Patrick Piuze, the Quebec alchemist of Chablis

(Chablis) LeBron James buys Grands Crus directly from him, Christian Louboutin exchanges bottles for pumps and since his debut he has received the best marks from the most famous wine critics. For 15 years, Quebecer Patrick Piuze has established his reputation in Chablis. That of an exuberant bon vivant, a perfectionist craftsman and an exceptional winemaker.

“Patrick, when he enters somewhere, after five minutes, everyone wonders who he is! says Fabien Espana, owner of the wine bar Chablis Wine Not, where you can find the great Burgundy wines, including Chablis from the house of Patrick Piuze.

I had not seen him since his departure for Burgundy in 2000. He had briefly been sommelier at the bar Karina, rue Crescent, after opening a wine bar, rue Saint-Denis in Montreal, in 1997. The head of the Pinot Noir — his blonde at the time — Colombe St-Pierre, was just starting out in the kitchen.

Patrick Piuze’s experience as a restaurateur was only a parenthesis in his career as a vine fruit enthusiast. “I left Quebec in 1991, but my roots remained in Quebec. I rememberit’s more than a motto for me,” says Piuze, who has retained the accent of his origins, in a language mixed with French expressions.

The name of his Montreal restaurant seemed predestined. Twenty-five years ago, when wine bars were almost non-existent in Montreal, he was already offering a Château Grenouilles as well as a Puligny-Montrachet by the glass. It was in the land of pinot noir and chardonnay that he founded a family. Fanny Lozano, his partner and the mother of their two teenage daughters, is a Frenchwoman with Andalusian origins. He, on the other hand, never asked for French nationality.

Nothing predestined Patrick Piuze, originally from Saint-Lambert, to a career as a winemaker in one of the most famous wine regions on the planet. He was a student to say the least turbulent, who made the 400 blows in several secondary schools in the Montreal region. “There is no private college that wanted me! he laughs. Like what the traditional school environment is not conducive to the emergence of all talents.

That of Patrick Piuze is as raw as champagne when he was introduced to wine thanks to sommelier lessons with wine columnist Nick Hamilton at LaSalle College. While he was himself a young sommelier in a Banff restaurant, he met Marc Chapoutier, from the famous M. Chapoutier house in the Rhône Valley, who inspired him to work in wineries in South Africa, Israel and in Australia.

After the brief Montreal parenthesis of Pinot Noir, he left for Burgundy to harvest with Olivier Leflaive, in Puligny-Montrachet. The trip was supposed to last three weeks… Leflaive paid him for training in Beaune before entrusting him with the vinification of three vintages of Chablis. Piuze then worked for a year at Verget, under Jean-Marie Guffens, who had become his mentor, before being recruited by Jean-Marc Brocard, where he was appointed cellar master in 2005.

In May 2008, Piuze left Brocard and founded his own company. He is only 35 years old. The success is almost instantaneous. Its first vintage is hailed by the magazine Wine Spectatorwhich gives its grands crus scores of 93. The wine chronicler of The PressJacques Benoit, underlines his great talent, as does the influential critic Robert Parker (The Wine Advocate) and the critic of New York TimesEric Asimov.

“It was he who launched me in the United States”, explains Patrick Piuze, who has developed a real fan club among our southern neighbours.

Among his admirers is a certain LeBron James, oenophile and basketball player, who in 2021 posted on Instagram a photo of Patrick Piuze’s Grand Cru Les Preuses 2016, intended for his former Los Angeles Lakers teammate Kyle Kuzma… and its 142 million subscribers. Buzz assured.

The Quebecer has not seen this photo at the time of its publication. He is absent from social networks and not the least techno. “I use a computer once or twice a year! “, he told me. His website hasn’t been updated since 2012. He doesn’t need it. Its entire production, mostly exported to some 60 countries, sells out within weeks.

