Edouard Cazals once made Bordeaux Grands Crus wines in Saint-Émilion, but in 2019 he turned north to Brittany to plant Les Longues Vignes, an organic vineyard along the riverbank of the Val de Rance – a site with little, if any, frost each year and which Cazals points out has less annual rainfall than Bordeaux. Known more for its cider production than its history of viticulture, the picturesque Val de Rance, whose estuary runs to the English Channel, is home to one of the many temperate microclimates in Brittany, where producers are seeking to meet demand for fresh and relatively light organic wines.
Faced with the onslaught of frost, drought and rising temperatures, French wine producers have turned north to the cool climate of Brittany, a culturally distinctive peninsula and popular tourist destination, which shares a similar, but often milder, maritime climate with Britain.
More than 30 wine producers have planted around 100 hectares of vines across Brittany since the EU’s liberalisation of vine planting rights in 2016, which brought an end to France’s prohibition of commercial wine production in the region. The most planted grape varieties are Chardonnay, Chenin, Grolleau, Pinot Noir and Treixadura.
From Provence to Brittany
Bertrand Malossi, director of La Vallongue and Domaines de Terres Blanches, two organic Provence wine estates, says he saw the potential of viticulture on the island of Belle-Ile, a green, rugged tourist destination west of Nantes, having spotted wild old vines whilst cycling on the island several years ago. “This year, we’ve planted 2.7 hectares of organic Chardonnay and Savagnin vines,” says Malossi, adding that he will be making fresh, lighter still wines with a “beautiful tension”. “Our vines have not been damaged by frost at all,” he says. Despite a public enquiry later this year into several plots identified for planting further vines, the Kerdonis vineyard is expected to extend well beyond 12 hectares.
Vines at Ferme de Port Coustic, on Groix Island, Brittany, where Mathieu Le Saux, a cider producer will make natural wines.
On Belle-Ile, Enez ar Guerveur in Breton, Arnaud Heurtebise has planted 2.5 hectare of organic disease resistant vines, hybrids and the Fié Gris grape variety, within his fruit orchard at Steredenn Ar Mor farm. Inspired by the island’s microclimate, Heurtebise, a cider maker, says he will plant a total 10.5 hectares of vines over the next few years. “We had a few mornings of white frost this year, but nothing of concern for the vines.” Further north, Mathieu Le Saux, another cider producer, has planted vineyards on a total area of five hectares to make natural wines.
With lower-than-average regional rainfall levels, part of southern Brittany, its islands, and eastern Brittany have become the most propitious areas for wine production, according to Professor Valerie Bonnardot, a climate expert in Rennes University’s geography department. “As a peninsula, Brittany benefits from the ocean’s moderating role, which prevents night and winter temperatures from falling too low, and day and summer temperatures from rising too high. The north and south coastal areas of Brittany have very moderate temperatures, with the south coast obviously being hotter,” Bonnardot says. “Frosts are rare, and our data from vineyards this April shows that temperatures in Brittany did not fall as low as neighbouring areas like the Val de Loire,” she adds.
That’s not to say that Brittany is immune to heat waves or dry periods. Cazals says the microclimate of his vineyard in the Val de Rance has allowed him to plant early ripening grape varieties, including Chardonnay and Pinot Noir, but he adds: “Over the past two years, we haven’t had a drop of rain between 15 June and 15 August.” The potential impact of diseases like mildew on organic viticulture has prompted oenologists, including Aurelien Berthou, Arnaud Heurtebise and Dorian Amar, along with Cedric Le Bloas, a leading organic cider producer in Lannion, to plant new disease-resistant hybrid grapes, rather than traditional grape varieties.
Professional winemakers now form part of the ARVB, the Association for the Recognition of Breton Wines / Credit: ARVB
Non-commercial association growers, who planted vines in Brittany before the EU’s new vine planting liberalisation rights of 2016, have already shown how wine can be made without chaptalisation, a method whereby sugar is added to wine to increase alcohol levels. “Wines in Quimper reach between 11-12.5 percent according to sites and the vintage. There is no need for chaptalisation,” says Remy Ferrand, General Secretary of the ARVB, the Association for the Recognition of Breton Wines.
Léna Desury, a commercial director at Laxe vineyard in Gascony, says her second vintage of organic Breton rosé wines, made by the sea in Pordic in Northern Brittany, has reached around 11 percent ABV. Newcomer producers are drawn by the “terroir” potential of the Armorican Massif, which include schists, quartz and granite soils. Ferrand says a surge in planting over the past two years prompted the ARVB to modify statutes last October to incorporate professional commercial growers now represented by Aurelien Berthou, a Breton oenologist who will be planting vines next year in the Val D’Auray in southern Brittany.
