellation, in cooperative. I then did my studies in Toulouse, I had experiences abroad. A first one in Romania, a second in Uruguay where I planted a vineyard while also taking on a job I’d found in Nord Gironde where I worked as technical director in a cooperative that’s very ambitious, I invite you one day to discover Tutiac in Bordeaux. It’s a very fine cooperative of Nord Blayais. I also worked in Uruguay for a dozen years, going there to do the winemaking and following the entire production journey. That let me open up to the wine world, understand that France wasn’t all that strong, that it had competitors, that there were things to see abroad and that we needed to prepare to exist in a wine market that was going to open up to a whole bunch of producer countries. I saw the strengths and I practiced these strengths, of those countries, to create wine. It’s true that Plaimont was missing for me, the rain at Plaimont you saw yesterday was missing for me. When André Duboscq, who is a bit the representative figure of Plaimont I was following, told me he was looking for a technical director at Plaimont, I came back in 2008. I drew closer to this Plaimont and to this will to defend very local, very strong things, that Plaimont had begun to put in place. So, technical director at Plaimont in 2008, then I took general management in 2012.
Antoine: OK, super. That’s a big panorama of experiences. Did you always know you wanted to make wine?
Olivier: Did I always know that? I always knew that wine took an important place in my life, my parents themselves were passionate about wine, they really opened me to wine culture very early. Without talking about wine consumption, in the end they drink much less wine than I do. On the other hand, this culture, this story of people, of people’s wills in territories, of their ways of wanting things in wine, there’s a culture there that carries itself, that’s enormous. So they passed it to me very early. I never knew if it would be my profession, my passion, my hobby, but I knew very quickly it would be part of my life. Then, of course, the tipping point is in studies. I did engineering studies in agriculture, then oenology studies to be an oenologist in Toulouse. There, I understood this world was inexhaustible, that it was going to lead me through a whole lifetime of questioning myself, reinventing myself, so from there I no longer had any doubt.
How did your first experiences go, in Romania for example? Let’s start with Romania, we’ll talk about Uruguay after, that way we go step by step.
Olivier: Once again it’s about openness, going to meet people, meeting people who’ve thought differently, who have another history, another culture of this wine. This product is infinite in terms of how to approach it. So I was born in this Plaimont, I wanted to see the world, to discover it, I needed to discover it too. I think it’s still an interesting way. It’s probably the first piece of advice I’d allow myself to give. It’s to start your life by opening your spectrum. There are too many winemakers who, because they have their family project that’s dear to them, don’t go through these stages of opening up to the world and so take over by habit a bit directly and so miss this enlargement that’s allowed by the fact of sharing other ways to approach wine. I had this chance, so I took advantage of it a lot. I saw new cultures, ambitions, projects that were of variable ambition. I loved this moment, it was magical, it was super.
Can you come back to Uruguay?
Olivier: Uruguay was much stronger, it’s a country that attracted me enormously, I loved this zone. If I hadn’t had family or such strong attachment to this Sud-Ouest I would surely have settled in this country. It’s an incredible country with very welcoming people, with a culture that spoke to me, a culture of sharing, of celebration, of generosity, of good living that was thrilling. People also who had discovered the vine through the intermediary often of Basque winemakers who had gone to settle there a bit more than a century ago. So, often with grape varieties, a vine culture that came from this Sud-Ouest that was also dear to him. So I arrived in Uruguay and I discovered Tannat. My family in Jurançon didn’t have red grape varieties, it was whites only. So I discovered Pyrenean Tannat in Uruguay, and I started working with it on the other side of the world. I worked it in a completely different climate, a way of cultivating, goals, ambitions that were totally different. I loved this moment, it was really very strong for me and it built me a lot.
That must have been pretty spectacular, what year was Uruguay?
Olivier: Well I planted the vineyard in 1998. I followed this project through all its construction until 2008, until my arrival at Plaimont. Of course once I got here I no longer had so much time to dedicate to all that.
What are the elements you take from Romania and Uruguay, if there were one, two or three lessons to take from these experiences that you try to apply today?
Olivier: Yeah, that’s mine, it’s really tied to my story and indeed to the story I came to look for at Plaimont. But what I found interesting in those countries are the people who were building their own story, who weren’t trying to imitate neighboring wine regions, who weren’t trying to imitate models we could admire but who were really trying to build their own story. I tasted feteasca in Romania that excited me more than the average Merlot you can find in those countries for example. I told myself this is really the adventure that’s exciting. If one day the viticulture of that country gains importance and if one day Romania, to take that example, holds a determining role in the world of wine, it will inevitably be through the story they write themselves. Not through approaching, however good, however perfect, models they’re trying to imitate or ape. Because there are sometimes caricatures that are a bit ridiculous, but frankly I found the stories exceptional even when the wines were particular, when they were surprising and sometimes shocking compared to the references I’d come with. But it was really this story that interested me, that has always been interesting for me to encounter.
Antoine: Yes that’s super interesting, by the way we did an interview some months ago now, I think a year or so since it was during the first lockdown, with Laurent Pfeffer who has a vineyard in Romania called “Catleya” and who makes very good wine, I personally appreciated what he does a lot.
Olivier: Voilà, that’s incredible, you have exceptional things to do in that country around those grape varieties.
Antoine: Yes that’s clear, so if you want to discover the Romanian vineyard in an interview, go listen to that interview because it’s really interesting. In fact, what you say about experiences abroad is funny but I have the feeling I’ve had similar feedback and I think it’s something specific to your generation, to go to the new world of wine and see that on site anything is possible because there’s not necessarily historical heritage, there’s no weight.
It’s been I don’t know 300 years that we’ve done it this way so we always have to do it this way, did you sense this liberation a bit?
Olivier: Yes I sensed that. I came out of school with a correct level of training. I was an engineer, I was an oenologist, I’d been given a certain number of bases to let me enter active life. It’s actually the moment in my life when I had the most certainties. I came out of there with a bit of an impression of knowing things, of having acquired them theoretically. Then from there when I started opening up to others, when I started sharing, sharing with other French winemakers, each time it opened my mind, it removed certainties from me, it let me ask more questions. When you ask yourself questions you question yourself. If you arrive with lots and lots of certainties acquired in a given place that you never confront, you’ll see we’ll talk a lot here at Plaimont about deeply rooted convictions. But, that have been nourished by knowledge, by understanding what’s happening in the world and the choices made by other winemakers and other actors on their own terroir, on their own territory. We only really transform, we only really push past what a territory can give if we have this conviction that we have to go further, that we have to have more ambition, see a bit bigger always. So these experiences really made me grow, and every day I still nourish myself from people doing things. We don’t seek to imitate them here. But on the other hand we’re inspired to tell ourselves that we have the duty to be even more ambitious compared to the potential that exists in our Gers, in our Gascogne, in our appellations here in Saint-Mont.
