I am an an avid collector of travel guides. And the Baedeker series occupies pride of place on my crowded shelves. Begun in the early 18th century by Karl Baedeker, by 1900 this little red book could be found in the knapsacks of poets and statesmen, artists and perpetual tourists. Virtually all of Europe, her countries, regions and major cities, as well as Egypt, Palestine, Syria, Asia Minor, Canada and the United States were covered by frequently updated individuated editions. Written by hundreds of pens, the guides were quite democratic in nature, providing precise info on everything from thrifty to expensive lodgings, museum entrance fees, front row theater and balcony prices, and train fares in first class or coach. Capturing the spirit of Nietzsche’s notion of the ‘Good European’, even if rather bourgeois, the Baedeker guides offered dignified commentary on the Western World’s shared history and culture, a common language for understanding monumental architectural forms and art, all for the ennoblement of the traveler wishing to learn as much about distant peoples and places as about themselves.
Then the world lost its mind. Two world wars made many a European Baedeker guide into an instrument of espionage and invasion, and transformed the excursion of a living city into a tour of ruins. But to this reader more than a half century later, this is also Baedekers great strength, what gives the guides their enduring value. They offer once living testimony of a vanished world.
Now this may seem an odd way to introduce David Downie’s Terroir Guides, but I am convinced that his work, the patient, herculean task he has successfully completed in three healthy volumes, Rome, The Italian Riviera and Genoa, and most recently Burgundy, is deserving of a similar admiration. And this is why. Focussing on food and wine, his Terroir Guides are generous and rich acts of resistance to globalization and homogenization. As he dryly writes in The Italian Riviera and Genoa,
The Italian Riviera has many excellent, sophisticated and some internationally celebrated restaurants. Most are not included in this guidebook…. [W]hen the authenticity, regional tipicity, and simplicity of the cooking are outweighed by the restaurant’s decor or setting and, above all, when the bravura of chefs focuses on innovation, creative or international cooking, the establishment does not correspond to the spirit of terroir.”
More pointedly, in the Author’s Foreword to his superb Burgundy guide he writes,
“The aim of the Terroir Guides is not to simply aid readers in the pursuit of hedonistic pleasure, but rather to encourage their appreciation of a slower, more meditative lifestyle based on respect for the soil, the seasons, and deeply rooted cultures capable of producing not only great food and wine, but also a saner and more tolerant world view and way of life.”
What may be found in Mr. Downie’s work are guides to cuisines and winemaking squarely at odds with post-modernist agricultural and marketing trends. Again from the Burgundy intro:
“[T]he battles continue against standardized, adulterated food, factory farming, growth hormones, fresh raw milk versus UHT milk, GMOs, vegetable fats in chocolate, trans-fats, and many other related issues, including the spread of hyper-markets and big-box discounters.”
Here my comparison of his work to Baedeker becomes a bit clearer. On every page is expressed the love Mr. Downie feels for each of the regions in which he travels. Never a harsh note, he writes entirely in the affirmative. His detailed explorations are always quiet celebrations of a vibrant, living food and wine culture he finds tucked away in corners of even the smallest, most decrepit village. There is always hope. Of the Northern Burgundy town of Tonnerre he wonders
“…how, in the second half of the twentieth century, Tonnerre was allowed to implode. Seemingly half of the houses in the upper city are abandoned, many in ruins. [....] With much effort, inner-city Tonnerre will rebound.”
He goes on to describe those dedicated to the work of the town’s re-energizing. And this is the general tone of the Burgundy book: for every sign of ruin or globalizing triumph there are plenty of counter-examples. For every collection of fast food joints and super-markets overflowing with standardized products mentioned, he offers well-described wine bars, restaurants, wineries and open markets. Where might artisanal cheeses and olive oils be found? Where are the best vegetables sourced?
Each of his remarkable 400 plus page Terroir Guides, Rome, the Italian Riviera and Genoa, and Burgundy, are the deepest, most exhaustively researched examples of their kind. I do not believe they will be outdone anytime soon. Further, I insist that as comprehensive gustatory compendiums of these regions, they each stand as a grand still-life, a moment in time. Future explorations of these regions, when a balance sheet is drawn up of their fortunes, the endurance of their multiple terroirs, such explorations will, I believe, require a return to Mr. Downie’s texts as a kind of standard history. Like a Baedekers guide, we need an accurate source of practical information to understand where we are. Mr. Downie’s work provides exactly that.
I contacted the author with a few questions. Knowing full well he was not a ‘personality’, that he did not seek celebrity, I did not hold out much hope for an interview. Neither did I really want one. Of the many haunting charms of guide books is the mystery of authorship. But I tossed a few his way.
Admin What project are you currently working on? Apart from your literary efforts, are you thinking of writing about another wine region?
