The wine, the Wine!
I did some hands-on wine research while I was living in the Languedoc of course, how could you not when you’re surrounded by vineyards that are such an essential part of the landscape and the culture? It’s the third week in September in the Corbières area north of the Pyrenées, and the red grapes are being harvested; the whites were already taken a couple of weeks ago. The air around the big wineries is filled with the heady scents of spilled grape juice that has already begun to ferment. Mixed into the wild and rocky garrigue landscape of ilex oaks, pines, juniper, herbs and other leathery, spiny bushes, every available and suitable mineral-rich piece of land in the hills and valleys is planted with grapevines of varieties you don’t often hear of elsewhere. We all know Shiraz, Chardonnay, Riesling, Merlot, Cabernet Sauvignon and Pinot Noir – the ‘international varieties’ – but how about Carignan, Marsanne, Grenache Gris, Picpoul and Terret? The resulting wines are very ‘local’ or terroir-dependent and come in smaller batches sold right out of the wineries. And even though the Languedoc predominantly produces red wine, there are also many interesting small ‘pockets’ of whites all over the region. Two notable ones are the Blanquette and the Crémant from the Limoux area south of Carcassonne, both sparkling white wines produced in a method similar to the ‘Champenoise.’ Apparently, the winter of 1531 was too cold for the wine to completely ferment before it was bottled, but when it warmed up in spring the yeast inside the bottles sprang into action again, creating the trapped carbon-dioxide that translates into the ‘fizz.’ The result was that the monks at the Abbey of St. Hilaire, near Limoux, more or less found out by accident that this was a remarkable way to create a wine that’s lovely to drink during a hot summer day. In fact, it may well have been the forerunner of champagne as we know it, from the area of the same name in northern France, because it was a visiting monk called Dom Pérignon who took the recipe with him when he returned there.
Blended wines, red, rosé and white, need to contain a specified percentage of certain grape varieties in order to receive the official ‘Appellation’ of its region and be allowed to note this approval on the label. In France, labels still mainly mention the place of origin of the wine to point at its characteristics (‘terroir’ is everything!), instead of its grape varieties as is the custom in what the French call the ‘New World’ where terroir is less indicative. But things are changing, even in France, and these days you increasingly see both on the label. Starting in Roman times but refined in the Middle Ages by the monks who lived in the abbeys, winemakers here have steadily improved the quality of the wines without engaging in the kind of mass-production now taking place in more recent wine-producing areas like Chile, Argentina and California.
In the Languedoc, you still see very old vineyards pruned in the traditional way, ‘gobelet’ style, meaning the tines are kept fairly short and grow out of one thick old trunk, like a mini-tree, so the leaves of the plant protect the low-hanging grapes from the hot sun. Their yield is not as rich as in the more modern method of pruning, the Méthode Guyot, which is to train a select few somewhat longer tines horizontally, along three lines of wire, easy to harvest by machine. This method creates the regular, very graphic ’striped’ landscape with acres of vines growing neatly in line on the slopes.
Gnarly, century-old vines grown in the traditional free-standing way, and the more modern style of horizontal pruning along wires, the méthode Guyot.
Proper pruning is essential: in fact, the plants should not over-produce grapes at the cost of intense flavor in the resulting wine. That wasn’t always the case: the Languedoc grape cooperatives used to produce the ample quantities of cheap export wines we came to know as ‘Vin du Pays,’ but during the last twenty years or so, there has been a steady movement toward higher quality wines to give the Bordeaux a run for their money . . . and why not, when the available soils here are up to the challenge? Professional vintners have moved in and are experimenting with the mix of grape varieties and characteristic soil-dependent flavours. New ‘Appellations,’ sub-Appellations and also IGP’s (Indication Géographique Protégée) are constantly emerging. The IGP’s are less restricted in their contents than the Appellation wines, that is, percentages of grape varieties used are left up to the vintners who can be creative and experiment with new flavour combinations. Outstanding wines can be the result: an IGP certainly doen’t mean a lesser wine than an Appellation one, and they’re a great way to keep ‘the art of wine’ moving and interesting. From Cébazan I have a delicious IGP red wine here, made from one kind of grape only, the Carignan, and the label specifies that it comes exclusively from ‘vieilles vignes’ – which means strictly hand-picked, although it’s not proven that this is superior to machine-harvested, but it sounds good to our romantic ear – so that’s intriguing and it’s likely the kind of non-commercial wine that will be impossible to find in any liquor store in the world. Another bottle awaiting me is the unique rosé made from a very old, almost unknown, very juicy local stock: the Cinsault grape. And so forth; my collection of bottles is growing by the day – always curious, I pick up a bottle wherever my excursions lead me.