Antoine: So after this experience, you arrive here at Plaimont.
First, can you tell us what Plaimont is?
Olivier: Well, Plaimont is a cooperative, it’s a union of cooperatives, but beyond the chosen model, it’s collective work. It’s a gathering of people that was born not long ago, just 40 years ago. On the scale of the history of viticulture it’s a tiny time. 40 years ago here, the wines that were made were arguably some of the worst in France, arguably the cheapest too. But there were people who had the vision to say “stop, we’re stopping this fight where we’ll have to produce cheaper wines in larger quantities, with bigger volumes, things that are going to be in the globalized market of entry-level wines.” We don’t have the people to do that, we no longer have winemakers who’ll want to do that here on this territory. We’re gathering here the wills of people who want to create wines that they really want to create, in their image, from the things that are strong here. So, by understanding this terroir better, by understanding the grape varieties better, and that highlight these terroirs. By refining of course our knowledge, our know-how so the wines tell well the story of this place. There’s a person I’ll be obliged to cite, André Duboscq, who was really the great architect, he’s an employee, he was the architect of the renewal and the story of Plaimont. He was the architect of that because winemakers wanted to give him free hands, give him the trust to build this story, and so in ‘78 he creates Plaimont. This cooperative to try to bring directly to market, condition, bring to market things that until then had only been of extremely local interest, including an appellation that was gently dying called the Saint-Mont appellation of origin alongside projects on Madiran. Then the construction of a project on gourmand fruity wines, very fresh, very digestible on the vins de pays Côtes de Gascogne which are now IGP Gascogne.
Antoine: OK so that was in ‘78.
Olivier: I have a lot of recognition for the people who did it at that moment because I wouldn’t have believed in it. At that moment the story had passed. Gers viticulture was almost abandoned, in an appalling state, and the people who believed it would be possible are extremely visionary people, who were extremely attached to the history of this territory. They did things that were unbelievable, it’s wonderful this common will to gather and say “let’s go, we’re going to push past what’s been attributed to us as potential.” The vine-growing potential. At the time no one believed in it, and it’s really a will of men who gather, who put themselves together, and that’s the point on which I’m a passionate about cooperation forever. I’ve only ever worked for cooperation because it’s this human adventure of very modest, very simple people, often, who put themselves together to accumulate a tiny bit of their qualities, their skills, and to compensate a tiny bit each one alone for all their gaps to end up making a project really and truly ambitious. Cooperation only takes meaning when there’s this will to put choices in common to see bigger, to see further.
Antoine: So you, you arrive in 2008?
Olivier: Yes, about thirty years after the start of the story, the great clearing I’d say. Technical knowledge had been acquired, the restructuring of the vineyard, the great challenges were set. I arrive at the head here of a technical project, in the first time I arrived on the technical project with a conviction of these people, that we needed to work on local grape varieties and grape varieties of the Pyrenean foothills. We’re lucky to have an exceptional biodiversity in the Pyrenean foothills and they had sensed, they had sensed this potential a bit. André Duboscq and his teams had also created a conservatory which is to this day still the largest private grape variety conservatory. I think you had the chance to make a stop there. It’s a place where the viticulture of tomorrow is being reinvented. So I arrived, they presented this conservatory to me, I was like a kid in a toy aisle, there were Pyrenean grape varieties we no longer knew much about. I tasted the grapes as they approached maturity, I saw the potential, I saw the role they had had for some of them entering the history of this place. To put myself back to the task, of understanding what they’re for, and why they had been useful at one moment, why they had been abandoned, why they could possibly in changing contexts bring enormous things on the climate plane, on the plane of societal expectations, on the plane of plenty of things. To tell myself, well, from this kind of museum that was created, to set off again, to rebuild an adventure for the future, that excited me immediately. I told myself it’s here that I want to work. My desires are for these people that I want to work and that’s really what mobilized me.
Antoine: So we’ll come back to these grape variety questions which are particularly interesting to me, which interest me a lot, and we’ve already talked a bit, but which are really spectacular.
Before, for those listening, can you come back to how a cooperative works, how does it go? What’s it for, etc.?
Olivier: A cooperative is simple, they’re winemakers who own their vineyard. They own their vineyard but they don’t have their own cellar, sometimes they don’t have real winemaking skills, of commercialization, so they choose to put themselves in common, to bring their grapes to a unit that belongs to them. That is, they take a part somewhere in the structure. They’ll develop a tool, cellars, they’ll hire teams to do the work they’re not able to take on themselves. In particular the commercialization of wines, and from there either we isolate their plots to make single-domain cuvées and then commercialize them for them, or we blend their wine with neighbors who have similar challenges to create blended cuvées and try once again to bring them to market.
The phenomenal advantage of this system when it’s well led, because there’s enormous drift in some cooperation sometimes. I’m a lover and absolute defender, but I’m also conscious sometimes of the drifts it has created. There’s sometimes a tiny bit of standardization, a blend, or a mixing in some situations of a whole bunch of grapes that’s not very thought out, that wasn’t done with real ambition. That meant some cooperatives produced fairly standardized products. Here, what was particular at Plaimont is that the will of the people was to create cuvées that tell a story: that tell the story of a terroir, or of a winemaker, or of a grape variety we had isolated and to transfer it directly to market to share it with a public, and that was really super important. And after, what’s always attracted me in cooperation, and that’s each one in front of their story, is that we work for a territory. I never saw myself working for an independent winemaker however brilliant they may be, with a boss. To work on 10, 15, 20 hectares of vines and tell myself I was going to wake up every morning, I was going to commit either to enrich a bit more the boss in question or to improve a tiny bit by tiny centimeters the production of this little estate. What’s very motivating and very satisfying humanly in cooperatives is that I get up every morning to work for dozens, hundreds, thousands in this case at Plaimont of people who have the possibility of transfiguring a territory, transfiguring the story of a territory.
