Video Production: Vineyard to Table at LEVIN Wines
LEVIN Wines is a Loire Valley domaine founded by renowned British hotelier, David Levin MBE, managed by Lynne Levin with winemaking by Emmanuel Bienvenu. This film documented the journey from the vineyard to table – focusing on the vintage, exploring the story, terroir, vineyard to table traceability, ethical and organic production, local traditions, cuisine and culture. Written by Kimberley Pearce. Directed by Mathilde Babo.
In Sept 2019, I wrote and produced a video for Domain LEVIN, in the Loire Valley, France. I worked with a French documentarian and drone camera videographer to shoot the 12-min short film.
Using the history, key people, winemaking, terroir, and brand story as a starting point, I wrote the script in three parts. Then, I created a mood board, shot table and script for voice overs and to camera interviews with the founder, winemaker, and GM. Along with key moments to capture during the vintage.
Vineyard to Table Levin Wines Shoot script – Three Parts
i. Terroir & Organic production
Video: Walking the rows at the vineyard, looking at the soil profile in each vineyard, village, region. Organic practices, biodiversity, green harvest, hand picking, preparing the vineyards
Part 1: Scene 1
Audio: David Levin MBE
How I first started in wine – Levin Wines was est. in 1986
I founded The Capital Hotel and restaurant in London in 1973, originally started growing grapes for private label wines – for the Greenhouse, catering for BAFTA.
The first wine was made at the local cooperative, but I became more interested in producing wine in what is now called organically but is just the way it was done generations ago.
I travelled yearly to Australia to buy wine and so, with the advice of his oldest Australian friends Len Evans and Brian Croser, in 2003, he had a winery designed in South Australia and built on the estate.
Today, my wife Lynne and I are hands-on managing the domaine, choosing the blend, overseeing the vintage and received certified organic status in 2011.
Part 1: Scene 2
Video: Drone flyover from Bourré to Choussy to Oisly, Lynne Levin in the vineyard.
Audio: Lynne Levin narration
There are 20 hectares under vine with 19 organic vineyards situated in Touraine across in in Bourré, Choussy and Oisly.
The vineyards have expanded gradually since 1986 and I always chose the best fields, even if they were far apart.
Each row, vineyard, village, region gives us a different note – the chalky character from Tuffeau terroir or minerality from Silex – and also protects from local problems like hail.
In Bourré, Tuffeau terroir (marine sedimentary limestone formed ~100 million years ago) mixed with loose and flinty clay, mica and sand builds of texture and minerality; and Silex (~65 million years old) flint terroir stores and reflects heat, producing restrained, linear, gunflint-mineral wines with acidity and spice.
Choussy and Oisly vineyards are both on sandy topsoil sitting on top of a thick layer of excellent smectite clay adding the varietal flavours and aromas.
The semi-continental climate of the region – chilly night and warm days – allow for slow ripening.
Part 1: Scene 3
Video: Lynne walking the rows in Oisly. Hand pickers picking grapes. Logo ECOCERT Certified Organic
Audio: Lynne Levin
We are committed to the difficult Ecocert organic certification in both winery and vineyards.
What a lot of people don’t realise is how involved the process is to become certified organic, we finished the 7-year process in 2011.
While there is a huge amount of bureaucracy, most importantly, each vine has 7 or 8 passes per year.
So, we really get to know the vineyards, the rows, the sections of rows quite intimately.
In a conventional vineyard, there might be just a handful of interactions with the vines, mostly from the seat of a tractor.
But our organic practices include handpicking, leaf plucking, certified organic and biodynamic vineyard preparations, high open spaced trellising, cover crops, hand ploughing and green harvesting.
There is complete supply chain traceability and a commitment to soil conservation using companion planting and no-till agriculture.
There is obviously much more expense in taking such a hands-on approach, but we find that, by excluding artificial interventions and nurturing a healthy ecosystem, the vines are more resilient, grape flavours are more complex, and the resulting organic wines are more nuanced in both youth and maturity.
ii. Winemaking
Video: Emmanuel doing the 100 grapes to test baumé / the grapes being picked / sorted / crushed / fermentation vessels
Part 2: Scene 1
Video: Hand pickers, tipping panniers of grapes into the trailer. External shot of Levin Winery. Lynne walking into the winery.
Audio: Lynne Levin
The process of vintage might seem mysterious, but for organic, low intervention wineries like us, most of the work is done throughout the season, with fermentation beginning naturally with yeasts that live in the vineyard.
An advantage of having 19 vineyards across in three different villages and various vine age between 3-38 years old, means that each parcel ripens at different times over 3-week vintage. So, we use a flexible local picking team to respond as soon as the grapes are ready.
As well as certified organic vineyards, LEVIN Wines is certified organic in the winery. Since we are organic, we can’t introduce any chemical inputs to cover up any mistakes!
We take a clean, ‘new world’ approach in the winery to allow the characters of the fruit to be fully expressed. That is why out winery looks like an Aussie tin shed – it is a replica of the Shaw + Smith winery in South Australia.
