I had a fascinating visit with our friends in Savoie last week. France, as a wine region, may seem overly perused by us wine experts, but there are many pockets of France where winegrowers are just beginning to understand the idiosyncrasies of their terroir and how to exploit it for quality. In the case of Savoie, discoveries are being made as a result of technological and conceptual innovations I hear echoed all over the country. Seeing how the vanguard of natural winemaking are able to produce noble and beautiful wines from diverse and difficult terroirs, I was given a newfound faith in the project in general. Progress is still being made in our small community of winemakers, and the results are as convincing as the first bottles of Foillard and Lapierre that made us question sulphur, chemical intervention, inoculation, and all of the rest in the first place. Though many of us have found a warranted modesty on some of these fronts, what the very brightest minds are discovering is a new path that produces wines with broader latitudes, deeper structures, new and unique flavors, etc.
There's another gear to the natural wines of this young generation, and the zealousness of winemakers in the Savoie is contagious. This is a region with maybe one or two producers starting to attempt natural fermentations only in the past ten or so years. Most of the natural winemakers of the region have begun in the past 3 or 4 years, and they enjoy a literal sandbox of land to experiment on. The tradition here is much lighter than that of its neighbors in the Rhône Valley or Alsace, and a lot of that has to do with the terroir of the Savoie. These are higher altitude vineyards that have historically struggled for ripeness, especially given the poverty of the sandy soils. But innovations like "soft pruning" or even no pruning, are making for plants of remarkable resilience and quality. Biodiversity in the vines, including co-planted grape varieties, is also a major tenant of the new theories.
Vineyards that are more gardens or jungles than manicured grape deserts are maybe not new to natural winemaking, but focus on soil health and plant resilience has allowed for a new level of competition in vineyards to thrive. Fruit trees, herbs, cereals, and all kinds of life make for a fugue state of growth and balance. We talked to some winemakers with thousands of diverse plant species living in their vineyards (to say nothing of the animals whose company they encourage, nor the trillions of microorganisms breeding in the soils).
If all of this sounds like more of the same, I look forward to your first experiences with these wines. These winemakers are cultivating strong and powerful grapes that are helping to combat all our biggest issues with "natural" winemaking. The health of the grapes allows for these winemakers to have the confidence to introduce more oxygen during fermentation and elevage, meaning wines can stay open longer without problems. They are starting to understand the relationship between acidity in the soil and mouse as well.
The wines I tasted were fantastic and clean natural wines that are getting better and better each vintage. I've often used the metaphor that conventional winemaking is like painting and natural winemaking is like taking a photograph. Sometimes the photograph shows a little more than we want to see. Sometimes the painting doesn't quite capture the scene. The best of these new wines have a complexity and dearth of information that makes me think of the invention of the telescope or microscope or however you like to stretch your metaphors. Much of my trip this summer (throughout France) made me feel this way, but it's especially exciting that a region with traditionally boring terroir can also apply a philosophy and get these fantastic results. I look so forward to these wines coming to the states, but for now I beg you to try some of our fares from the region in New York today. We'll be out with them all week.
