Ep. 19: Stephana Nicolescou of Domaine Andrea Calek
03/20/24 • 33 min
Despite the fact that I was in art before, I don’t perceive tending vines and making wine as art. And therefore I myself don’t feel comfortable excusing my prices because it’s a special little artsy thing... It’s not what I’ve been learning for the last fifteen years. - Stephana Nicolescou
Half-French, half-Romanian, and raised in Chicago, Stephana Nicolescou is a well-traveled natural wine jack-of-all-trades who, since 2017, has been helping run the 5ha Ardèche estate of her companion, renowned Czech vigneron Andrea Calek. In 2019 and 2020, she also produced négociant micro-cuvées of her own as Une Strop, an Ardèche cinsault and a Loir-et-Cher cabernet franc, respectively. In addition to her winemaking activities, she is an avid scuba diver and amateur pilot, and routinely organizes a natural wine stand at the Django Reinhardt Jazz Festival in Fontainebleau.
Nicolescou left the USA to attend art school in Paris at age eighteen. Her introduction to natural wine came a few years later, after dropping out, when she managed the popular 1st-arrondissement natural wine bar Le Garde Robe. She left the position in 2011 to embrace wine production, first working in Andalucia for Bodega Cauzon, and later for Clos Roche Blanche and Michel Augé of Les Maisons Brûlées. She moved to Ardèche in 2014 with her then-companion Samuel Boulay, who had taken up the vineyards of retiring Ardèche natural wine pioneer Gilles Azzoni. When that relationship ended, she returned to Spain, where she worked for Bodega Marenas, before returning to Ardèche at the end of 2016 to work for Andrea Calek
I first met Nicolescou shortly after arriving to Paris in 2009, when I worked in central Paris and frequented apéro hours at Le Garde Robe. I lost track of her when she left for Spain, only to re-encounter her in 2018, when I arrived for a tasting appointment with Calek and was surprised to see another familiar face. Nowadays I make a stop at the couple’s handsome bioclimatic abode whenever I’m in the region, most recently before the Montpellier salons in late January, when we recorded this podcast. Check it out for Nicolescou’s plans for her own winemaking; her perspective on the Chicago natural wine scene; and how she intends to survive a zombie apocalypse in Ardèche.
This is a free episode of the NOT DRINKING POISON podcast. For access to all episodes - plus years of natural wine profiles, reports, and interviews - please subscribe!
FURTHER READING & LISTENING
NDP Podcast Series III: Les Emigré(e)s - Expat Natural Winemakers in FranceEp. 14: Katie Worobeck of Maison MaenadEp. 15: Hannah Fuellenkemper of ABRACADABRAEp. 16: Joe Jefferies of Les Bories JefferiesEp. 17: Jon Purcell of Vin NoéEp. 18: Michele Smith-Chapel of Domaine ChapelEp. 20: Kenji Hodgson of Vins Hodgson
Despite the fact that I was in art before, I don’t perceive tending vines and making wine as art. And therefore I myself don’t feel comfortable excusing my prices because it’s a special little artsy thing... It’s not what I’ve been learning for the last fifteen years. - Stephana Nicolescou
Half-French, half-Romanian, and raised in Chicago, Stephana Nicolescou is a well-traveled natural wine jack-of-all-trades who, since 2017, has been helping run the 5ha Ardèche estate of her companion, renowned Czech vigneron Andrea Calek. In 2019 and 2020, she also produced négociant micro-cuvées of her own as Une Strop, an Ardèche cinsault and a Loir-et-Cher cabernet franc, respectively. In addition to her winemaking activities, she is an avid scuba diver and amateur pilot, and routinely organizes a natural wine stand at the Django Reinhardt Jazz Festival in Fontainebleau.
Nicolescou left the USA to attend art school in Paris at age eighteen. Her introduction to natural wine came a few years later, after dropping out, when she managed the popular 1st-arrondissement natural wine bar Le Garde Robe. She left the position in 2011 to embrace wine production, first working in Andalucia for Bodega Cauzon, and later for Clos Roche Blanche and Michel Augé of Les Maisons Brûlées. She moved to Ardèche in 2014 with her then-companion Samuel Boulay, who had taken up the vineyards of retiring Ardèche natural wine pioneer Gilles Azzoni. When that relationship ended, she returned to Spain, where she worked for Bodega Marenas, before returning to Ardèche at the end of 2016 to work for Andrea Calek
I first met Nicolescou shortly after arriving to Paris in 2009, when I worked in central Paris and frequented apéro hours at Le Garde Robe. I lost track of her when she left for Spain, only to re-encounter her in 2018, when I arrived for a tasting appointment with Calek and was surprised to see another familiar face. Nowadays I make a stop at the couple’s handsome bioclimatic abode whenever I’m in the region, most recently before the Montpellier salons in late January, when we recorded this podcast. Check it out for Nicolescou’s plans for her own winemaking; her perspective on the Chicago natural wine scene; and how she intends to survive a zombie apocalypse in Ardèche.
This is a free episode of the NOT DRINKING POISON podcast. For access to all episodes - plus years of natural wine profiles, reports, and interviews - please subscribe!
