Olivier Cousin trial: 4th June verdict - a moral victory for Olivier Cousin

Before the judgment and after:
(not sure what a SAF lookalike is doing dressed 
as an avocat sitting far left!)

In a judgment that was given in less than three minutes Olivier Cousin was ordered to pay a symbolic civil fine of €1 to both the INAO and the Fédération Viticole Anjou Saumur. In addition he has to pay court costs of 90€ (a fixed sum that goes to the State) and 600€. There is, however, a 20% reduction on the 90€ fee if this paid within a month.

At the full hearing on 5th March 2014 the prosecutor had asked for a fine €5000. A euro a piece is well short of this!

The verdict delivered by Françoise Pietri, the président of the Tribunal, was unfortunately barely audible as she has a very quiet voice and prefers not to use the microphone.  

 "I don't trick people," said Cousin after the verdict. Cousin and his lawyer have 10 days to decide whether to appeal against the judgment. Olivier's wife emphasised that the fine was a civil matter – damage to the plaintiffs’ commercial rights and that her husband had not been condemned by the judges.

Eric Morain*, Cousin’s Parisian lawyer, was ecstatic: “this is a very fine victory today – stupefying. We gained everything we asked for. We are joyful – there is no question of an appeal!”  

Olivier Cousin questioned by journalists 

after the verdict  

There appeared to be no-one present at the hearing from the Fédération Viticole, apart from their lawyer. However, the Fédération has issued a statement:

'UNE VICTOIRE POUR LA PROTECTION DE L’AOC ANJOU

La Fédération viticole de l’Anjou et de Saumur prend acte de la decision rendue le 4 juin par le tribunal correctionnel d’Angers dans l’affaire opposant le ministère public à Olivier Cousin.

Ce jugement qui condamne Olivier Cousin, vient confirmer:

– Quel’ appellation d’Origine Contrôlée «Anjou»  reconnue depuis 1936 par décret fait l ’objet d’une protection prevue par la loi au même titre que toutes lesautres AOC. L’utilisation du nom de la dénomination« Anjou» pour commercialiser un vin produit en dehors du cadre de l’appellation d’origine est simplement interdite.

– Que celui qui fait le choix de ne pas se soumettre au dispositive decontrôle ne peut utilizer le nom« Anjou» sans se render coupable de contrefaçon et de tromperie. Le choix de produire un vin endehors de l’appellation d’origine est respectable. Cependant, il ne permet pas de jouer les passagers clandestins au detriment des vignerons qui portent l’AOC. Il ne peut y avoir d’exception selon la qualité suppose du vin, le mode de culture, le nombre de bouteilles en cause, la seule localization des vignes ou l’image médiatique du viticulteur.

Ce jugement constitue également un rappel à la loi adressé à ceux qui seraient tentés de détourner la notoriété de l’appellation« Anjou» sans en respecter les règles fixes par les pouvoirs publics. La Fédération viticole de l’Anjou Saumur qui participle à la protection des AOC don't elle a la charge maintiendra sa vigilance pour empêcher ce type de pratiques.'

Me Nathalie VALADE Avocat SELARL LEXCAP

(Me Nathalie Valade replaced Me Alain Fouquet, who made such a pig's ear of the Fédération and INAO's case at the hearing in March. Following the 2014 municipal elections Fouquet has become a maire adjoint for Angers.)  

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The Tribunal de Grande Instance d'Angers appears to have had little sympathy for the six charges brought by the INAO, Fédération Viticole Anjou Saumur and Le Direction Régionale des Enterprises, de la Concurrence. The civil fines are entirely symbolic - the judges appear to have decided that the damage Olivier inflicted on the interests of the INAO and the Fédération was absolutely minimal with the statement from the Fédération more wishful thinking than a true reflection of the reality. Their talk of 'contrefaçon' and 'de tromperie' surely bears little relation to the actual verdict. 

4th June 2014: no picnic this time, just empty 

space and a gathering storm 

In contrast to the hearings of October 2013 and March 2014 there was no picnic, no demonstrations of support in front of the Angers Court. Olivier must have known that the weather forecast would not have been favourable for a picnic today as there have been heavy downpours. Whereas on the two other occasions the weather was been fine and sunny. 

Report on October 2013 hearing when case was put back to March 2014. 

Report on March 2014 hearing. 

* See profile of Eric Morain by Alice Feiring here.

tronches de vin - le guide des vins qu'ont d'la gueule: new guide

tronches de vin

 'Il est enfin là.