Crushing history, brighter future
In 1941, French General Philippe Petain brutally severed the Pays Nantais from Brittany resulting in the region losing its biggest wine area, and key economic area, including its port city of Nantes, its former capital. The French state upholds this controversial policy to this day. France’s EU membership helped transform belittled Brittany into one of Europe’s biggest agro-industrial regions, yet increasing demands in the region to move to less intensive farming methods present an opportunity for wine producers, as reflected by the increasing number of organic farms. Sarzeau, Sarzhav in Breton, an historic wine production area located on the Rhuys peninsula of the Gulf of Morbihan, is one of the municipalities which is diversifying agriculture production with the planting of vines.
Historical wine production areas of Brittany / Credit: Guy Saindrenan, author of La vigne et vin en Bretagne
Lenaïck Chevalier, head of environment and heritage at the town hall of Sarzeau, told Meininger’s that the municipality was investing €1million in the planting of a total of 9.5 hectares of vines and a winery which is expected to produce 35,000 bottles of organic sparkling and still wine each year.
Having won Sarzeau’s public tender to make organic wine, Guillaume Hagnier, a former Champagne producer, planted the first vines of Chardonnay, Chenin and Cabernet Franc in May 2020. “We chose these varieties according to our taste,” says Hagnier.
Sarzeau municipality’s financial model minimises the risk for Hagnier, who pays rent on the vineyard which is owned by the municipality. Hagnier is managing the vineyard, wine production, distribution and sales. Hagnier says the “quality of life in Brittany, together with the vast potential of wine production in Sarzeau,” lured him away from Champagne, where he had worked for more than twelve years making Champagne for Castelnau and other producers in the Côte de Blancs. In 2018, the Mayor of Sarzeau, David Lappartient, publicly said that Bordeaux and Burgundy producers were prospecting for sites in Brittany, where land prices are lower than France’s leading wine regions.
If the pandemic has prompted a surge in property sales to Parisians and others attracted partly by lower prices and cooler summer temperatures, there is also a commercial interest in viticultural sites, producers say. Edouard Cazals says that wine companies are prospecting in the region because they know “made in Brittany” wine with a supermarket retail price of €5 would sell. Like many places, local products remain popular in Brittany, as is reflected in the success of the Produit de Bretagne (www.produitenbretagne.bzh) label, which groups together 470 local businesses.
Indeed, the renewal of wine production in Brittany has drawn the attention of Champagne and still wine company Moet-Hennessy. In a company report on the potential of wine production in the region published in January this year, Rodrigo Laytte, a cool climate specialist and the international technical director of Moet-Hennessy’s wine division, Estates & Wines, concludes that high quality sparkling and dry white wines can be made in Brittany. Red wines, he says, would require more attention in terms of viticulture and vinification. Convinced of the potential of renewed wine production in Brittany, Laytte says Breton wine could be priced at €15-€20 a bottle. Although association wines are already made in Brittany, the region’s first commercial wines are expected to be released in 2023.
Port Blanc, off the Pink Granite Coast in Northern Brittany. Producers have renewed vineyard plantings in Brittany, a popular tourist destination / Credit: Barnaby Eales
Tourism boon for growers
According to French public health body Sante Publique France (SPF), Brittany is home to the highest number of regular wine drinkers in France. A SPF study on alcohol consumption published in January 2020 found that 35.8 percent of Bretons aged 18-75 drink wine more than once a week, a significantly higher percentage than most French regions. Wine producers will also benefit from Brittany’s reputation as one of France’s leading tourist destinations. In 2019, Brittany had close to 100 million overnight tourist stays and received almost 13 million tourists, according to Brittany’s regional chamber of tourism.
Appellation moves
Several of Brittany’s new producers are now looking to the neighbouring Pays Nantais to supply vineyard material, equipment and grapes, which they could vinify whilst young vines grow into their production years. Maxime Cheneau, who makes high-end “Village Cru” Muscadet wines in the village of Mouzillon, says he has held talks this year with the Regional Council of Brittany over plans to establish a flexible PGI appellation for Brittany which would include the Pays Nantais. Last year, in the wake of the renewal of viticulture, French authorities authorised a new PGI wine appellation for Ile de France which stretches beyond the current administrative region to incorporate historical growing areas. Under the generic Vin de France label, the particular provenance of wines cannot be mentioned, Cheneau points out.
“A PGI for Brittany, in line with what Ile de France has done, would provide wines with greater visibility when promoting them to consumers,” says Aurelien Berthou. “It would provide structure for a re-emerging sector and better protection for Breton growers.”
