ANDERS FREDERIK STEEN & ANNE BRUUN BLAUERT
Tournons Tous Notre Regard dans la Même Direction 2022
Ardèche, France
The very end of four different 4-5 days vertical pressings, starting with Chardonnay, then Viognier and finally the Sauvignon Blanc and Grenache Blanc. Every variety represents an equal amount of this wine. Due to the heat experienced during harvest, the end part of the pressings started to ferment and macerate a little bit in the pressoir, so we separated this end pressing juice or “fin press” into this wine. Once fermentation started properly, we filled the wine into old barrels, where it aged for two and a half years. So, technically a white wine, due to no or very little maceration – but you could argue it’s an orange wine – if we categorize by its color and flavor profile. The wine has this bitter tannic structure, known in a macerated or “orange” style wine, but is very light and delicate, expressing more the salty notes and preserved fruity notes than notes of maceration and tannins.
Chardonnay, Viognier, Sauvignon Blanc, Grenache Blanc
ABOUT THE PRODUCER
Anders Frederik Steen and Anne Bruun Blauert make their thoughtful and highly original wines from “grapes and only grapes”.
Anders began making wine in 2013 when he first started purchasing fruit from winemakers he admired and making wine alongside his friend, legendary Jura winemaker Jean-Marc Brignot. The couple and their young family have now settled in the beautiful village of Valvignères in the Ardèche. The many varieties grown here thrive on a perfect mix of clay and limestone and the vineyards are full of life, having been tended organically for decades.
As well as their own vineyards, the two also harvest grapes with their friends Gérald and Jocelyne Oustric of La Mazel in Valvignères and further afield with the Bannwarth family in Obermorschwihr, Alsace.
In his previous life Anders was both a chef and sommelier, working at the best restaurants in his native Denmark. This experience informs the couple’s winemaking, in that a little like a kitchen working with the seasons, they do not seek to follow rules or conventions and do not feel the need to make the same wines each year. Instead, as they harvest, they taste the grapes and begin to imagine the kind of wine they might be able to make. Layers of flavour and texture are brought about through slow presses, oxygen and canny blends.
It is a refreshingly free, creative approach that yields thought-provoking, sometimes challenging wines that are truly one of a kind.