« Tronches de vin, le guide des vins qu’ont d’la gueule. »

Un guide. Notre guide, à Antonin, Guillaume, Olivier, Philippe et moi. Un guide des vins? Plutôt une galerie de portraits de vignerons qui font des vins avec du caractère, de la personnalité. Des vins qu’ont d’la gueule quoi.'

From Eva Robineau's Oenos site where there are further details on this guide that has just been published and also here.

Les auteurs (the authors):

Olivier Grosjean – Le blog d’Olif

Antonin Iommi-Amunategui – Vindicateur, No wine is innocent

Guillaume Nicolas-Brion – Du morgon dans les veines

Philippe Rapiteau – La pipette aux quatre vins

Eva Robineau (Oenos)

Préface : Alice Feiring

Said to be the first wine guide to have been produced by bloggers.

Loire wines@Soif – 27 Battersea Rise, London – opens Monday 21st November

Stéphanie Caslot, Domaine de la Chevalière, Bourgueil on red on Soif list 

Soif, the latest wine bar in the Terroir chain (Terroir and Brawn), which involves Eric Narioo and Les Caves de Pyréne, is due to open on Monday 21st November at 27 Battersea Rise, Battersea, London, SW11 1HG.

Loire wines are well represented on the wine list (still in draft form, however). They include a range of PetNats from producers like Catherine and Pierre Breton (Vouvray), Olivier Cousin (Grolleau from Anjou), Hervé Villemade (Cheverny) and François Plouzeau (Touraine). Dry whites include wines from Pierre Luneau, Joseph Landron, Thierry Puzelat, Frantz Saumon, Thierry Michon, Damien Laureau (Savennières), Thierry Germain and Le Briseau.

There are examples of red Loires from Clos Roche Blanche, Thierry Puzelat, Emile Heredia (Vendômois), Sébastien Riffault (Sancerre Rouge) and Domaine de la Chevalerie (Bourgueil, Pierre Caslot and family).

Amongst the small selection of sweet wines is the Coteaux du Layon de Saint Lambert from Vincent Ogereau.     

17th November 2011: Alice Feiring@Soif

Naked Wine and Real Gamay in London

As a pre-launch Alice Feiring will be at Soif on Friday 18th November.

Notice from Alice's site: 

'If you're at the VinNatur tasting in Zurich next week, please say hi. And if you're a reader of mine in London, come hang on November 17th. The event will be staged at  Soif, the newest winebar in London.  Buy a book, let's talk and drink and Q&A, and schmooze, because I tell you, Kate Thal knows how to put on a show. It's going to be terrific! And in the spirit of Nouveau Day, come and take back Gamay! The real deal for real people.' 

•

The Loire project in St Martins Lane, which had been due to open this autumn, has been put back to to next Spring.

Les 5 du Vin looks@a couple of books – Alice Feiring's naked wine and Ben Howkins Port for Real Men

See the new post here.

Alice Feiring: naked wine – letting grapes do what comes naturally

This morning a review copy of Alice Feiring's new book naked wine arrived by courier. It is published by Da Capo Press and is priced at $24, $28 (Can) or £15.99. I shall look forward to reading it as Alice has strong opinions and is a strong proponent and defender of natural wines. Alice acknowledges this in her opening two sentences:

'When it comes to wine, I can be polarizing. I don't mean to be I just have unnaturally strong opinions."

naked wine is dedicated to David Lett and Marcel Lapierre, who both died recently.

More on Alice's new book when I have a chance to read it.

‘Maybe forty producers making exquisite wine’

September 2008: Côt in the Cher Valley

Returning to yesterday’s posting on Alice Feiring’s The Battle for Wine and Love and to her assertion that in the Loire there are ‘maybe forty regional producers who make exquisite wine’, here is my list of producers in a small part of the Cher Valley between Bléré and Saint-Aignan who work with passion and commitment and whose wines are worth tasting and good to drink. There may well be others whose wines I haven’t yet tasted.

Michel Augé – Les Maisons Brulées, Pouillé
Mikaël Bouges – Faverolles-sur-Cher
François Chidaine – AC Touraine holdings in Chissay
Bruno Curassier, Domaine de la Grange, Bléré
Jean-François Merieau – Les Bois Vaudons, Saint-Julien-de-Chédon
Pascal Potaire – Faverolles-sur-Cher
Vincent Ricard – Thesée
Vincent Roussely – Clos Roussely, Saint-Georges-sur-Cher
Catherine Roussel and Didier Barouillet – Clos Roche Blanche, Mareuil-sur-Cher
Jerôme Sauvete, Monthou-sur-Cher

Plus a producer whose methods Alice probably wouldn’t approve of but whose wines are worth trying anyway: Thierry Delaunay of Domaine Joël Delaunay

That’s 11 producers already in no more than 40 kilometres and there are still hundreds of kilometres of Loire vineyard left.