©Alison Harris
Right now I am trying to juggle the three Food Wine books–meaning promote them–and decide whether to undertake another. These are very long-term projects, and require a great deal of research, foot work, energy, and investment. If I do another, it might well be of a winegrowing region, though I cannot say which just yet (I am talking to my publisher about this). It might also be Paris, which does have a couple of vineyards. Mostly, Paris has many fine wine shops, and wine experts (winesellers and sommeliers).
My other projects are my recently published political thriller, set in Paris: Paris City of Night. It requires nursing; all books are hard to get airborne, but when you’re known as a food/wine and travel writer and you write a crime novel, the odds are entirely against you.
Lastly, in terms of books, I am trying to finish and find a home for a quirky book about hiking across Burgundy (and much of France) along ancient Roman roads and medieval pilgrimage routes. The book is titled HIT THE ROAD JACQUES. It includes some commentary on food and wine, including an unexpected revelation about French winemakers and their “special” relations with Mr. Parker. I don’t want to steal my own thunder.
Do you have an opinion on wine scores and ratings?
DD Having worked for some years two decades ago on the Gault-Millau guidebooks to France, Paris and Italy, and having lived in France for 25 years, I have developed an allergy to numerical scoring. The French are obsessed with it, because they are traumatized as school children by the 20/20 system (no one ever gets 20/20 in school). Wines are living things, and we are too (most of us). Wines change, we change, constantly. Change is not possible, it is inevitable. That is why ratings of any kind are so approximate and ultimately not very useful. Also, Mr. Parker’s ratings–and those of many reviewers–would not generally be my ratings. Taste is highly variable. I do not worship fat, fruit-forward, oaky wines, and I am a mono-variety man (though I do love some wines made with multiples).
Do you take tasting notes above and beyond those provided in your book?
DD See the above for background. I am possibly less organized than you think. I take notes, in notebooks, and usually I can’t find my notebooks, and if I do, I can’t find my notes in them (I am par-blind, which probably helps me as a taster, but makes life hell otherwise). I also scribble notes on brochures, on wine labels, and so forth. And I realize that a wine tasted at the winery may taste very different at home, or in a restaurant. Winemaking, wine appreciation, and wine education, to my mind, are an art or a craft, not a science. Science and technology have their place in the world of wine, but they are also proving dangerous–like tools handed to the Sorcerer’s Apprentice. For me, when it comes to wine, the less “technique” the better. Romanee Conti has been making organic, un-technical wines for quite a spell, and people seem to like them. Many less trumpeted winemakers have too.
Are there wine books from any era, whether historical, popular or scientific, in or out of print, that you would recommend to the Burgundy enthusiast?
DD I will have to give that one a think. I am chaotic in my reading… most of my reference books (which I don’t always own, but borrow) are French…
What camera does the Food Wine series photographer, Alison Harris, use?
DD She has used/uses a variety of cameras. Now she uses a Canon professional digital camera with an EFS 17-55mm lens. By the way, here is her
website, (and she is my wife, of many years now).
If you could be a tree, what tree would you be? JUST KIDDING!
DD Actually, I am happy to answer: a live oak. Drought-resistant, tough, a loner, but also happy to dip roots into a river, and stand among other oaks (and any other tree–all trees are lovely). In fact, if I could, I would chuck in everything I do and plant trees. The best photo of me ever taken shows me attempting to embrace an ancient chestnut, in Burgundy. I will attach it for your delectation. Burgundy has some of the world’s oldest and most beautiful chestnuts….
Thank you for your time.
DD Thank you for yours!
———-
For more information on this gentleman, please see
this interview.
An additional review may be found on
Mr. Downie’s website, as well as notice of his other writing efforts.
And
this piece by Mr. Downie himself appearing today (3/09) in the Huffpost.
Admin
Presented here is a detailed look into a historic winery, the Adega Regional de Colares outside of Lisbon, Portugal. It is also the conclusion of my thorough interview with Colares enologist, Francisco Figueiredo. He was very generous with his time, spending more than two hours indulging my curiosity. I would encourage readers to, well, read the first two installments: The Vineyards of Colares, A National Patrimony At Risk and From The Vineyards To The Adega Regional de Colares. It is a strange twist of fate that well after thinking I should not soon pass this way again, in two days I shall in fact be returning to Portugal for more wine work. More details to come.
Admin You were bottling the other day? This is your machine?
Francisco Figueiredo Yes. It is a little messy in here because we just got forty pallets of bottles. We were bottling some of the red 2004 Colares. And this is our bottling machine.
I’ve seen these guys before. Is this Italian?
FF Yes. Many are. So are the crushers and de-stemmers. The press is French. We have, more or less, modern machines. We still have some work to do. We have some walls to paint. We laid down a new floor about two years ago. We have to go slow with the investments. We will repair the roof and the walls soon, I hope.
These are the old lagares where the grapes used to be crushed and pressed. And part of the reds were fermented here. We don’t use the lagares anymore.
Does anyone still use lagares?
