An Oral History of Domaine de l'Anglore
From Eric and Marie Pfifferling, Philippe Pinoteau, Jean-François Nicq, and more.
Since releasing its first wines in 2002, Tavel’s Domaine de l’Anglore has become the most celebrated natural wine estate in the Gard. Its lustrous Tavel rosés and feather-light Vin de France reds - often almost indistinguishable in color intensity, and all equally sought-after - were a key inspiration for scores of natural vignerons that have since arisen in the region.
Eric and Marie Pfifferling’s work also represents a landmark in the wider dissemination - and the evolution - of the natural vinification ideology of Marcel Lapierre, Jacques Néauport, and Jules Chauvet. The Pfifferlings discovered cool carbonic maceration via their friend Jean-François Nicq, who had himself learned of the work of the Beaujolais pioneers alongside his friend and former schoolmate Thierry Puzelat. The Pfifferlings were among the first to explore - at a painstaking, boutique scale - what the technique could yield on clay-limestone sands where the mistral-swept Rhône valley opens out into the Provençal garrigue. Along with Jean-François Nicq, the Pfifferlings soon helped found the salon La Remise in 2004, uniting a nascent natural wine movement in the south of France.
Today, Domaine de L’Anglore’s stylistic peers include friends like Alain Alllier, Clos des Grillons’ Nicolas Renaud and (more recently) Mas Mellet’s Emilie Brice Bolognini, and former employees like Romain Le Bars, Valentin Vallès, and Anjou vigneron Benoit Courault.
Since 2017, the Pfifferlings have been joined at the estate by their sons, Thibault and Joris. Their once-tiny estate has swelled to 20ha, but the wines remain as allocated as ever - and as resolutely paysan in their ex-cellar pricing. Eric Pfifferling, in recent years, has made a perceptible effort to remove himself from the spotlight, preferring to let his sons welcome all but longtime clients. The effort has only led to increased mania about his work, particularly among more recent initiates to natural wine.
I last visited Domaine de l’Anglore in March. Rather than trot out my own, fairly superfluous impressions of the new vintage, I figured it would be more interesting to relay a few firsthand accounts of the estate’s origins, from those who were there.
AN ORAL HISTORY OF DOMAINE DE L’ANGLORE
This sketch of the origins of Domaine de l’Anglore is compiled from a plethora of interviews conducted in various settings over the last six years. I’ve arranged them to form a rough narrative.
JULY 2015
Philippe Pinoteau, of Paris bistrot Le Baratin: It happened that Jean-François Nicq met Eric Pfifferling. Pfifferling had vines, vines from his grandfather, an ampelographical heritage - and everything went to the cave cooperative. Nicq said, “Make yourself a winery, vinify your grapes. I’ll help you out.” And that’s how Anglore was born. Nicq set up his winery in the Roussillon, and Eric built his own winery.
OCTOBER 2019
Roussillon vigneron Jean-François Nicq: Eric’s wife, Marie, babysat my sister’s kids, back when she was a student. So I always knew her. I met Eric when I was at Estezargues. He was a cooperateur at Tavel, right nearby. Later we had the idea to start an estate together. It didn’t happen, because he had his vines there, and I didn’t want to set up there. It was a rather utopic idea, so we let it go. But we stayed friends for a long time.
MARCH 2021
Eric Pfifferling: We almost consulted with [early natural wine oenologist] Yann Rohel on our first vintage in 2002. Ptit Max [Morgon vigneron Guy Breton] recommended him to us. Max said, “You don’t understand anything in wine, so it would be good to do a first vinification with someone who really knows how.” I didn’t take it poorly. It was true. But in the end we didn’t call him.
Marie Pfifferling: Jean-François Nicq sent us [future Languedoc vigneron, then an acolyte of Rohel and Nicq] Axel Prüfer instead.
EP: It was going really bad. We were not managing. The harvest was rotting on the vines. It was catastrophic. We said, “What do we do?” Jean-Francois said to Axel, “I think it would be good if you went to lend a hand to Eric, because I think he needs it.” So it was rather me who worked with Axel, not Axel who worked with me ! He arrived, and he said, “No problem, don’t worry about it, everything’s going to work out.”