Left: This monster harvests the grapes and is precisely adjustable to the desired width and height of the vines. The ‘New Holland’ alright, unbeknownst to the Dutch: most of them still drink beer. Right: the new companion to the vineyards: solar energy parks.
You won’t see the old pruning method anymore in places like St. Émilion in the Bordeaux area, where the intensely marketed prestigeous wines are big business, definitely aiming at quality, but also more and more at quantity to be sold as cheaper wines in supermarkets, certainly not ‘grand crus’ but still always ‘Bordeaux’ of course.
I was there too, this summer, on my way south to the Languedoc. I dearly wanted to see it again because I picked the grapes in St. Émilion in September 1973, when they were still harvested exclusively by the hands of itinerant labour like me and other students-cum-hippies. It nearly broke my back. The bunches of grapes hang a mere ten inches above ground, so your body is at a ninety-degree angle for going on ten hours a day: the ‘vendange’ is a job in a hurry. The minute it’s been decided by the experts that the grapes are fully ripe and at their maximum flavour, they need to come off – now! Then again, the Château of Guadet-St. Julien, owned by a local aristocratic family, treated our crew to the best, hearty French cooking at lunch time, and put an entire barrel of last year’s wine – meaning young, un-aged wine – at our disposal (an oak barrel holds about three hundred bottles of wine, so we approved of this gesture). They put us up in dormitories at the château itself so it was party time all the time, despite the hard work: we were young and had no trouble burning the candle at both ends . . and what a great way to learn to speak French, being the only foreigner on the team. I was never as proud as when I hitch-hiked back to Holland after the vendange with my part-payment of two precious bottles of St. Émilion Grand Cru Classé in my backpack.
The façade of the Château Guadet-St. Julien in St. Émilion, and a winery castle in the midst of its vineyards in the same area.
‘Château’ in the wine business is a relative concept: for instance, our winery in St. Émilion was a proud, classical townhouse with the wine-making work taking place in the back of the property, invisible from the street. A network of ancient, vaulted cellars underneath the building held the vats and bottles of precious, maturing wine, stored in batches by their vintage year. This old ‘landed’ family of ‘urban’ lawyers (in the City of Bordeaux) has made great wine for many generations: the young son who worked the vendange with us in ‘73, same age as me, runs the business now that his parents are no longer alive. A few wineries are still always located on the land, in real historical Renaissance castles, towers, horse stables, servant quarters, walled gardens and all, or in original abbeys and monasteries, but most work out of huge industrial buildings adjacent to large farmhouses in the middle of the vineyards. If it’s about wine, tradition has it that it must belong to a ‘château’ and carry its name for added cachet: that’s marketing. More recently then, as more and more people join the lucrative wine industry – vintner-school grads with lots of money – you see brand-new ‘fake’ castles appear in the rural French grape-producing areas.
St. Émilion was a very pretty but sleepy little village, then. Now, it’s a tourist circus that shouts ‘buy wine!’ off the roofs and out of every medieval nook and corner; cars are parked for miles along the vineyards outside the village and you can hardly walk for the bodies crowding the narrow historical streets. I barely recognized the place I had such fond memories of. ‘You can’t go home again’ said Thomas Wolfe and it’s true: inevitably, the beloved places of your youth will never feel the same to you fifty years on.