FF Yes. In the Douro Valley there are places where they still use them. And some of our own growers, they also do their own wine at home, they use them… Here are the old cement vats, fermenters also. We don’t use them anymore, either. And here is an old centrifugal crusher. And our new one. We use a pneumatic press for our wines. We also have two hydraulic vertical presses over there which we can use if we have a problem with the pneumatic press. And we have a machine to fill the ‘bag-in-box’. We use that type of package for our table wines. They are the boxes with the small tap. We use vacuum filling. The wine stays good for quite some time. And that is now our substitute for the glass jug. We are getting good sales from using the bag-in-box system.
So we ferment in temperature controlled stainless steel. Some of the red, because we don’t have enough room in the stainless steel, we still use those big wood vats over there. We call them ânforas; we still use them for some of the table wine. Of course, we have no temperature control with them. An interesting fact about those is that, as you know, for our steel vats we have to use the pump to circulate the juice, from the bottom to the top, to pump over to get the color out. But in the wooden ânfora, the process is done naturally because the carbonic gas pressure that builds inside is enough to push the wine to the top; and it fills that cup on the top so that the pomace always stays beneath the wine. We can do this without the use of pumps or electricity, just the carbonic gas pressure which build up naturally during fermentation. I have not seen these anywhere else in the world. The system is the same for the cement vats called ânfora Argelina, but I have never seen wooden ones.
Where did these come from?
FF They were built here. The wood is Portuguese Chestnut. Each takes ten tons of grapes. And later we then bring over the pneumatic pump and open a small door to take the pomace to the press. This has a tube inside. The cup on top has a hole, in the center, so the wine goes up, fills the cup, and the wine then drains back on top of the pomace.
It’s like a giant coffee percolator!
FF (laughs) Yes. Almost exactly like a coffee percolator. This is the same system as the traditional cement that appeared in the ’60s.
May I climb up?
FF Yes. As long as you are not afraid of heights!
We climb up a narrow ladder.
FF You can see the tube. This is really spectacular to see during fermentation because the cup is filled with wine and it bubbles! It is a pretty sight.
The doors are very small. How do you clean out the interior?
FF We go inside. Someone has to go inside to remove all of the pomace. We put a ventilator up here and let the vat breathe for some time because of the danger of suffocation. In fact, four people have died in Portugal during this harvest time because of carbonic gas. They die without knowing it. We are very careful about that. For cleaning we have a special device that sprays hot water. But it is very difficult to be 100% sure that it is perfectly clean. It is wood, after all.
But we don’t have a problem with Brettanomyces because our wine has a low pH. And we don’t have a lot of sugar in the wine. We produce dry wines, around 12% alcohol. All the sugar is consumed by the yeast. So it is not easy for Brett. The main problem for us is not having temperature control here; not the wood but the temperature control. The wine can heat up quite a bit, around 40 degrees celsius.
Really?
FF Yes. That is high enough for the wine to lose a lot of the aroma. The tube, by the way, is connected to the crusher so that the grapes come through here. We use two or three of these vats or ânfora, each year.
Whose initials are these, JVN? The maker?
FF That means Junta Nacional do Vinhos, the National Wine Institute [founded in 1937]. Since the fifties, until 1994, this cooperative was a kind of hybrid organism; it was half cooperative, half was intervention by the state, the agricultural minister. Because of that all of the wine had to be made here in order to use the Colares DOC. That is no longer the case.
And what are these tools?
FF We don’t use them any longer, but they are for pushing down the cap. They were used if we didn’t put in a full 10 tons of grapes inside the ânfora. With less grapes inside, the carbonic gas would not be enough to push the wine out of the top. These forks would be used to push the pomace, the cap, down to mix with the wine. We now use a pump for that if it becomes a problem.
These are beautiful. I trust they will eventually end up in a museum.
FF Yes, yes. Some of them already are. And they are not permitted for use these days. They are made of wood and iron. What was done at the time was to paint, to use special paints to protect the iron parts in the tools and machines. Now it is all stainless steel. But every year all of the old tools had to be painted with the special paint that protected the iron from contact with the wine.
We climb down the stairs.
So, to be clear, someone has to climb into the anfora from the top…
FF Yes, yes. You go up to the cup and climb in from there using a ladder. The center tube is pulled out and someone goes down.
Do you ever have any cork issues?
FF No. We use only corks. I have never received cork taint complaint. Never. I will always choose cork.
I agree with you completely.
FF Would you like to taste some of the wines?
Of course! You know, I have a odd thing to ask. Being from America, we like to collect hats or shirts of the places we’ve visited. I’m looking for something with the name ‘Colares’ on it. Do you know where I can find such a thing? A rather silly idea!
FF No. But it is not a silly idea. It is an idea I have given to the directors. Why not a polo shirt or something? Even for the workers!
Not to mention Gonçalo, the winegrower we spoke with earlier. He wasn’t even wearing a hat!