Thibault Pfifferling: In 2002, the day before the harvest, there was 700mm of water. The first vintage.
EP: I sold off three-quarters of my harvest to negoçiants. It had 1.2g of volatile acidity and 15g residual sugar. It stayed in the annals of the syndicate. There were people who wanted to come taste, and people at the syndicate said, “Don’t bother, it’s disgusting.” The reputation followed me through the years. There was just one little tank of Tavel that finished, that we were able to bottle.
OCTOBER 2019
Jean-François Nicq: 2002 was a catastrophe, the year of the floods in Tavel. The first vintage where Eric leaves the cave coop, and the day before the harvest, they had the equivalent of two years of rain.
You can’t imagine what that is. Grapes are normally high off the ground, but with 600mm of water, the grapes bathe in water. At Estezargues, they had the same thing. When soil goes in the grapes, the grapes become unclean to vinify. The grapes are acid, and you put limestone earth around it, and you lose all your acidity. It neutralizes it.
MARCH 2021
Eric Pfifferling: In winter 2003, we went to sell the wine in Angers. There wasn’t much. But the little that we presented, worked well, notably thanks to [wine journalist] Sylvie Augereau, [sommelière and wine agent] Sylvie Chameroy, and [Loire vigneronne] Catherine Breton.
MAY 2021
Sommelière and wine agent Sylvie Chameroy: I started my wine agency in 2002. And it was in the first years that I came down to Tavel. We did tours with Sylvie Augereau and Catherine Breton. That’s how I met Eric.
JULY 2018
Thibault Pfifferling: The Tavel didn’t work at all in the beginning. In 2002, to try to sell Tavel in the world of natural wine at the time? They all said, “Tavel’s disgusting, stop your foolishness.”
JULY 2015
Philippe Pinoteau: One year, around when they started, Nicq and Pfifferling were here in Paris, and I left with them, and we made stops in Arbois and Morgon. And I brought them to see Pierre Overnoy. And from Pierre Overnoy, we went chez Jean Foillard. That was a long time ago. That’s how things were done.
MARCH 2021
Eric Pfifferling: We had some good encounters in winter 2003. We were with Jean-François Nicq in the car coming back from La Dive Bouteille in February 2003, and we said, “It’s a shame to have to go to the Loire to present one’s wine each time.” That’s how we created La Remise with Jean-François. In Marie’s parents’ storage garage.
We did La Remise in 2004. I think Marcel Lapierre came down here in 2004 or 2005. We met several more times. We weren’t very numerous at that time. I think at the first La Remise there were seventeen vignerons. Even at La Dive Bouteille, we must have been thirty-five vignerons.
Thibault Pfifferling: Today there are ten times as many. It’s crazy how it’s grown exponentially in twenty years.
EP: I think it’s because it carried an innovative message: the idea of making wine, with little means, in simplicity, with a certain authenticity - finally, true grape juice, fermented. I was extremely seduced by that model of working. It comes from a good place.
JANUARY 2020
Southern Gard vigneron Alain Allier: The first natural wine I tasted was chez Eric. It was a Friday. He invited me to come taste the cellar. I said, “How can you sell that? It’s full of gas?” He told me to take a bottle with me. It was an epiphany.
He introduced me to Jean-François Nicq, Gerald Oustric, Gilles Azzoni… It started at the salon La Remise. There I met Bernard Bellahsen, Loïc Roure, Bruno Duchene. We shared everything, it was extraordinary. I arrived and I didn’t have any clients. They introduced me to clients, and I said, “But I didn’t bring anyone!” And they said, “Of course, it’s no problem!”
It was amazing to me, arriving from the cave cooperative, where it was every man for himself.
MARCH 2021
Eric Pfifferling: At the start, La Remise wasn’t necessarily with the intention of being a salon. It was a place to meet, to exchange points of view, on the difficulties that we encountered. We spoke of pruning, vine training, etc. In terms of wine, we all had very particular stories.