FURTHER READING & LISTENING
NDP Podcast Series III: Les Emigré(e)s - Expat Natural Winemakers in FranceEp. 14: Katie Worobeck of Maison MaenadEp. 15: Hannah Fuellenkemper of ABRACADABRAEp. 16: Joe Jefferies of Les Bories JefferiesEp. 17: Jon Purcell of Vin NoéEp. 18: Michele Smith-Chapel of Domaine ChapelEp. 20: Kenji Hodgson of Vins Hodgson
Previous Episode
Ep. 15: Hannah Fuellenkemper of Abracadabra
In Auvergne, the winemakers are very independent. I don't know if it's the Auvergne that makes you like this or if it's the people. Because not a lot of the winemakers in the Auvergne are actually from the Auvergne. They come from somewhere else and I think maybe they come to a place like this because they like to be alone. - Hannah Fuellenkemper
There are, I often say, two ways to fall in love with natural wine, not mutually exclusive. One is to learn about it, taste widely, and begin buying it in favor of all other sorts of wine. The other is to find yourself rearranging your whole life so as to be able to make your own natural wine. Hannah Fuellenkemper, a peripatetic American natural wine négociant now finally somewhat settled in the Auvergne, is a poster-woman for this latter way of falling in love with natural wine.
Born in Germany, raised between the USA and England, Fuellenkemper obtained a law degree in Amsterdam before discovering an interest in natural wine at the city’s wine bars. She followed her muse to wine salons in France and a revelatory experience harvesting with the Cousin family in Anjou in 2017. She interned for Manuel di Vecchi Staraz at Vinyer de la Ruca in Banyuls before moving her base to the Ardèche, where for several seasons she worked on and off for the regions’ natural vignerons, including Sylvain Bock and Andrea Calek / Stephana Nicolescu. In 2019 she did a season of work in the Loire for François Saint-Lô; the same year, she began making a small quantity of her own négociant wine.
Following a series of precarious and improvised cellar situations around Auvergne, Fuellenkemper at last established a stable cellar rental this year near the town of Brioudes. In 2023 she produced an impressive 10’000 bottles of her radically handmade natural négociant wines, sourced chiefly from the south of France, and recognizable by the paint spatters they bear in lieu of front labels. Fuellenkemper and I met in 2018 and soon began exchanging wine tips, crash pads, and winemaking labor in the course of our travels around France. I caught up with her in December 2023 as she headed home to America for the holidays. Check out the episode for Fuellenkemper’s memories of sleeping in a cave in Berrie; her list of emergency kit survival items for rural French life; and her experiences with Tinder in Auvergne.
This is a free episode of the NOT DRINKING POISON podcast. For access to all the episodes - plus years of vigneron interviews, profiles, tasting reports, and commentary - please subscribe!
FURTHER READING & LISTENING
NDP Podcast Series III: Les Emigré(e)s - Expat Natural Winemakers in FranceEp. 14: Katie Worobeck of Maison MaenadEp. 16: Joe Jefferies of Les Bories JefferiesEp. 17: Jon Purcell of Vin NoéEp. 18: Michele Smith-Chapel of Domaine Chapel
NDP Podcast Series I: Paris Natural Wine Lifers, Part INDP Podcast Series I: Paris Natural Wine Lifers, Part II
NDP Podcast Series II: Contemporary Paris Natural Wine, Part INDP Podcast Series II: Contemporary Paris Natural Wine, Part II
This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit notdrinking...
Next Episode
Ep. 23: Mathieu Lapierre of Domaine Lapierre
I was thinking of when I was really young, five to ten years old, at primary school, [of posters that were] just to explain to us the cycle of a tree, or a flower... I wanted to take that kind of academic way of presentation to explain carbonic maceration to people. - Mathieu Lapierre
Mathieu Lapierre is the co-manager, along with his sister Camille, of famed Morgon estate Domaine Marcel Lapierre, which he has overseen since the passing of his father in 2010. Initially a chef by training, Mathieu Lapierre joined the family estate in 2004 after viticultural studies in Beaune. Few who have met him in his two decades at the estate fail to remark the breadth of his interests, which also include the piano, archaeology, and Legos.
The occasion for our chat in early January was the completion of a pet project he first mentioned to me several years ago: an educational poster about the process of carbonic maceration. I may just be the target audience for this sort of thing, but I suspect Lapierre’s finished poster has an impressive potential to improve the global wine conversation, which remains rife with inaccuracies and mistaken impressions where it concerns carbonic maceration.
It is a situation that persists simply because questions about carbonic maceration most often arise in wine shops, wine bars, and restaurants, where informed staff are often too hurried to effectively explain the process. In such a way, Lapierre’s new poster is an inspired marriage between message and medium: it offers, in the form of a handsome poster illustrated with watercolors by French cartoonist GAB, information that is helpful on the wall of a wine establishment. Check out the podcast for a history of carbonic maceration; the sociopolitical values embedded in its practice; and the link between carbonic maceration and aged meat.
This is a free episode of the NOT DRINKING POISON podcast. For access to all the episodes - plus years of vigneron interviews, profiles, news reports, and commentary - please subscribe!
FURTHER READING & LISTENING
Eloi Gros: An Homage to Vanishing Beaujolais-Villages
BOOK REVIEW: Jacques Néauport, Le Dilettante
Podcast Series III: Les Emigré(e)s - Expat Natural Winemakers in France, Part IPodcast Series III: Les Emigré(e)s - Expat Natural Winemakers in France, Part II
Podcast Series II: Contemporary Paris Natural Wine, Part IPodcast Series II: Contemporary Paris Natural Wine, Part II
Podcast Series I: Paris Natural Wine Lifers, Part IPodcast Series I: Paris Natural Wine Lifers, Part II
This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit notdrinkingpoison.substack.com/subscribe
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