Francisco laughs while getting two tasting glasses.
It must be very satisfying work for you. You’re doing so many things at the same time; preserving a way of life, preserving a wine culture, preserving memory…
FF Yes. It is all very important. I am also afraid that things might not go well in the future. The vines are in danger. That’s the only thing that I regret.
He uses a thief to draw a barrel sample. This is the white Malvasia, sandy soil, 2008. We will bottle it probably in a couple of weeks. [Late November.] Malvasia has a very citric, very minerally, acidic taste, and an almost salty taste, I notice. It also has an oxidative character; I think of hay or honey.
Very oceanic… very bright and fresh. How is the water quality here?
FF We analyze it inside our HACCP plant: ‘Hazard Analyses and Critical Control Points’. (laughs) There is some paperwork that we have to do. We have to analyze the water. It is good.
That’s one helluva name. So when you’re doing bottling session how many people would normally be here?
FF Working? Around four. We do it with a small crew to get into the rhythm. We can do about 1000 to 1200 bottles an hour. That is a good speed for a machine like ours. One guy puts the bottle on the carousal, another one taking it off and putting in the cork, another one carrying the bottles, another stacking the bottles. It would be quicker if we had one of those pallet movers, but we don’t have one yet.
Do you use wild yeasts?
FF No. We inoculate. The reason is that I had some experiences making the wine with natural yeasts, the wild yeasts, but I had some problems with starting the fermentation. It is too risky for me to risk that when I do 7000 liters of Ramisco or 2500 liters of Malvasia. But I did make an experiment. It is a question of trying to select a natural yeast from the area; that would be a project that I would like to do.
So you have experimented…
FF Yes, with several yeasts. For the whites we use a Portuguese yeast; it was selected in the Vinho Verde region, in the north of Portugal.
How was it done historically?
FF Naturally. But the big difference is that it would have been in an open lagar. That makes a lot of difference from using the closed stainless steel vats. I have made wine at my parents home using, not a granite lagar, but a small plastic lagar, more or less; and I had no problem starting the fermentation. Sometimes we have a problem with it stopping!
It can stop at 12% ?
FF Yes, before the sugar is depleted. That is a risk for the wine. But the main problem is fermentation within a closed tank. That’s when it becomes difficult. We would probably have no problem if I did the Ramisco in the lagar.
Francisco draws a second wine.
Have there ever been experiments done with fortified wines in Colares?
FF No. Just for the workers. I have done one this year. (laughs) We call it jeropiga or Abafado. I have taken the juice out of the tank before fermentation started and added our wine distillate. I made five liters last year. We give a small bottle for each of the workers. It is for drinking now. We have a tradition of drinking it during Saint Martin’s Day, the 11th of November. That day it is traditional to release the young wine for the first time; and you also drink abafado. An abafado is when the fermentation has started a little bit, like a Port, it is the same. Port is a special type of abafado. We add the spirits before the fermentation has started. One is usually a little bit sweeter than the other.
He pours the second wine.
FF This is the Ramisco. This has been in the big wood vats for around two years. Then it was put into these oak barrels. This is not young oak. It is three year-old oak. Our Ramisco wine doesn’t go well with new oak. It is too strong for our wine. So we use a two to three year-old barrel. What we are doing now is three years in the big exotic barrels in the other room [another part of the adega] and one year in the small oak barrels. We now see that this is the best for the wine.
How warm does it get in the other room?
FF This room is much hotter than the other. Even during the summertime the other room only gets to 16, maybe 20 degrees celsius. Here, no.
We drink the Ramisco. This Ramisco is regional because it has not yet been certified. It becomes DOC only after certification. Before that it is regional. Six months before bottling we have to send the wine to a certification board and they will certify the wine as DOC.
What does certification involve? And who is on the panel?
FF It involves a chemical analysis and a tasting. The panel is made up of one representative of the city, there are the persons who represent the associations and cooperatives of the Estremadura region, and then there are representatives of the producers. The panel or board has about 15 people.
What wine do you use for topping off?
FF We use the same wine held in a different vat. We can mix a maximum of 10% of different years of Ramisco. If we have the need we can do that, to play with the volumes. When you use new oak, and I’ve this experience in other places, you often have to use 15%. The Australians usually don’t top. They put the barrel on its side and leave it there for a only a few months. They probably do that in California as well.
Just out of curiosity, what do you think of wine ratings, and wine descriptions, the tasting notes?
FF They are very exaggerated. Wine is simpler than that. I think that is the beauty of wine. Sometimes a wine smell like something, but the critics exaggerate. Sometimes the wine smells like something tangible, but….
We exit the adega and make our way to his car where I retrieve my personal effects.
What do you have here in the back of your car?
FF My mother-in-law sent this to my mother. It is a basket of walnuts and some chestnuts, and a bottle of jeropiga! (laughs) It is my mother-in-law’s present to my mother.