There were people who had start vinifying at same time as us, but I already had twelve years’ work on the basis of my estate already. Whereas people who took over vines that were totally herbicided for years and years had fermentation difficulties. I didn’t have the same difficulties as my peers. So we tried to discuss it.
Then around 2005-2006, we had divergences of point of view, about the organization, and divergences of point of view on the wine too.
Marie Pfifferling: It was a beautiful adventure. But then, it’s normal that everyone goes on their own path afterwards.
EP: For me, it’s very understandable that it happens that way. There were certain camps that were created among the vignerons.
There’s a lot of us now. It’s good that there are different commercial networks. We arrived like a second wave, after all the work that Marcel [Lapierre], Jean Foillard, Ptit Max, and all did. Now there’s a third generation arriving. We see it because there’s a lot of demand for our wine. And we can really see there’s a little revolution that is happening.
Domaine de L’Anglore
rue du 19 Mars 1962
31026 TAVEL
DOMAINE DE L’ANGLORE: A TIMELINE
1988 - Eric Pfifferling, a beekeeper and beekeeping warden, begins farming 4ha of grenache in Tavel, inherited from his grandfather. He delivers his grapes to the local cave cooperative.
1989 - Jean-François Nicq, a schoolmate and close friend of Thierry Puzelat, takes a job at cellar master at the cave cooperative in Estezargues.
1993 - The Pfifferlings convert their estate to organic agriculture.
2000 - Eric Pfifferling makes his first few trial vinifications, with the aid of Jean-François Nicq.
2001 - Nicq leaves Estezargues to establish his own estate in the Roussillon. Pfifferling exits the Tavel cave cooperative.
2002 - Flooding ruins the first vintage of Domaine de l’Anglore. Axel Prüfer comes to help with vinification. Jacques Néauport visits in September, having heard about the work from Gérald Oustric.
2003 - The Pfifferlings present what little 2002 wine they were able to produce to their satisfaction at La Dive Bouteille, then organized by Catherine Breton. They begin working with former Auxerre sommelière turned Paris wine agent Sylvie Chameroy. On the way back from La Dive, the Pfifferlings and Nicq get the idea to organise their own salon, La Remise.
2004 - The first La Remise is held in the storage garage of Marie Pfifferling’s parents.
2004 or 2005 - Marcel Lapierre visits La Remise.
2006 - The Pfifferlings quit the Association des Vins Naturels. They are far from the only ones put off by the ideological infighting associated with the organization’s early years.
2010 - Pfifferling tries to vinify much of the harvest without refrigeration, but is unhappy with the results. He makes the acquaintance of an elderly winemaking monk at Château de Manissy who soon influences him to vinify at slightly warmer temperatures than the Lapierre gang (vatting at 18°C, fermentations warming up to 25°C). Thibault Pfifferling begins working with his father during harvest and vinification.
2017 - Thibault and Joris Pfifferling officially join the estate.
2018 - Thibault’s girlfriend, Nathalie Crozon, opens her bistrot La Courtille in Tavel with the aid of the Pfifferlings.
2019 - The Pfifferlings move wine production into a vastly larger new cellar in the center of Tavel.
FURTHER READING
My 2018 interview with Thibault Pfifferling in Sprudge Wine.
A December 2020 interview of Eric Pfifferling in the French regional paper Midi Libre, unfortunately riddled with errors. Pfifferling’s name is spelled wrong in the first paragraph. Later, Pfifferling is mistranscribed as citing Thierry Breton and Pierre Puzelat as inspirations, when clearly he meant Pierre Breton and Thierry Puzelat.
Bertrand Celce’s superb 2011 visit with Eric Pfifferling, which Celce nobly waited a decade to publish, out of respects for Pfifferling’s wish not to stoke demand overmuch.
Thanks for this info (and the subsequent linkage), as I'm hosting a tasting of L'Anglore wines next week, alongside the wines of Hardy Wallace (Extradimensional Wine Co Yeah!). Hardy speaks of the connection to Pfifferling in his interview with Levi Dalton on I'll Drink to That!