RhÔne Ranger

Nicole Sierra-Rolet of boutique winery Chêne Bleu talks to GERRIE LIM about her wish to grow some very deep roots

AS BEFITS SOMEONE who wields a patrician-sounding surname, Nicole Sierra-Rolet appears disarmingly affable, her generous laughter virtually her calling card. Yet it’s obvious in conversation that she’s ever-mindful of how her boutique wine Chêne Bleu has gradually become a rising star, despite its humble provenance. La Verrière, her 150-hectare estate, lies amid the mountains of Vaucluse in the remote Provençal village of Crestet, yet receives growing numbers of visitors each year because of two wine-related schemes. These are an “Extreme Wine Experience” wine school held there each June, and the International Grenache Symposium that Sierra-Rolet founded and assiduously hosts on her premises, the latter a massive gathering of growers and producers aimed at venerating the savoury Rhône style of the Grenache grape.

Chêne Bleu has already garnered acclaim for its own Grenache-Syrah flagship wines, Abélard and Héloïse, named after the famous tragic medieval lovers. Those two reds are complemented by a 100-percent Viognier, a rosé made from Grenache and Syrah, and a white Grenache/Rousanne/Marsanne blend called Aliot – all biodynamically farmed and no small achievement for an estate that only unveiled its debut 2006 vintage in 2009, winning immediate praise from wine luminaries such as Michel Bettane and Steven Spurrier, both quoted in a Financial Times How to Spend It piece on Chêne Bleu last year (“The wines are exceptional in every sense of the word,” Spurrier gushed). The wine course, considered an upscale summer boot camp for wine enthusiasts, attracts a range of students despite the slightly daunting fees (averaging €7,500 for a six-night stay, excluding the cost of flights) and is lauded for its emphasis on going beyond the classroom, providing its students with an actual vineyard experience while tasting and being tested on more than 120 wines.

The La Verrière estate sprung from an abandoned property restored and revived in 1994 by Sierra-Rolet’s husband, former Lehman Brothers France CEO (and then London Stock Exchange CEO) Xavier Rolet, aided and abetted by his sister and her husband, Bénédicte and Jean-Louis Gallucci (respectively the vineyard manager and winemaker), oenologist Philippe Cambie and consultant winemaker Zelma Long. Chêne Bleu’s annual wine production is now some 22,000 to 33,000 bottles, depending on the year, sold mostly to high-end restaurants after being adroitly promoted by Nicole Sierra-Rolet as the globetrotting face of her own unique brand.

Your background is quite international – you’re American-born but grew up in Italy.
Yes, I actually have quite a multicultural background. My father is French and Italian, my mother was primarily American and Russian. I was born in the US but moved to Italy and went to French schools, and then my family moved to Brazil. There are many benefits to moving around a lot and growing up in a cross-cultural environment, but I’ve now found great pleasure in finding a place where I can let my own roots grow deep, a sense of place and a sense of terroir that has brought real grounding to me.

For those unacquainted with your wine, what does Chêne Bleu mean?
It stands for “blue oak.” There’s a tree on the property that suffered in 2005, and we painted it with copper sulphite, so it made a very interesting art object and also brought a lot of attention to the natural beauty of the tree. We felt it was a fitting metaphor for the project, which is about respecting the rich tradition, which dates back to the Middle Ages. Chêne Bleu is about the terroir – we are on the same latitude as Châteauneuf-du- Pape and so we have this rich fruit, yielding highly textured wine with firm tannins. We also have the altitude that comes from being the highest vineyard in the region and that, combined with a very deep root system and very good micro-geology, brings a freshness and a mineral finish to the wine. I’m in the Rhône but my wines have one set of roots in the Southern Rhône and one in the Northern Rhône stylistically, which gives us an interesting juxtaposition that’s fairly unique – it’s our own voice in the wine world.

You’re best known for your two red wines, Abélard and Héloïse. How are they different?
Abélard is classically more Southern Rhône because it has a Grenache base, like Châteaunneuf-du-Pape, with some 20 percent Syrah. Héloïse is a slightly more Northern Rhône style because it is mostly Syrah with some Grenache and five percent Viognier. In France, we’re considered very groundbreaking because we’ve gone outside the appellation system to try to create the best possible wines that our terroir can bear. We are on top of four appellations – Côtes du Rhône, Côtes du Ventoux, Gigondas and Séguret –but that’s confusing and ultimately irrelevant to the kinds of wines we’ve decided to make. We’ve chosen to go into Vin de Pays for our top wines and that is a very non-traditional approach in our area, which is why some people have called them the first Super Rhônes, in reference to Super Tuscans.

How do you counter the cynicism of people who might think, “Oh, her husband’s an investment banker, he bought her a vineyard.” Does that rankle you?
I’m confronted with those preconceived notions on a regular basis. And I say, consider the wine. Anybody who has ever made wine will tell you that you can’t just wake up in the morning and decide to make great wine. You have to have an exceptional place and exceptional skills, and the fact that we have won numerous medals in every international competition in a completely objective blind-tasting situation would, I think, dispel the concern that this might be just some vanity thing. To have something unique to contribute in oenological terms, that feels to us like a big responsibility, so the activities that we’ve undertaken have all derived from the same source – we’re sitting on this diamond in the rough and figuring out what is the right way to develop it, to bring it to the attention of the world.

Are you a perfectionist by nature?
I’ve become a perfectionist as a result of the opportunities brought forth by my work. I’m an Aquarius, so I’m very idealistic. I like projects where a lot of people come together and raise the bar. That’s why I chose as our motto, Non Mihi, Non Tibi, Sed Nobis, which means "Not Mine, Not Yours, But Ours” – because there’s a very collaborative aspect to everything we do. We reach out to other people, we welcome them and we welcome their involvement and we try to give as much back to them.

Aquarius is the water bearer, but you’re bearing wine, right?
Very clever – I like that analogy! Interestingly, we find that many of the people who connect with what we’re doing, like our wine-course students, are not just wine enthusiasts but also people who are very driven to achievement in their own lives and in their own professions, who understand and relate to the underlying perfectionism and drive that gives us the energy to take all these areas to the highest levels. I think that anybody in the wine world today who has the opportunity to push the envelope, to explore approaches that are not tried and true, has a responsibility to do that.
There’s certainly enough good wine in the world, so this is not about just making more good wine. People have everything they need. This is about exploring new ways of thinking, bringing those that are often effective in other businesses into the wine world, to shake things up and find solutions for wine that are novel and useful. That’s why I started the International Grenache Symposium.

So I assume you enjoy that role, being considered as pioneering?
Yes, I do think it helps to blaze a trail for future winemakers, for them to be fairly experimental in terms of the wines they want to make. Pioneering? I would hope so. They view us as such. We’re just following the logic of our vineyard.