Thank you very much, Francisco. This has been an eye-opening visit.
FF It was a pleasure, Ken. Let me give you some wine before you go.
Does the adega keep a wine library?
FF Yes. Since 1931, the first harvest in the year of the foundation of the cooperative; the first wine we made.
Back to 1931? My goodness. So what is next for you, your next series of tasks?
FF We will bottle a few things. We always have a busy commercial time at Christmas. After that, in January, we usually transfer the young wines to the wood vats, take the lees out. Then we continue to bottle if we have the need. And I start in the springtime I get out of the cellar to give technical support to the vineyards. And then the cycle begins again!
Admin
The title for this second and concluding part of my interview with Morgan Clendenen, owner and winemaker for Cold Heaven Cellars, comes during her detailed discussion of the very real practicalities of farming grapes. Make no mistake. It is fraught with anxiety and uncertainty. Not that there is much anyone can do about it. She holds farmers in the highest regard. They are different. They know what is within their abilities. Indeed, having learned her lessons well, Morgan approaches winemaking with a kind of dispassionate Eastern quietism, an attitude she will patiently encourage, well, wannabe winemakers to adopt. It is all about a clear understanding of what is within one’s power, one’s control, and what powers properly belong to the world. Small miracles and potential disaster struggle for ascendance in the brain.
This attitude is equally important to cultivate in the winery. After making wine for more than a decade, three truths have emerged for Morgan Clendenen: Do not hesitate to do what you must to save a vintage; there is always more to learn; and winemaking is not for whiners.
Part 1.
Admin Could you say a little more about your earlier Pinot effort?
Morgan Clendenen I haven’t made one since 2002. In 2003 I was getting all of my Pinot from Au Bon Climat and we lost our entire crop that year. That’s when I started making Syrah. The 2008 and 2009 are the first Pinots since then. I love Syrah when it is from a great vineyard. So many people do Syrah, and Syrah usually is not something I reach for. My 2005, I’m absolutely in love with this wine, but it has a Pinot Noiresque quality to it. That’s probably why I love it so much!
Yes. Syrah has fallen on hard times here in California. I like Northern Rhone expressions in any case…
MC Syrah is a real tough road here. The only thing I’ll say is that my Syrahs tend to stand out, away from the group, not being so ubiquitous, because we do two years barrel, two years bottle before release. I come from…, I was raised raised in the house of Au Bon Climat cuvée; the acidity and restraint are definitely a number of the building blocks of my wine education for winemaking.
Yes. Would you say a bit about ‘green’ practices on the property itself? The vineyards? Do you have certain standards, certain requirements?
MC Not directly, because I don’t own the vineyards. Sanford and Benedict was for a period of time organically farmed. I have issues with some of the organic farming. I find that there is a lot more ‘product’ on the grapes themselves than some of the people who farm non-organically. I see more product! And I just can’t help but wonder how much of that is getting into the wine, and how that makes it ultimately ‘better’.
What do you mean by ‘product’?
MC Well, there are a lot of organic compounds that they use in spraying vineyards. I don’t know. I’m not vineyard manager or viticulturist. I make wine. So I really can’t tell you those kinds of things. I know that Le Bon Climat is farmed organically, and I will tell you that they are the ugliest damn grapes I get. (laughs) They are! We have a motto in the winery: “Ugly grapes make great wine.” (laughs)
And I had some ugly Pinot Noir this year and I had some beautiful Pinot Noir, and I have to tell you, the beautiful Pinot Noir tastes beautiful! The ugly is o.k. (laughs) Now I’m struggling to decide what I want to do, whether I want to blend it all together or keep it separate.
With organic preparations you are often required to use them more frequently. Their effectiveness is limited if contrasted with more industrial strength pesticides. They break down more readily, and so on. What kinds of pest pressures do you have there?
MC We have mealybug, I know that. White fly is a huge problem out at Sanford and Benedict over the years. The white fly basically shuts down photosynthesis, that it causes your grapes not to be physiologically ripe in the end. That’s a bad thing. Mealybug is really horrible because it kills the plant. We’ve really been watching the mealybug problem. We have a big mealybug problem at Le Bon Climat. And I think part of the reason we have a really big problem is because we are organic. What’s being applied over there is not proving effective enough to take care of the problem.
That said, I want to be greener. Hey, I moved my winery into Buellton and moved my house to within a mile of my winery. Before I was driving 45 minutes to get to my winery every day. That doesn’t feel green! Especially when you’re driving a big truck. In those terms, there is always something we’re trying to figure out; how to be a greener business, how to leave a smaller carbon foot print. And I have toyed around with biodynamics. It’s something I’ve read about, studied some… I’ve even gone as far as to procure the horn! (laughs) But I have never buried it in the ground.
Where do you keep the horn?
MC I have the horn at the winery, actually. It’s a buffalo horn; it’s not a cow horn.
