Sylvain Martinez' Qvevri Chenin "Vin Jour"

Lessons from a successful qvevri vinification on chenin.

Sylvain Martinez drawing a sample of the 2020 “Vin Jour.”

Sylvain Martinez began making wine in 2006, producing small quantities of his own wine alongside his decade of work for Anjou legend Olivier Cousin. In 2016 Martinez took over and began refurbishing an immense, antiquated winery in the village of Saint-Maur, a thirty minutes’ drive east of his former workplace. His 2019 micro-cuvée “Vin Jour,” a qvevri maceration of old-vine chenin, is a standout amid a recent wave of French winemakers experimenting with qvevri vinification. On the way back to Paris I visited Martinez at his winery in Saint-Maur to learn a little more about his procedure.

Martinez’ qvevri is buried only about half-way, for the simple reason that he was unable to dig any deeper in the rock of his very cold cellar. He wound up raising the floor slightly to give the jar more coverage. He destems the chenin by hand. Most importantly, he leaves it in there for a whopping nine-months, a practice that is more or less common in Georgia, but which is, for whatever reason, rarely emulated among qvevri proponents in France. (Patrick Desplats, for example, pressed his qvevris off their marc after 1.5 months.)

In Georgia I’d often heard that long macerations in qvevri lead to a process of self-clarification, as the marc descends to the bottom of the qvevri. It wasn’t the case in 2019, says Martinez.

A bitterness came to the wine during the December after the harvest. I was afraid I vatted it too long. People advised me to wait and said the bitterness would descend. So I waited until June. The grapes were still floating on top. We devatted with a ladle and pressed with a little manual press, and made 300L.

I didn’t want to put it back into the amphora, because I was worried it would oxidize. I had a cigar-shaped barrel that was the right size, so I put it in there for 3 months.

“Vin Jour” departs entirely from the acid-based aesthetics of traditional direct-press Anjou chenin, entering a deeper register of brazil nut, acorn squash, roast banana. Its rich, ripe tannins probably owe something to the heat and low rainfall of 2019. The 2020, still on marc in qvevri, was in its peak tannic phase, but was notably already dry, while Martinez’ direct-press chenins in barrel still contained a whisper of sugar.

After first tasting the 2019 “Vin Jour” during En Joue Connection, I bought a bottle to take with me. I opened it over lunch the following day with qvevri enthusiast Patrick Desplats, who also responded very enthusiastically to the wine. He said it was a marvel and that it married oddly well with the lamb intestine stew he’d prepared.

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Sylvain Martinez
7 Cale de Saint Maur
49350 LE THOUREIL