We work with our Loire-born, organic winemaker, Emmanuel Bienvenu to decide on picking and approaches in the winery driven by physiological ripeness, flavour and the biodynamic calendar (fruit and leaf days).
Part 2: Scene 2
Video: Emmanuel in the winery.
Audio: Emmanuel Bienvenu
Through the year, we rely on cover crops and companion planting to introduce trace elements back into soils, strictly limited use of organic copper sulphate spray when needed. It’s all about the preparation.
During vintage, we do baume tests on every vineyard – picking 100 grapes from along the vine rows – crushing them by hand and using the refractometer to check the baume or sugar which is the potential alcohol. And, check the acidity, which reduces as the sugar increases – we want that in balance.
And, we all taste the juice and grapes from each parcel, again and again. The baume and acidity should be correct, but the flavour is most important – we imagine how each unique parcel will add to the final blend.
We use a local team of pickers from Montrichard, who have gotten to know our vineyards over the past few years. They hand pick with secateurs into 5 kg picking trays and panniers, to make sure we preserve aromatics. The grapes are hand sorted on a table at the vineyard, making it to the winery with 1 hour of being picked.
At the winery, they are sorted again into the destemmer and chilled before entering the press, ensuring only pristine grapes are crushed and no oxidative characters develop.
Instead of the open topped concrete fermenters generally used in the region, temperature is carefully controlled in our small batch stainless steel fermenters, keeping parcels separate to help create a harmonious blend.
Temperature controlled stainless steel fermenters allow cold stabilisation, very cool ferment and fine-tuning of the aromatic and alcoholic fermentation using indigenous yeasts.
We begin fermentation process at 10ºC and increased to 18ºC, usually over 10 days. After tasting again, we might chill to 8ºC to ‘stress’ the yeasts to maximise the aromatics. Over the course of a month, it was first increased to 18ºC and then 20ºC to finish aromatic fermentation. Alcoholic fermentation is completed over approximately 12 days.
For fining, only bentonite clay is used (rather than isinglass or egg whites), so the wines remain vegan throughout production.
iii. Local Cuisine & Dishes
Video: food/cuisine context. Footage of the Amboise Market on the banks of the Loire on Sunday 22nd September, 8:00 am to 2:00 pm. And, on Saturday afternoon, there is an amazing cheese shop at the foot of the chateaux at St Aignan called ‘Atelier de curiosités fromagères Sarl la Maison Du Fromage’.
Part 3: Scene 1
Video: Lynne at the Amboise Market and cheese shop.
Audio: Lynne Levin
Local food is such an important part of the vintage and central to understanding the cultural context of the wine and the Loire Valley region.
The harvest is very hard work, so we must feed people nonstop. Every day throughout vintage, the winery team sits down to three-course lunch, there are celebrations, barbequing the wild venison our winemaker hunted, picking tomatoes from the kitchen garden, and shopping at the village markets, boulangerie, fromagerie.
The Val du Loire is the home of Sauvignon Blanc and so many of the wonderful goat’s cheeses, like Sainte-Maure-de-Touraine were created in the same milieu.
The chalky terroir and texture of the Sauvignon Blanc mirrors the chalky texture of the local goats cheese. The savoury, dry, zingy Gamay is a perfect match to the smoky, silky, rich pork rillettes de Tours.
But, the Loire and in fact, the whole world is so much smaller today than it was in the centuries before. There are so many international influences and cross-cultural food matches that come from well beyond department Loire-et-Cher.
Our Sauvignon Blanc is a wonderful match to saline oysters, smoked salmon, pristine sashimi, buttery langoustines. Anything with lemon citrus characters. And a whole spectrum of complementary dishes from all over the world like, Sichuan salt and pepper squid, a burnt butter Dover Sole, or a green salad with zucchini, fennel, asparagus, pea shoots, dill, rich extra virgin olive oil.
Our Rosé is divine with a simple tomato, basil and sweet balsamic, when they’re at their peak, as tomatoes always are at vintage. But it is also incredibly well travelled, matching to: Garlic and chorizo prawns, Shanghai Xiao long bao (dumplings) with its soup-filled pork buns and ginger black vinegar, or a savoury cheese and charcuterie board.
Our red Gamay is wonderful with locally made pâté, terrine and rillettes, but with its silky texture, fine acidity, restrained tannins goes equally well with Sticky stir fried Shitake mushrooms and bok choy, Thai red fish curry, Woodfire barbequed duck breasts.
Shooting Schedule
The shooting schedule ran during vintage in the Loire Valley – from Friday 20th September to Tuesday 24th September.
Friday 20th September shoot at the vineyards in Oisly and at Levin winery.
Saturday afternoon, cheese shop at the foot of the chateaux at St Aignan called ‘Atelier de curiosités fromagères Sarl la Maison Du Fromage’. 6 President Wilson Square, 41110 St Aignan, France.
Footage of the Amboise Market on the banks of the Loire on Sunday 22nd September, 8:00 am to 2:00 pm. 23 Quai du Général de Gaulle, 37400 Amboise, France.
Monday 23rd September shoot at the remaining vineyards and drone operator over the three vineyard sites.