The strength of Plaimont today, the challenge it has, isn’t just to make a few families or a few dozen families live, it’s the fact of completely rebuilding, reinventing the future of the zone where we’re located, and that’s super motivating. Every day, when we work, we’re about 200 collaborators, 200 employees at Plaimont today. And we all fight so that hundreds, thousands of people here on these territories live better tomorrow, that we draft a project, that we draft an ambition for this whole territory and that we make things change. When we have subjects that really mobilize us, currently we’ll talk again about grape varieties, we’ll talk again about changes in vineyard practices, we’ll talk about the great climate challenges, etc., all that all together we have the strength to make things change.
Antoine: And in fact you’ve said a tiny bit.
But, in some key figures, how many hectares of vines is it?
Olivier: Well it’s very important, Plaimont is fairly large if we talk big numbers, because it’s 5,000 hectares of vines, a bit more than 5,000 hectares of vines, so it’s huge if you want, but the truth is it’s also 500 winemakers. So actually the average was rather small winemakers, people who have, 10 hectares on average, who put themselves together to try to build a common project, a collective project, and so that’s capable of moving this territory forward much more strongly and much faster than what they could have done. Once again I have a lot of respect for some independent winemakers. There are also brilliant ones in this territory, we’re lucky to have here cooperation that organized itself but also independent winemakers who did exceptional things on this territory. Who pull it up and we often have very good relations, there’s not one way to see things, but it’s true that we’re the smallest. In fact, the most modest, the people who said well alone I’ll never get there, so I’m going to put myself in this project, so it’s 500 winemakers, 5,000 hectares of vines today at Plaimont, that’s about 1/4 of the vines of the Gers you see, to situate yourself there are 20,000 hectares in the Gers, and there’s 1/4 of the winemakers of this Gers who decided to gather in this project called Plaimont.
Antoine: Isn’t it sometimes a hassle to manage 500 people around a table?
Olivier: Yes, when you don’t like people, it’s very hard to convince everyone, to listen to others, etc. Well it turns out I have plenty of other faults but I love that and I love working for people who don’t see things like me. To nourish myself with their way of seeing things, and that’s cooperation, it’s wonderful for that. It’s permanent, you have people who tell you it’s good when they think it’s good, you propose, who criticize you because they think they wouldn’t have done it that way, so we have a permanent exchange, a permanent self-questioning. I won’t tell you that sometimes it’s not wearing, that would be a real lie, but from the moment it happens in a good state of mind as is the case at Plaimont, it’s exceptional, you see, the diversity. We talked about it a little but we’ll keep talking about biodiversity, which is very dear to me and you know that. It’s the diversity of men in a cooperative, it’s enormous, I have people who are absolutely brilliant, there are people who are extremely modest, the simplest there are, they’re also part of our project and we have to push forward for the good of this territory both types of winemakers, it’s super, it’s super humanly rewarding, voilà.
Antoine: So precisely, I admit I don’t know exactly which end to take it from because there are plenty, plenty of possible entries.
But here you do work that’s rather wonderful on biodiversity, on the different types of grape varieties, etc. I’ll let you start as you like?
Olivier: Well, I’ll tell you about something that’s terrible, I won’t give you many figures, I don’t really like figures, I’m rather literary, but there’s one figure that’s terrible. It’s that in France in 1950 roughly with grape variety wines in France we had 53% of the French vineyard, today with grape variety wines we have 92% of the French vineyard. There’s an erosion of diversity that happened on the grape variety mix of the French vineyard that was cool and exponential. Post-war, there was a need for lots of wines, a need to replant grape varieties that were demanded by the consumer, and so at that moment a certain number of vineyards, a certain number of winemakers made some concessions compared to their then terroir, to their past convictions. They tried to imitate a tiny bit what was working. It’s true we planted Merlot like in Bordeaux, we planted Pinot Noir like in Bourgogne and we planted Syrah like in the Rhône.
Antoine: You also planted?
Olivier: No sorry, I’ll tell you why: not because we were more visionary than others but because we were further, but so it was France, and France lost enormous wealth in terms of biodiversity at that moment. It was post-war and we’re lucky to be post-war. We didn’t exist, we were moribund, we were completely at the end of the rope. There was a small local story, of Armagnac, which had ups and downs, but on wine there was almost no ambition at all anymore, so finally the people who didn’t sell wine, they didn’t restructure their vineyard, they didn’t renew their vineyard to produce the grape varieties that were demanded by the market since they no longer produced any. So they kept what they had, what they’d inherited historically. We had this chance, and as André Duboscq arrived in the 70s, he saw this potential, he saw this wealth in terms of diversity. He understood the erosion of diversity that was happening everywhere in the world and he said this is our DNA, around this we’ll bring something we very modest, very small, very poorly organized still, we’ll bring something to the great history of wine. Compared to the great prestigious appellations, the great estates, the great châteaux, the great stories that have sometimes been going on for decades or centuries on certain points. What we’ll bring is this story that we draw from hundreds or thousands of years of local grape varieties that have never moved from the Pyrenean foothills, and that we’ll try to show again to the whole world.
We want to take them further to enthusiasts, people who want to discover things, and for that we had the feeling we were a phenomenal space of discovery. People who drank 400 Merlots, 500 Chardonnays or 200 Syrahs in the past year. They inevitably want at some point to discover something else, to discover a grape variety that was born here. When you’ve never discovered a Romanian feteasca or at our place a Manseng Noir: that’s what we cultivate, the Petit Courbu, the Arrufiac, the Pinenc, the Tannat. Only grape varieties that aren’t very well known on the world stage for some of them. Surely you didn’t really know them before coming to discover them here. But on the other hand it’s a story, it’s a phenomenal discovery, and we’re lucky to have a generation, that you’re part of, that’s passionate about these things, that’s open, that wants to discover things.
We lived in the 70s for example with people who wanted a perfect variety of apple, they created the Golden for example, made to measure, all perfect as needed, no roughness, no taste too violent up or down, and a friendly color that pleases everyone, they created that variety. But today we’re lucky to have a generation that wants to rediscover old local apple varieties that only adapt to a small corner but that tell a story, that tell a past story, that have lots of taste, that are very rich in taste. Richer no doubt, less standardized, less polished than those that were created, but you see that have a real energy, and so we find ourselves really in this dynamic of people who want to rediscover old varieties of tomatoes, old varieties of apples, who want to eat again a meat breed that was forgotten, that had almost disappeared because you’d been more productive, but that today brings a story, a cultural richness that goes well beyond the gustatory quality of the product, that gives a lot of strength to those products.