It must be said that Patrick Piuze purposely runs a company, with a turnover of around 1.5 million euros, which remains artisanal in many respects. Four of them work there year-round. The office shared by Sylvie Quittot and Fanny Lozano, his longtime collaborators, occupies a small space in the cellar on rue Émile-Zola. Its only employee, Géraldine Chauvet, known as “Gégé”, waxed the necks of the bottles by hand during my visit last March.

There is more space in the cellar – one of them dates from the twelfth^e century — for barrels and bottles arranged in various discreet buildings on rue Émile-Zola, some of which communicate via an underground passage.

“The people of Chablis really welcomed me. It would not have been possible to have access to these cellars, for example, without the help of the Vocoret family, one of the oldest families in Chablis”, explains Patrick Piuze, giving me a tour of the owner. .

Piuze does not own any vines in Chablis, but selects his grapes from carefully chosen plots, which he harvests by hand — which is exceptional in Chablis — by 75 seasonal employees, housed and fed on site at the end of the year. ‘summer. He does not skimp on quality, most often chooses grapes from old vines, works closely with winegrowers and is a fan of natural fermentation.

Over the past two decades, he has become a specialist in the Chablis terroir, whose limestone subsoil is notably composed of thousand-year-old sediments of oyster shells. Blind, he is able to guess the vintage, the cru, the terroir of one of his wines, even if generally, he prefers to drink the wines of others.

He defines himself as a conductor. “I don’t know how to play all the instruments, but I know how to lead the musicians,” he says. It is he who determines the time of the harvest, which varies by several weeks from one year to another, depending on several factors, including of course the weather. Harvesting after a rain that has “cleaned” the grapes will not give the same result as harvesting in bright sunlight.

The success of this operation is crucial. “One of the rare times I saw him angry was when the pickers arrived in the vineyards without their shears, 20 minutes’ drive from here, and we had to go -return to pick them up,” says Gégé.

A very popular Non-dosed

In Quebec, the most popular wine from the house of Patrick Piuze is undoubtedly the Non dosé, a sparkling wine created using a Champagne method in collaboration with the Moutard house, established for several generations in Champagne and Burgundy. “Half of our sales are made in Quebec,” says Benoît Moutard, a friendly 30-something who has a lot in common with Patrick Piuze.

The SAQ now sells a “non-dosed” rosé, made with pinot noir. The circle is complete for the former Montreal restaurateur, who works almost exclusively with Chardonnay.

Patrick makes us taste, to his team, Benoît and I, a premier cru of 2013, a “small year” from which he drew excellent wines which improve with time, which is certainly the mark of a talented winemaker . Around us are stacked crates of bottles due to leave for Finland, Hungary and Switzerland. Sylvie manages a theft of bottles from a container in Italy.

“Patrick sells dreams, Sylvie determines how many dreams we can sell, and I how much the dream costs! says Fanny to me, reminding me that one of the characteristics of France is luxury (the Piuze house produces 2.5% of the Chablis grand cru appellation). Patrick told me that he sometimes bartered bottles for pairs of shoes with the famous designer Christian Louboutin.

One would not guess, to see him, that he spawns with fashion designers. He may have turned 50 in January, but he still looks like a 1990s teenager who worshiped Nirvana. He wears a kangaroo with the word “Daddy” inscribed in a heart given to him by the singer Charlotte Cardin – the daughter of a friend and collaborator -, recently passing through Burgundy with her boyfriend, the musician and actor Aliocha Schneider.

The visits of importers follow one another. Two Englishmen are tasting vintages straight from the barrels, as I did myself a few hours earlier. Two days later, former hockey player Mats Sundin is due to pass. Patrick, a Canadian fan who gets up at night to watch their playoff games, finds it funny that a former Nordiques and Maple Leafs player comes to visit him in Chablis.

I understand what attracts them. “What you are doing is not far from alchemy! “, I said. And he replied: “Trying to turn grapes into gold, I don’t hate the idea! “It is perhaps no coincidence that he settled near the Côte-d’Or…