Well, buffalo horns won’t work, of course.
MC I don’t know. The place where I was doing it, at the ranch, (actually it’s my ex-husband’s ranch, but we’re pretty friendly on that; basically, I let you keep your stuff. We’re cool.) So over at the ranch, because I was growing organic vegetables over there, I was extremely interested in biodynamics. Yves, my French partner, just laughs his ass off at biodynamicism. He says it’s a fashion, and then takes me to look at vineyards that he knows are biodynamic. And they are pretty sad looking. But I can’t say that they make terrible wine. You know? Biodynamics has some interesting things about it. It is rather archaic in some of its principles.
I remember meeting Telmo Rodriguez, a Spanish producer; and he said his vineyard was biodynamic. It was a time when I really didn’t know much about it. I asked him about it. He wouldn’t tell me! Finally I asked, ‘if you’re not willing to share with people what specifically you are doing in the vineyard, then don’t talk about it being biodynamic’. It is a vineyard he owns, after all. I think what’s going on is that Spain is a Catholic country. Biodynamicism is a little bit of witchcraft mixed in with some homeopathy and astrology. In that way it makes it interesting to me. But, I’ve never had the chance to actually see it in action. So… I’m almost dead certain that Beckmen Vineyards is all biodynamic.
I think that anything that puts you in your vineyard more frequently, that makes you more connected with it, is better for your vineyard. Period.
I think that is exactly right. But now, with respect to the mealybug problem at Le Bon Climat, it might be interesting to think about one of the major selling points of the biodynamic approach is that it restores a certain kind of balance. It would be interesting to see whether you could do like a test block.
MC It’s at a point where nothing, not even biodynamics is going to cure it. (laughs) It’s really bad. I’m sure the rains are not helping. Rain just spreads it around. It’s a constant battle. I have a total respect for farmers. How to deal with that kind of uncertainty in a job… you can’t predict what the weather is going to do. And even when you try to predict it, that doesn’t mean you can always do something about it. I can’t imagine how stressful it must be to be a farmer.
It’s funny. During harvest, when it starts raining, everybody around me gets all nervous an upset; and I say, ‘you know. I’m just not gonna’ because there is nothing I can do about it’. The best thing I can do is that when my fruit comes in see what the deal is and go from there. To winemakers I ask ‘Why cry over spilled milk?’ Now, I don’t hear the same bellyaching from farmers out there working their butts off.
Yes. I had a wonderful conversation with Bryan Babcock last year sometime. He is a hard core farmer, I’d say. And he is very outspoken in this regard, about the exigencies of farming. He’s a tough guy.
MC For Le Bon Climate vineyard, Jim (Clendenen) would be in total agreement with Bryan. And I think it is the same thing with wine. If you get wine that doesn’t have any acidity in it you’d be a fool not to put some acid in it, in my personal opinion. I had a guy at Morgan’s Halfway House for Wannabe Winemakers this summer (laughs) who was making some Syrah. I looked at his numbers. He told me how much acid he was going to put in, and I said, ‘you know, I would put in twice as much.’ He said that he was afraid to do that. I told him not to be afraid of the acid. As perfectionists, we want to produce the best wine that we can. That is very trying. In your mind’s eye you’d really love to have fruit and juice that’s perfect; juice you don’t have to add anything to. Everything is natural, and so on. But that is just not reality. Yes, you can take your natural fruit and just let it go, don’t do anything to it. Or you can hold its hand, make sure it gets to the end point, the right place, and still have it be commercially viable. If you don’t do that you’ll end up with wine that the public may not necessarily want to drink.
So, just as in the vineyard you have to address problems as they come up, sometimes you have to be a lot more pro-active than in your heart you want to be, whether it’s chemical or whatever. And in the cellar it is the same thing. You want perfect fruit, but that does not mean you’re going to get it. You have to work with your boundaries to make the best wine you can.
Last year at Le Bon Climat the grapes were absolutely perfect. The numbers, perfect. I didn’t have to do anything. It was a cakewalk. I loved the wine. But that only happens once every two of three vintages, that you get the perfect balance. So, yes, we’re going out there, we’re testing the sugars and such, but sometimes it’s a box of chocolates; you get what you get. This year was very odd for me, the 2009 vintage. The sugars were not very high. I don’t think I picked any Viognier above 23 Brix. Most of it was 21.5; but it was physiologically ripe. Very, very strange vintage. But they will have low alcohols; they will be fresh. It not going to be green, I can tell you that; which is what 21.5 would suggest.