Here we are in the heart of ‘plain’ AC Touraine – most of the vignerons cited use this appellation, although a few prefer to opt for vin de table. This part of the Cher Valley is well worth exploring and can offer wonderful wine at very reasonable prices. Look out particularly for Côt and Gamay, Sauvignon Blancs that can be way better than many more expensively priced Sancerres and Pouilly-Fumés and an increasing number of pétillants naturels.

Alice Feiring: The Battle for Wine and Love

Alice’s book is certainly a good read: having been given it on 30th December I finished it yesterday. It is good to read a wine book that has passionate beliefs, even if I don’t fully agree with her. It is also typical that this book was published in the US. The UK, that once had a flourishing wine book publishing scene, now sticks only to the tried and tested. Only self-publishing efforts such as Charles Metcalfe and Katherine McWhirter’s excellent The Wine and Food Lover's Guide to Portugal lighten up the depressing situation, which is likely to get even worse during 2009.

But enough rant and back to Alice. She is a keen supporter of natural and traditionally made wines and a horror of wines made by ‘spoofulation’ – from chemically ravaged vineyards, made using cultured yeasts, enzymes and aged in heavily toasted, new barriques. She believes that wine has become standardised and lays a lot of the blame at the door of Robert Parker. Hence the book’s alternative title: How I saved the world from Parkerisation.

I have a number of points of agreement with Alice. She likes to get out to the vineyards, meet the producers and hear their stories. I suspect she would be as staggered as I was by a significant UK wine journalist declaring recently that he hated visiting vineyards. Not for her the wine critic approach, adopted by Robert Parker and Malcolm Gluck, that concentrates on assessing bottles of wine and almost views visits to wine regions as a distraction. Alice has no time for marks – especially the 100-point scale. She is also a great fan of the Loire – ‘the land that Robert Parker forgot to review’.

'That was when it hit me that Parker's history of ignoring the Loire had been its salvation. Because Parker dismissed the red wines of the area, the Loire vineyards remained relatively cheap. It remains to be seen whether the Advocate's new appreciation for Loire reds will have any effect on the region or the wines' mass appeal.' This may well be partly true as it is possible had Parker championed Loire reds then prices of the most favoured sites in Saumur, Chinon, Bourgueil and Saint-Nicolas-de-Bourgueil might have risen. But it is highly unlikley that even Parker's most enthusiastic championing would have affected vineyard prices throughout the Loire. In any case prices vary very considerably from one part of the Loire to another: a hectare of Muscadet will not cost the same as a hectare of Sancerre.

Robert Parker has not been alone in ignoring the Loire. Few UK wine journalists and writers have bothered recently to attend the annual Salon des Vins de Loire and few are regular visitors to the region. However, the Loire does now appear to be coming back into fashion. If this is the case, it coincides with one of the smallest vintages for years – in places even smaller than 1991.

One of the funniest parts of the book is in her phone interview with Robert Parker when Robert denies that he has a ‘thin skin’. “I mean, I never commented on that woman’s book [Elin McCoy’s Parker biography, The Emperor of Wine], but the really annoying thing – that was totally untrue – she said about me is that I have a thin skin, that I don’t accept criticism, and that I go after wine writers.” One can almost imagine a roar down the phone: thin-skinned – moi!

Alice’s view is too black and white for me – lacking in nuances. Perhaps I prefer to sit on the fence more than she does. Her judgments are too sweeping. Take her rubbishing of the Salon des Vins de Loire and the overall damning of the general standard of Loire wines.

‘After experiencing such lively times at the alternative tasting (Dive Bouteille and Renaissance des Appellations), how could the dull Salon de Loire have a chance with me? At the Salon the T-shirts and tattoos of the day before were traded in for button-down shirts and sportscoats. But much worse than the formality were most of the wines. Just as at the fringe Italian tasting, most of the Dive wines were meritorious – and at the conventional Salon there was no relief. While I can point to maybe forty regional producers who make exquisite wine, there are plenty of truly bad wines made in the Loire. There are many passionless winemakers who overcrop, machine harvest, farm with chemicals, and use lab-made yeast. Unfortunately most of the 740 million gallons of wine produced in the area sucks.’

Certainly there is still poor wine made in the Loire but substantially less than there used to be. Only maybe 40 producers who make exquisite wines? Depends, I guess, on how you define exquisite, Alice, but there are many, many more who work with passion and commitment and whose wines are worth tasting and good to drink.

However, The Battle for Wine and Love is certainly a recommended read.