Word has it that there’s been a reduction in wine consumption in the last so many years and France is aware of it: craft beer and distilled drinks are becoming serious competitors that force wine prices down. I see quite a few abandoned or uprooted vineyards in the Languedoc region, but it could also be that the plants – and the farmers – were simply fatigued, or planted in the wrong conditions, who knows. Perhaps the health and fitness craze makes people drink less these days? Not the French, clearly, they continue their wine-drinking culture by having their daily drink(s) at lunch, or, later in the day, to socialize and ‘people-watch’ in one of the many local cafés-terraces. Not me either, that’s for sure. I can’t get enough of trying these interesting wines and during my daily walks along the vineyards here I’m constantly tasting the ripe grapes to try to train myself in recognizing the subtle differences between varieties that eventually make up the specific local wine. It’s really difficult to tell from the vine, I’ve learned that much. Juiciness, thick skin, thin skin, quantities of seeds, colour of the juice, sugars: it takes an expert and a life-long study to ever get to know the subtle ingredients that make for a good wine. There’s a winemaker in a 12th Century abbey close to Lagrasse (great adaptive use of an old building!), the Domaine Villemagne, who has created a ‘grape museum’ by planting one example of each grape variety in four separate rows of about 30 metres in length, allowing you to walk along and pick, taste and compare the differences for yourself. A brilliant and very helpful idea for those of us who are intrigued by the art of winemaking. The family at the Villemagne winery produces a specific golden apéritif wine as well, made of 100% Grenache: it’s called a Carthagène which is a ‘vin de liqueur,’ sweeter but not too sweet, higher in alcohol content but not as high as cognac: 17%. Great with chocolate, but surprisingly, it also matches well with the heavies of roquefort and foie gras. Even though red wine is the mainstay product of Languedoc wineries, with the addition of some characteristic rosés as well, I’m having a glass of white again now: it’s from the historical and fully restored Abbey at Fontfroide close to Béziers, ‘Via Hominis’ of Pays d’Oc. A lovely, fresh drink in August, while it’s well over 30 degrees outside!
Soils: This is what schist rock looks like underneath the surface; a tree’s roots fighting their way into it (cross section revealed due to road building); and another close-up of shell-filled clay in the Corbières mountains – the bottom of the sea, once.
You’d think one could easily become an alcoholic here, living in the midst of all these châteaux producing fabulous wines, but it’s not about the alcohol which should never dominate the wine, it’s about the balance, taste and unique quality. I’m not looking forward to stepping into a Canadian liquor store again and be forced to buy a faceless, ‘terroir-less’ mass-produced wine at an exorbitant price.
Walking through the mountainous garrigue-topped landscape interspersed with vineyards in the Hérault area of Languedoc, north of the city of Béziers, you begin to understand what ‘terroir’ really means (a degree in geology would help). The vines aren’t irrigated or fertilized: they’re made strictly dependent on the soil in their carefully chosen location, combined with the wind, weather and climate they’re growing in. They do well in the dry, hot summer, having developed deep roots – a plant can grow 5-metre long roots, searching its way into the rocky soil – to find the moisture they need to grow their crop of grapes. They also benefit from the summer warmth preserved in the rocky soil during cooler nights. Sometimes the farmers pile up the available white, calcium-rich pebbles along the rows of vines, enabling the plants to thoroughly absorb the minerals that will influence the taste of the future wine. Then, walking on through hilly stretches of wild ‘garrigue’ landscape, you turn a corner and suddenly the soil in the flat basin below is bright red and the vineyards look completely different. Some geological dynamic, be they tectonic plates shifting or Mediterranean flooding millions of years ago, caused the iron to flow from underneath the shale and limestone slopes and collect in deep layers of fine red sand down below. And again, not too far from there, the ground in the vineyards will be yellow, consisting of the same pulverized sandstone that’s used in the typical masonry of the houses.