I thought about additions and that sort of thing, but the fruit tasted good. The juice was yellow, with a green tinge. It was a very unusual year for Viognier. A friend of mine, Karen Steinwachs, who is the winemaker for Buttonwood, I met her for lunch right before Christmas, and she said she brought in, I think it was Sauvignon Blanc at 22 Brix, somewhere in there, and she still got 14.5 alcohol! We can’t figure it out. How does that translate? It doesn’t make any sense. There is something going on, but we can’t figure it out. And she is meticulous. She tested it at her lab and she sent it off for testing. Now, we know within 99.9 % that fruit, the Brix level, was at 22. We’re stumped. Perhaps different yeasts are responsible. There are so many different yeasts now, maybe that’s the reason. Some scientist may tell you that’s just rubbish, but in five years maybe some breakout scientist will say something different. There are certain things that I don’t know to be always constant. So I told her that I’ll tell her what my alcohol is in the end. I’m not predicted to have anything above 13.5% alcohol. It’ll be interesting. If it goes higher then she and I will definitely be contacting Davis! Houston, we have a problem. (laughs)
Is she using wild yeasts?
MC She’s using commercial yeasts. I use commercial yeasts. The Saints and Sinners is a wild yeast, however. I am not a big fan or wild fermentation because most of the time some of the wine gets stuck, it doesn’t finish. If you’ve ever restarted a fermentation I don’t think there’s anything more unnatural that you can do to wine. It made me sick to my stomach and I never want to do it again. When you have to take wine and heat it up, and then add 25 pounds of sugar… that does not feel good. It does not feel natural. It feels intrusive.
Strictly speaking, with the wild yeasts on the grape skins, and even though you may use a commercial yeast, you really don’t know which yeast finished the fermentation. There is no way of knowing. There are thousands of yeasts in there.
Yes. Indeed, a number of commercial yeast companies now include combinations of wild and commercial yeasts, Saccharomyces cerevisiae principally. The idea is that the wild yeasts get a toehold before the commercial populations overwhelm them. Some qualities are imparted before others.
MC That’s what we’ve been doing in my cellar. We’ll monitor the juice, and when it is starting we’ll let it go for a couple of days. And then we inoculate. I do like natural yeasts; I just don’t want to have to deal with restarting the fermentation. You’d then have to use commercial yeasts in any case. I think that is the dirty little secret of natural fermentations. People always talk about using nothing but wild yeasts, well, ya know, bullshit! I don’t believe you! Especially for California with the high sugar levels, if you then go with wild fermentations it is a recipe for a stuck fermentation, in my mind. You don’t really know what goes on behind closed cellar doors! (laughs)
And just because it’s ‘commercial’, that does not make the yeast unnatural. It’s yeast, for god’s sake. It’s not plastic. In the past I played around with making sourdough starters from red grapes. One year I did one from Sanford and Benedict and two other vineyards. And it was interesting! The sourdough starters themselves were so very different in the breads. I had one from Gold Coast vineyard that, I swear to god, tasted like cinnamon in the bread! And that was because of the yeast starter. I took some red grapes; I put some flour in at a certain temperature, and created a starter. Once I had it started it was like having a newborn. You had to feed it… I mean, ok, I can’t deal with this anymore! (laughs) So I really like my yeast that comes in a packet! I am very comfortable with it.
I actually use a Champagne yeast for most of my Viogniers because I like the clean expression; it is a clear expression of the grape without adding this fruit factor or floral factor, all these things that the different yeasts are supposed to do. If it ain’t broke I’m not going to fix it.
Well, wonderful. I have a lot of material to work with here. I want to thank you…. wait, one more question. What do you think of the usefulness of new Social Media for a winery’s promotion? Does it help? Can you see the benefits?
MC You know, I use Facebook for work all the time. I get accosted by my friends all the time. ‘Ah, you’re on Facebook all the time, blah, blah, blah.’ Well, it allows me to get in touch with people in San Francisco, New York, Chicago, France… boom, all from one place. I think if you’re smart and learn how to use it, it offers great benefits. And it’s free. How many things out there are free that you can also benefit from, certainly on a business level? It can be intrusive. At times I wonder what the heck am I doing. I do get stalkers! But for the most part it has really helped my business.
I’ve always been a little behind the scenes, a little bit underground. I am not, as my Facebook persona may suggest, as out front as you might think. I always been more of a ‘behind the scenes’ person.
Thank you very much, Morgan, for the opportunity to speak with you. Oh, one last question, did you really ride an elephant in a vineyard?
MC Yes, I did. That is totally true. A socialite that used to live here in the valley held very elaborate parties. She chose her guests based on their entertainment value and willingness to go along with her party ideas. For her 50th birthday she had an Indian themed party. All the guests, all women, were required to wear a sari. The party was held by their pond located in the middle of their vineyard. I actually ordered a sari from India and learned how to fold the layers of cloth; there were many! Nothing like being swadled in a colorful sheet when it’s 100 degrees out! But the surprise of the party were the three elephants… I must say it was a majestic feeling, lumbering slowly through the vineyard, slightly higher than an elephant’s eye. I will never forget that view, for a time an Indian princess riding in a California vineyard.
Very cool. Take care, Morgan.
MC Bye, Ken.