Antoine: Indeed, and it’s true there’s a whole story about apples that was forgotten at certain moments, we’d talked about it a bit with Loïc Pasquet in a past episode. But yes, apples, well I don’t yet do a podcast on apples, maybe one day, but it’s true the parallel is interesting in any case.
Olivier: I’ll tell you the story of the agricultural fair, I was a student in agriculture. When I was an engineer we’d go to the agricultural fair in Paris, I remember there were dairy cow breeds for example, they had an udder that was 50 kilos with this thing that had been created for production, productivity, you see, that could produce, I won’t say silly things and I’m not very specialized in this, but dozens and dozens of liters of milk per day, enormous, etc. And it was those that were often the model of agriculture at the time, they were at the front of the agricultural fair. The genetic selection of things that produce a lot, and that shocked me a few months or years ago, it’s sure that it wasn’t as much in agriculture preceding, the next one, it’s an old breed of dairy I think from Normandy that had almost disappeared, it was that one that was the symbol of the agricultural fair, that’s the story of agriculture, things that are true, that are very rooted, that are anchored in a place, and that enthusiasts get back to working and bringing to a consumer who discovers like that not just a product but a story, a region, a way of living, and that’s what’s exciting in fact about products and products of terroir.
What happened for some people to say we stop, we stop making the vine pee and we make something interesting?
Olivier: Listen, you see, there’s a packet of questions, I’ll try to answer with my means but I don’t know what got into them, it’s crazy. I mean the truth is there’s a generation of crazy people, no doubt, sickened by past models and reflections, that is, the generations before, they were so shocked by the failure, you see, of a way of seeing things, they could clearly see that agriculture, viticulture, life here was dying, you know that in the Gers in 1800 there were 300,000 inhabitants and that in the years I’m talking about it had dropped to 160,000 inhabitants. There was a rural exodus, no one wanted to live here anymore, the productivity reference models were elsewhere, so people left from here, and so people, I think in ‘78 they had a kind of fed-up moment and they said, maybe well before realizing it was a story that could generate an economic reality, they said well at least we’ll do things we like, that we believe in, that talk to us about our elders, about strong things that happened here. We’ll do it at whatever scale it’ll be. They hadn’t at all imagined what Plaimont would be a few years later but they did it among people who appreciated each other and wanted to rewrite this story, and after, yeah it’s still crazy. I agree with you, I mean believing in that at that moment, believing in that today isn’t always simple, I was told: “no, can you imagine, when I go to markets, we walk around everywhere in Europe in the world, and people when we tell them we come to present a Petit Courbu, an Arrufiac, the first reaction is still to say listen, your story is still not very simple, it’s complicated, I clearly see it excites you but I’m still a bit surprised, how do you want me to immediately enter into it?” So you need a bit of, you see, a bit of sharing, of attachment, to explain why we got there, so they end up entering into it. There’ll be many who aren’t interested, I assure you, but we sense that more and more people end up entering. At the time it was impossible, that’s for sure, and I know what people lived through, and that’s why they’re admirable and I have an immense respect for the people who believed, with all the mistakes that were made, with, voilà, but they believed in something that was impossible to believe in and they saw there’d be a generation, yours, that would be interested in things richer in meaning, stronger, and that was really powerful.
Antoine: For sure that’s great, well precisely you do big work here on grape variety preservation and showcasing them. We had the chance to taste 2 or 3 cuvées, well they’re no longer behind me, there are a few experimental bottles still that are there, there was also a Manseng Noir, other things we were able to taste.
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Can you precisely tell me about all this preservation work, identification, showcasing, I know you have a subject on the Tardif?
Olivier: Voilà, that’s mainly the preservation, it’s something we talked about, the people who preserved these grape varieties who stopped the hemorrhage of biodiversity loss are the previous generation, before the one working today. You met Nadine earlier, you met Élodie, people who are young women here in the process of reinventing viticulture for tomorrow, for the day after tomorrow. From these famous grape varieties preserved by the previous generation, indeed there are grape varieties that disappeared from our vineyards, almost disappeared from our vineyards simply because they weren’t suited: either to climatic conditions at a given moment, or to knowledge at a given moment, or to expectations in terms of taste at a given moment. So these grape varieties, you see, they were born in the foothills, they were worked by a certain number of winemakers, then little by little they were eliminated, marginalized a bit, simply because they didn’t meet an expectation of one moment. That doesn’t mean that those grape varieties have no interest forever, it means it was the great mistake made in many vineyards. They said “voilà, if the elders abandoned them it’s because there were good reasons, it’s true they had good reasons.” But they had good reasons at a given moment 50, 100, 150 or 200 years ago, and conditions, they change a little, you know that every day today we’re told about climate change, we’re told about changing societal expectations, we’re told about changing consumer tastes, etc. And so these grape varieties that tell the story of a place, we have to try to see, when we’ve had the chance to preserve them as is the case at Plaimont, see if they’re not capable of telling a story for tomorrow’s expectations. Among these grape varieties we’ve preserved, in our conservatory it’s 37 grape varieties, you imagine 37 grape varieties completely disappeared, that we had the chance to preserve on a few plants, and that we put in this conservatory for study. This conservatory was created in 2002, since 2002 we’ve been working on these 37 grape varieties to try to see their potentials, their aptitudes, what they’re capable of bringing to the great history of wine in the years to come, in any case the great history of wine of this territory, and among them we have a certain number of grape varieties, by reevaluating them we say yes, we understand the small flaw, the small lateness, the small annoyance it causes, so we don’t see a great future for it short-term so we simply continue to preserve it. And then there are among those, you’ve heard, that there’s the Manseng Noir, the Tardif, completely disappeared grape varieties that we chose to represent to people who are a bit passionate about wine, passionate about wine history, and passionate about taste too because these grape varieties, they bring with them a taste, it’s a shock each time. You see, they’re so particular, so