F.l.t.r.: White (with extra, added minerality to the plants’ roots), red and yellow soils: Different ‘terroirs’ for vineyards producing a range of specifically suitable grapes, required for the wine to gain the ‘Appellation’ designation.
The wineries, in cooperation with the municipalities and tourist offices, put on many village ‘fiestas’ in late summer. In the market square under the plane trees there will be tables around a big bar surrounded by food trucks that serve local specialties such as, for instance, fresh oysters. Hundreds of happy people take part in these balmy evening events, presenting a nice mixture of local residents, expatriates and tourists speaking all kinds of languages. At the next local wine tasting session, I’m going to ask for a comparison between the specific wines that were produced from these different soils, be they calcareous (limestone) clay, schist or gneiss, and see if I can recognize their characteristics. It’s a couple of weeks later now and the word is in: I prefer the velvety smooth, utterly refined red wines from the schist-soils of the more northern, steep mountainous slopes – from the Appellation of the gorgeous little villages of Rocquebrun and Berlou. At the tasting session, I had no idea yet that schist (shale) is a sediment rock that contains a rich soup of minerals, such as muscovite, chloride, talc, sericite, biotite and graphite hidden amongst its quartz, mica and feldspar! And that all of it, mysteriously, finds its way into the wine in perfect harmony. My respect for the winemakers performing their alchemist’s magic has gone up!
So I walked through these vineyards, looked at their location, hiked in their surroundings, saw the plants, touched the soil, tasted the grapes, talked to the enthusiastic winery men and women, purchased and then drank their final products. This is different from ‘just drinking wine;’ it’s the kind of first-hand experience that deepened my appreciation of this part of France and made me love the whole scene even more. Ever since my first serious foray into the art of wine at St. Émilion, it’s been my drink of choice – I almost never drink beer anymore like I used to in my student days.
Different soils, again: Close to the village of Cessenon-Sur-Orb, there’s an old, discontinued quarry of rare, red marble. Baptismal fonts in the local churches are often made of it, so you can admire its unique beauty once it’s polished and sculpted. Signs around here tell you that some of this marble was used in the ‘Red Room’ of the White House but I’ve been unable to find it in the photographs; this room has been renovated numerous times by the various presidencies. Right: if you have so much marble at your disposal, why not pave the street with it?
How I’d love to export these wines to Canada and keep them in my life once I leave this area! I did my best to become an Honours student in the Faculty of Wine while here, but clearly, it’s a life-long study, there’s so much to it and I have to leave . . .
Of course there are libraries full of books about wine and clubs for ‘tastevins’ you can join everywhere, so I’ll leave it to the experts to explain it all in great detail, but I’ll frankly admit that for me, there is no such a thing as spending time in the Languedoc without considering – and partaking in tasting and drinking – its wonderful wine.
It’s the first of November now and time to resume my nomadic life, onto Spain. Hidden in the trunk of my car is a box-full of wine bottles I’ve carefully selected and they’re coming with me, which is probably a foolish thing because crossing the fine Spanish Rioja wine-producing area with all these French wines is a bit like carrying water to the sea. New delights in the wine department will await me no doubt.
Be that as it may, even now that I’m the same age as old people, during this year in Europe I feel free as a bird again as though I had a long, wide-open road of a whole life ahead of me, like I felt in my early twenties when I hitchhiked out of St. Émilion looking for futher adventures, pennyless but carrying two treasured bottles of wine on my back. This time around, I have a few pennies in the bank and travel in my own comfortable car, but the secret stash I carry along with me still gives me the same sense of pride and enormous pleasure . . .
(Sadly, dear readers, for the time being, I had to remove the ‘comments’ function on my blog because recently I began to receive a constant daily barrage of Russian spam comments, in Cyrillic no less, so I couldn’t even read them . . apparently, some people have nothing better to do with their time. Please email me if you want to share a comment with me)