different, they bring something the first time you taste, I’ll remember all my life the first time I tasted a Manseng Noir I told myself it’s him, it’s like the first meeting with a child, you tell yourself I’ll spend my whole life with him for sure, and so incredible, the qualities he was going to have, the story he has, the excesses he has, he has a few, yeah, I want to share with him a little bit of road because this grape variety deserves to be rediscovered, it’ll excite a certain number of people I know, customers, friends, people who’ll be amazed by what it’s capable of bringing to these territories. So we started to grow some of them again, the Manseng Noir was the first in the story, we had found an old Manseng Noir plant in one of our vines, we replanted this Manseng, we today have 30 hectares planted, you see it’s no longer entirely marginal, anecdotal, there are a good fifty winemakers who’ve all planted half a hectare, a hectare of Manseng Noir, and so there are some who started creating a cuvée or 2, so there’s a cuvée called Moonsmann that’s a blend, but there’s a cuvée in pure Manseng Noir, voilà, that we tasted earlier, that really expresses if you see this rolled licorice that has this violet side a bit that’s exciting and lots of freshness with an alcohol level that no doubt had condemned it, you see Manseng Noir today does 11 and a half, 12 degrees today. With the great climate changes that we all observe every day, we can imagine that 50 years ago, 150 years ago, this grape variety did 6, so if you want, we understand well why winemakers 150 years ago said well at these grape varieties that make wines at 6 degrees or 7 degrees we’re not very excited by it, and so we eliminate it a little, we set it aside in favor of other richer grape varieties that reach maturity more easily. On the other hand today, in light of the great challenges, you understand well that Manseng Noir is in the process of surpassing a certain number of grape varieties that made the past century and that will have more difficulty adapting to the great warming we’re also observing. So you see. It’s life, life is in motion. On the other hand we don’t lose our bases, we keep working a story that’s our own but of course adapting tools, leaving aside tools, to put in place a terroir, you see we have grape varieties that were suited to a 13 bolt, we had a 13 wrench, 50 years later if the bolt in question has become 14 because of climate change, because we have more will to treat vines with this and that, well the bolt changes, you have to change tools to showcase this terroir, really we live it like that, it’s a revealer of terroir, a revealer of experience, of what our appellations can bring, and so it has to be in motion, and after if you let me one more little second to talk about that, you know I talk too much about that, but, well that’s not nothing, the Tardif. You mentioned it a little bit, this one excites us, excites me enormously since it’s a grape variety that has completely disappeared, we found 2 plants of Tardif on the parcel that’s pre-phylloxeric, that’s the only French vine that’s a historic monument that you find at the heart of the Saint-Mont appellation, I invite all the people a bit passionate about vine-growing culture to come meet it, it’s a parcel that was planted in the 70s, it’s 200 years old today, it’s a parcel with a richness in terms of genetic diversity that’s enormous for a vine that’s 200 years old, you don’t realize what that is.
There’s something happening, there’s an emotion, it’s something, you arrive at a place that was planted under Napoleon I, I mean that’s what we’re talking about, it’s exceptional, and on this parcel we found 2 plants of grape varieties we hadn’t identified at first glance, and so that we today know is called the Tardif, just the name makes you understand why it was abandoned, it must have had some difficulties to ripen at the time, but that today presents an interest that’s enormous, it’s a grape variety that’s extremely aromatic, very peppery, very spicy, very gourmand, very easy, you see it’s very good, and so this grape variety we found on the appellation, fairly logically we want to integrate it into the decree of the Saint-Mont appellation, voilà, it’s really our historic emblematic appellation here in the Sud-Ouest of the Gers, and on this Saint-Mont appellation we really have the basis today of the blend, it’s the Tannat and the Pinenc, and we have the feeling that this Tardif grape variety, by the aromatic complexity it brings, by the richness, by the alcohol balance also that it would allow to obtain on terrains that are sometimes a bit rich in alcohol, well we have the feeling it really has a role to play in blending in our story, and so we want it to be integrated into our Saint-Mont appellation decree, and so we fight for that, so we fight, you see, technically to rediscover this grape variety, understand it totally, we’ve been vinifying it experimentally for over 15 years now, 15 years we’ve been seeing a little the behavior it has on our territory. Today we’re saying voilà, we’re ready to move forward, so good news, I announce it to you, it has officially entered the appellation decree this year but still in proportions that remain a bit tiny, and so we fight, you see, a little bit with the people we love at INAO, we love them very much because we’re very close to the concept of appellation of origin, but we want them to help us a tiny bit to go faster. You see this grape variety has a role to play on our fundamental appellation, we have to be able to use it. Well today we’re limited to 10%, we have to tomorrow be able to use it at 15, 20, 25% in our blends so it really takes the share of the role it has to play for the future of viticulture in this corner, voilà. So that’s really a point that’s very dear to me and I fight so that these appellations of origin which seem to us really the heart of the reactor, it’s really there the story of wine in France, it’s made around these appellations of origin but we must absolutely not freeze them, we have to make them progress from local things, from local will, from local know-how, from local grape varieties, but we have to keep making this evolve in this direction. So the Tardif, I announce it to you, we’ll fight with all our strength for it to be part of the great story of the Saint-Mont appellation in the years to come.
Antoine: Understood, well precisely can we come back a little to these different elements and to what happens when we have a new grape variety or when we develop new things? So in France there’s an official catalog, there’s one in many countries, in Italy I think almost every country there must be an official catalog of vine types and species that are authorized grape varieties for cultivation for wine since after there’s a catalog for table grapes.
And so for wine in France, what’s it? In France it’s between 250 and 300 grape varieties registered in this catalog. Already, do you have grape varieties not registered in this catalog?
Olivier: Well yes, we have some of our grape varieties not registered because we’re in the process of making the request, and since no one having made this request, well if no one makes the request to integrate the catalog of authorized grape varieties, well fairly logically since it interests no one, well they’re not authorized for production.
Antoine: How does this request work?
Olivier: Well it’s an organization that evaluates objectively, I’d say independently, it’ll evaluate the integration of these grape varieties into the catalog. It was a fairly heavy protocol, you have to demonstrate the historical character of this grape variety, its role, try to find a little bibliography on its history, of course try to demonstrate first that it’s not dangerous for consumption, and that it doesn’t bring particular issues, and then so it’s an appearance in the official journal, it’s really validated by the state as a new grape variety integrating the catalog of authorized grape varieties, and it’s the only way to have authorization to produce it. A grape variety that’s not in the catalog by definition a priori doesn’t have the right to be produced. That’s really important, everything in the catalog is authorized, all those that aren’t there, even if it’s not dangerous, even if it’s not, even if it’s not that, you don’t have the right, voilà. And so it’s really a path that’s fairly heavy, ah it’s long, we have the chance frankly to have in the people who evaluate these grape varieties extremely brilliant people, I think you exchanged a tiny bit with Olivier Aubry, they’re people of that level, the Englishman who’s a bit at the head of all this is an exceptional young man, they’re people who have a height of view, who have a consciousness of the urgency to preserve this biodiversity, to put it back in value, that means that they will, from the moment we document our request enough, try to follow up on it. So often it’s a long path, and it’s several years to integrate, between the moment of the integration request to this catalog and the final result, it’s very, very long, it’s very heavy, it’s an administrative file, voilà, it’s not done lightly and brilliant, very competent, very precise and very sharp people who’ll study this request, but then once it’s in the authorized catalog you can produce it, anyone can produce it in France, everyone can produce it. What changes therefore is the presence in appellation, but you’ve understood everything, that we can produce it in vin de France, voilà, I can say today the Tardif, the famous Tardif, I have the right to produce it 100% in vin de France, I make a parcel, I make a wine from this grape variety, I call it 22 French, no one can forbid me today from producing it and commercializing it in vin de France.
By the way there are many winemakers who say well listen, my project, I’m abandoning the appellations, the things, that’ll just be more administrative complications, blockages, things, so I’ll do it in vin de France. Well we’re so attached to our terroir, to local history, to what happens here, to this climate, to showcasing it, that we try to take the step after, once it’s authorized, so it’s the case of the Tardif, it appeared in the official journal in 2018, we made the request, so a bit more than 2 years ago today, so we’ve started planting Tardif, so we’re today at about 4 hectares of Tardif planted from those 2 plants, you see the journey is very long, so we take buds from them, we’ll graft them and we’ll reproduce identical plants this way, and so 4 hectares of Tardif planted now, the administrative path remains to have it agreed, to enter the appellation of origin. So we chose this Saint-Mont appellation of origin, it’s where we found it, where it exists, where it has its reason for being, and so we’ll little by little with INAO try to integrate it in a proportion that’ll grow, I hope with them, as we realize all its interest, so this is a path that can be very long, can be decades, but and that’s what we want to fight on, and that’s what I thank you for coming to see here and helping us pass this message, that’s what we have to manage to shorten. If the challenges of change are as strong as what we want, we want another viticulture, if we want another climate, an adaptation to the climate, you have to change the tools, and when we have the chance, like us, to have local grape varieties that respond to a certain number of these challenges, we have to integrate them a bit faster before writing the appellation, we fight for that.
Antoine: Actually what you’re saying is that climate change being present and having effects on temperature, on the maturity level of certain grape varieties.
Olivier: The alcohol degrees, the acidity drops in some grape varieties, sometimes there are grape varieties that adapt very poorly to these new changes we observe, voilà, no doubt about that, so either we come correct the difficulties generated by these climate changes, that is, I’ll acidify wines, I’ll de-alcoholize wines, I don’t know, by curative techniques that are always disgusting, it’s lousy, we’re not in this story, we don’t believe in it, the curative we tried for decades and decades in phyto, that was the model, you’d see the disease appear and then we’d have a product that kills the disease to correct the problem. All that we no longer believe in, it’s over, you have to anticipate problems, manage them by means that mean we put in place genetic diversity, know-how that’s adapted to the new changes we’ve observed. And it’s really that, and so it’s like that we work, our elders, they didn’t have curative, so they saw there was warming, cooling, I don’t know what, a disease appearing, well they put in place genetic material, a reflection that was suited to these new conditions. They didn’t intervene in the, you see, the great period of curative is from the 50s to the 2000s. At that moment we believed problems would arrive but no problem, science was going to correct the problems we ourselves had generated. That’s over, we never believed in it, we’d have wished to never, we know it’s no longer the direction of history.
Antoine: The answer finally to all this was in the plant material that already exists.
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Olivier: Obviously you have to adapt the material, that’s all, and especially all this material that was abandoned because it never ripened a few years ago, if there’s warming we still have to reevaluate them. The Tardif and the elders who called it that, you can imagine it’s because that wasn’t a quality they’d found in it. They called it that because they found that it was still complicated to bring to maturity, it’s still a shame not to reevaluate them. When we learned they were called that, we said well that’s super, and in fact you tasted with me earlier, you saw the energy in this wine, the aromatic complexity, the richness, the freshness in this wine. It’s really a major challenge for the years to come for this appellation, the Tardif will be the great grape variety of the Saint-Mont appellation in 15 years, 20 years, 25 years, I’m sure of it.
Antoine: Well in any case there’s plenty to do, I have no doubt about it.
It’s not complicated sometimes to do this kind of thing? We’re talking precisely about things registered in the official journal that are in decrees, and there are many administrative, technical layers to pass, are there moments when you’re discouraged?
Olivier: That’s also why cooperation is nice because when you have a small dip, if you want, there’s a little buddy or a little colleague who’ll give you a hand, who’ll help you cross the administrative difficulties, when the administrative difficulties are crossed, you have a little buddy or a little colleague who’ll tell you go, I believe in it, we’ll go sell it, you see, so it’s true that the collective leaves less room for doubt because when you’ve well traced where you wanted to arrive, there’s always a moment when there are people with enough energy to bring you to reach your goals faster, so that’s a point still to nuance. On the other hand it’s hard today, what’s going to happen for tomorrow’s viticulture, it’s more complicated than what happened for yesterday’s viticulture, but it’s still more exciting to approach it through this prism, and at the end it’s the only sure way to manage to reach your goals. Today waiting for problems and telling yourself we’ll imagine solutions to fix them, obviously it’s simpler to say that others will work for you to fix the problems that you yourself create, but I don’t believe in it, and especially we don’t have the right to believe in it, we in the Pyrenean foothills which has a tiny vineyard, you see, very sharp, very particular, to say that he knows he’ll work to resolve the concrete problems we ourselves create ourselves no, we have to, we really have the chance to have an exceptional territory, exceptionally rich, we have the chance to approach things from the right end, to be able to do it there, a rich biodiversity, so we have to start from this work, and which is a long path but once again exciting. You met since yesterday I think a few passionate people, you see, people who weren’t born here, who aren’t from here, but who saw that here exceptional things were happening, and when you want to work on it like that, frankly no, it’s rewarding, and no, I never have wear on it, plus the potential is infinite, the means entrusted to us are infinite, so on the contrary we nourish ourselves with hope, with desire, with expectation, it’s brilliant on the contrary.
Antoine: Can you tell us a bit about Plaimont’s wine range because it’s extremely wide, we had the chance to taste a bit together but there are many things inside?
Olivier: Yes, because at Plaimont we made the choice to try to give an objective photograph of each of the projects that come from our winemakers, you see, we didn’t try to standardize in a fairly wide range, a bit averaged, all the components our winemakers produced, so we have here if you want some examples, a winemaker for example who has a pre-phylloxeric vine with 2 plants planted in 1871, this one isn’t the same as the historic monument that makes an exceptional cuvée, incredible on half a hectare, voilà, of course we showcase this parcel, this story, this project of this winemaker to try to bring to the tables of enthusiasts this cuvée raw. So that exists, we also have winemakers who in the Côtes de Gascogne appellation want to make super fruity, super gourmand wines, very easy to access, not very expensive, it’s bottles worth 4 to 5 euros, you see very easy, very digestible, very aromatic wines, so that’s another project, you have to make it live for itself, we have people who want to make in Pacherenc du Vic-Bilh on our AOC closer to the Pyrenees, late harvest wines, you see, and that’s their project, that’s their life, that’s what mobilizes them fully, we try to retranslate that, so we give them the possibility to work the vines like that, helping them, accompanying them so they work in isolating their grapes, vinify them in late harvest in sweet wines but very fresh, very tense, very lively, and then we commercialize them as such. So you see we don’t try to say what to do, that’s not our will, what to do, no, we let it develop and we try to accompany the expression of all the wills of this territory, of all the richness.
So to summarize today Plaimont is 4 appellations, so the vins de pays IGP Côtes de Gascogne which form the most important production for us, mainly in the Gers, a tiny bit in the Landes, in the Lot-et-Garonne, but mainly in the Gers, the Saint-Mont appellation which is the historic appellation of birth of the Plaimont project, an appellation where almost all the winemakers who believe in this appellation have joined our project, so we master a tiny bit this appellation, there’s almost only Plaimont. And then 2 appellations on the same territory, the Madiran appellation and the Pacherenc-du-Vic-Bilh appellation, that’s on the same territory, Madiran is red and Pacherenc-du-Vic-Bilh is white, voilà, so producing only wines of appellation of origin or of IGP, so really linked to this territory, it’s really focused on that. So you see appellations not very well known but really spaces of discovery, the guy who tastes these appellations loses references, he really discovers a universe, an atmosphere, grape varieties, a way of doing that’s very different.
Antoine: Yes, that’s clear, in any case I invite you indeed to taste this, I think you can find it at your wine merchant if they’re a bit sharp and if they have nice things, normally you should be able to find some without problem. It’s true there are nice things, we were able to taste a few bottles that were very nice, so voilà, set off on this discovery, it won’t cost you very much.
Olivier: You see, it’s interesting too, the wines at 300,000 euros, I mean it’s exciting, fortunately it exists, and it participates in the great French culture, but we produce wines that are within reach, you see there’s a very strong story, a very strong culture brought for a few euros or a few dozen euros at most. The most accessible cuvées with us are voilà around 4 to 5 euros, and the truly exceptional cuvées go up to 30 to 40 or even 50 euros for the exceptional vines. But the majority is 30 euros, you see, for the most ambitious cuvées of these micro-terroirs, of these very particular places. So these experiences are accessible for the majority, and that’s also important because wine, it has to be accessible, it’s a sharing of conviviality so it’s important to respect that.
Antoine: So we’d already have an hour of interview, I have a few more questions so I’ll try to go straight to it. In terms of wine tourism, it’s something you push a lot, we’re at the Saint-Mont monastery right now, it’s wonderful, and there are also jazz meetings, there’s also a race that you can do either walking I think, you can discover the properties and good products.
Can you tell us a bit more about everything you do here? And after, when should I come?
Olivier: So in fact the Gers is really once again, you see, 180,000 inhabitants, going up a little today, 180,000 inhabitants in the Gers, so we’re really in the territory of meeting, and we’re really very happy to welcome people, to welcome, to share a bit our way of living, and so wine tourism is naturally part of us, if you want we’ve given ourselves a few means to guide visitors, to guide enthusiasts a tiny bit to discover all these things that are a bit complicated, a bit sharp, so don’t be intimidated I’d say, all these grape varieties a bit unknown, all that, don’t be intimidated, you have to come to us and we take you by the hand, you let yourselves do, let yourselves be carried, we take you by the hand, we bring you into these famous very ancient parcels that are 200 years old, we’ll bring you into our estates, into our châteaux, into places that are magical, that tell a story really very strong, and that’ll allow a tiny bit by being held by the hand to discover what we are deeply, and so we’ve invested a lot in that because we believe that once people come here and discover the potential happening here, well they’re often ambassadors, in any case very close friends of our projects, so it’s a bit something fundamental. So the great dates I’d say usually this year you know it’s a bit particular but usually late March I always have fairly strong activities on the Saint-Mont appellation the last weekend of March, well there we’re postponing it a tiny bit, you’ll have to come meet us on September 4th, these meetings are postponed in just before harvest, that’ll also let you discover the vineyard at the moment when it’s most beautiful, so on September 4th you can come here to discover the Saint-Mont appellation, there’s a major event happening late July early August, we talked about it earlier, but that one is symbolic for us, it’s the Jazz in Marciac event, so we Plaimont we’re just a tiny actor, a tiny ambassador of this project, and it’s emblematic for us, it’s a very small village in the Gers in Marciac that developed the largest European jazz festival today. It was a colossal festival but that knew how to stay very with lots of proximity, lots of generosity, very Gers in approach but with voilà often world-renowned artists, the greatest artists have come through Marciac, and so voilà it should happen if everything goes well health-wise, it should happen at the very end of July, beginning of August this year, voilà so it’s 15 days roughly, it’s really to do if you want to encounter the Gers, if you want to encounter this culture, the Jazz in Marciac festival is no doubt the best moment, and if you have to come back, that’s the moment when I’d reinvite you, it’ll be a pleasure to share that.
Antoine: The appointment is set, this summer’s vacations, but we’ll get out of this one day.
What’s Plaimont’s ambition?
Olivier: Plaimont’s ambition is to keep moving forward, to keep evolving, to keep sharing among ourselves, to live among ourselves these local projects, you see, this story that’s a little on the sidelines but that’s very strong and that ensures this territory’s capacity to reinvent itself. I dream of a territory where there are 200,000 to 250,000 inhabitants tomorrow, people who want to reinvest the Gers because they realize alongside us how much this place is magical and very beautiful, but we’re you see in a protected very natural place, we’re an hour and a bit from the mountains, we’re an hour from the sea, it’s a place really with a climate that’s extremely privileged, very temperate, very mild, and yet because we didn’t know how to show all its aptitudes, well there are people who chose to leave it. Today we feel there’s an opposite movement and I invite all the people to come discover this territory, it’s really exceptional. So that’s the project, it’s nourishing the people who live here, who choose to live here, and getting exceptional productions known to the greatest number, the furthest, we tried to bring it back, and to bring back a tiny bit of our story, of our convictions, well very simply.
I have 3 big questions left that are fairly traditional in this podcast, so I warn you in advance about all these questions, so I hope you’ve at least been able to think. So do you have a tasting that blew you away?
Olivier: A tasting that blew me away, I have plenty, I had a tasting of a winemaker I don’t know at all in the Loire on a Cabernet Franc a few days ago, I was at a cooper’s who let me discover this, so it’s a Chinon, a Cabernet Franc, it called out to me, it surprised me, it was exciting, so it’s a cuvée that’s on an estate called Domaine de la Commanderie, and it’s the cuvée’s name is Vallée du Roi, and it’s a 2018, I had a great time, I find it digestible, gourmand, in mouth 13, aerial, it’s a real model, so the Cabernet Franc was born in the Pyrenean foothills and when I see what we can do on Chinon, I can’t compete, so it’s very good you see when some grape varieties like that are exported and give all the best of themselves in a place where it was adopted, and yes by the way it has its mark of nobility, so that’s a small wink. Then I’ll give you one anyway because I never answer succinctly enough, I’ll give you one, I have a winemaker I love and who makes a cuvée I really love on Jurançon, voilà, his estate is La Radia, I really invite you to discover this winemaker, it’s an exceptional guy, he makes a cuvée in particular that’s dear to me because it’s produced in my village of birth called Côte Blanche, well it’s Costa Blanca, it’s a dry white wine of Jurançon that’s of a complexity, of a richness, of a subtlety, of an elegance, and the winemaker, voilà, I think honestly there aren’t many equivalents in the Pyrenean foothills and there aren’t many in France, voilà, it’s really a discovery, I really invite you to discover that.
Antoine: OK that’s noted, we’ll try to get a nice little bottle in passing.
Do you have a wine book to recommend?
Olivier: Well a wine book, you see I haven’t thought about that, I have a favorite book, I have a patience, voilà, I haven’t talked well, I’ll talk to you about a book that overwhelmed me, it’s me, it’s really I read it 10 times in my life, it’s a Céline book, it’s, it’s “Voyage au bout de la nuit,” well it’s something no doubt that we all shared at some moment, a small passage in our studies, but I invite everyone who has a little time to reread this book, it’s magical all the time. He’s a genius like there never was, it’s really each page, you have to even not, you must not hesitate to read just passages if you don’t want to say it’s a doorstop, “Voyage au bout de la nuit,” but it’s a moment of poetry all the time, it’s a strength of writing that’s enormous, and frankly it’s people who do with words we all know moments that are exceptional, it’s really a book that overwhelmed me, overwhelmed, that’s all I want to say, I knew this question wasn’t hard to answer because it moved me, in his way of writing, in his way of seeing things, well it’s a bit dark sometimes, but it’s of a realism, of a strength that doesn’t have an equivalence, but it’s enormous.
And to finish, do you have a person to recommend to me, that’s how I phrase the question, who is the next person I should interview on this podcast?
Olivier: Voilà, that’s the one that’s hardest because I have so many people who impress us in this profession, who excite us, who give us the desire, so there are plenty, so I’ll cite you, I’ll cite you 2 people, the first is a very close friend, someone who was a winemaker in Cahors called Mathieu Cosse, so from Domaine Cosse Maisonneuve, I invite you to meet this character, that’s a guy like no one, voilà so you really have to meet him, he’s a guy I love, I love everything he does even when it’s excessive, even his faults I like them, so voilà I invite you to meet him, he’s a real character, and especially he’s a guy very faithful in friendship, and that has a value too, and after small detail still, all his wines are delicious, so voilà, of a digestibility, of a frankness, of a freshness that are real models, so it’s once again an expression of the Sud-Ouest that’s exciting. And then I’ll tell you the story of a guy when I saw that, I’ll cite him because I want to think of restaurateurs currently they’re suffering, you know it’s been weeks and months that they haven’t lived, and we have a guy who’s a guy in Brest, voilà, he’s a customer of mine but who became for many much more than that, who’s in Brest, the restaurant is called Le Crabe Marteau, it’s Pierre Cosmao and his wife Martine, they’re passionate people, they’re crazy, people who do a quality of finishing that really attaches a lot to the product, etc., they’re people who are suffering currently, it’s been months and months they haven’t been doing their passion which is to cook every day, share with their clientele, and their clientele their products, they’re people who discovered this territory here a few years ago and who fell a tiny bit in love with it too, and they’re magical people. I’ll tell you a small anecdote if you have time: you know what this guy did, he has a restaurant in Brest, one in Lorient and in Nantes, you see, where he’s situated a bit, so we can discover lots of Saint-Mont in these restaurants, but beyond that, he’s the sponsor of the Vic-en-Bigorre rugby club here in the Gers, so the people of the rugby club, they have a big Crabe Marteau, so the first restaurant to bear it is 500 kilometers away, so you see, the interest just by passion, you see he attached himself, it’s crazy, these people who live, who feed themselves with passion, who don’t reason too much, those are the people who interest me, and his is really good, so I invite you to go see the restaurant and to support him as soon as we can finally go there, because we miss those restaurants and those passionate people.