Admin
Morgan Clendenen of Cold Heaven Cellars has been quietly perfecting her take on Viognier since 1996. She writes:
“My mission and goal as a winemaker is to illuminate and define Viognier, to elevate its profile and explore its potential through keen observation and copious tasting. I seek to sound the depths of this enigmatic grape, to reveal its secrets and shine a bright light on the extraordinary fruit grown in the cool vineyards of the Santa Maria and Santa Ynez Valleys of California ’s Central Coast.
Despite this strong ambition she flies under the radar, working and experimenting diligently according to her own vision. She has little interest in the expansion of Cold Heaven if the proper fruit cannot be found. Though her love of Pinot Noir may eventually require a call to a local contractor. And neither are Cold Heaven’s labels festooned with marketable tropes. They are reserved, dignified. Yet Ms. Clendenen is also a vivacious, quick-witted soul, and seems easily capable of commanding a room. So her wines, her beloved Viogniers, possess these complimentary aspects of her character: finesse, balance and a lively acid.
I spoke with her just last week, Wednesday, one of many days California was being flattened by a runaway train of foul weather. A last note, I have enjoyed only three of her wines. That will certainly change.
Part 2 will post later this week.
Admin What a lot of rain! How are your vines? Any vineyard erosion?
Morgan Clendenen This is the time of year you want rain. It’s good for the vineyards. As long as we don’t have any frost, we should be sitting pretty. The abundance of rain usually means an abundance of grapes. But Mother Nature… she’s a tricky bitch! And erosion is always a problem in California whenever it rains. So if you’ve planted in a dubious place then it may happen. But Le Bon Climat vineyard is constantly dealing with erosion factors. We try in various ways to slow the water down. But it’s an ever changing Earth we live on. Ours is a constant struggle to try to control the environment. It’s kind of funny. Well, maybe not funny: it is what it is.
About water. Do you folks irrigate?
MC Most everything I deal with is irrigated. And I’m very happy because in the past few years we’ve had some tremendous heat waves right before harvest. When you have these heat waves what you get is sugar ripeness but not always physiological ripeness. I saw a little bit of that this year. It was interesting that the sugars were there but the physiological ripeness wasn’t. And then it kind of switches places where the grapes became physiologically ripe but the sugars were not as high because we had a cold snap after a heat wave. Irrigation helps us moderate these swings.
There is only one vineyard that I can think of, I’m sure there’s more around here, and that’s Foxen. They have a specific vineyard that they dry farm. But everything that I deal with is does have irrigation. It’s a drip irrigation system.
On a personal note, just to get this out of the way, why is it that there are no two pictures of you that look alike? It’s the oddest thing. You’re like a changeling!
MC (laughs) I don’t know! The picture on the Home page of the winey site is odd because what you see is a reflection of me off the glass of a painting. You see what I see in the mirror, not what you would see looking normally at me. So I look very different to everybody. But I think I look the most like me in that picture! (laughs) It’s just how it is. When I look at myself it is always a reflection.
So no Grace Jones-like body doubles! Well, one of the reasons I wanted to speak with you was because of a wine of yours I enjoyed many years ago, an early, maybe the first bottling of the Domaine des Deux Mondes, Saints and Sinners. I’ve had Viogniers from all over California since then but I’ve never forgotten that wine. Your winery’s name stuck in the back of my mind. And then to have encountered the winemaker herself on Facebook, well, there you go.
MC Well, thank you. That wine is basically just a recipe I followed from Yves Cuilleron [from Condrieu] to make a wine in his style. It’s a partnership I have with him. He’s very well known for his wines. He makes several single vineyard Condrieus. His sense of doing more than one, playing around, manipulating the grapes to some degree, is always very interesting to me. In fact, his sweet wine has always been a benchmark wine for me. But with that wine, the Domain des Deux Mondes, we decide that we do this fun thing where we would blend finished wine from one of his vineyards with finished juice from one of mine. It was a 50/50 blend. We had so much success from that, and had enjoyed doing it, we decided that we would take some of my grapes and use them for Yves style.
Now, Cold Heaven’s style is nothing like that! Nothing like that. Deux Mondes is not Cold Heaven. It’s not the wine I personally would go for in a line-up. It’s very oaky and it tends to be a little riper than everything else I do. But it shows that, yes, I can make lots of different styles besides what I do. But I choose to go in a different direction with Cold Heaven because I like it the best. And that typically means lower sugars; I like high acidity. I like it to be natural.
I buy very few grapes from warm sites. I’m not interested in warm sites for Viognier, quite honestly. I’ve been working with Sanford and Benedict vineyard and Le Bon Climat vineyard which would always serve up a good helping of acidity; and I would barely, if ever, have to acidulate those wines. The first Deux Mondes was a 2004 vintage.
That may have been the vintage. I’m a little surprised because I am no fan of oak and I like high acid. But palates change. Clearly, I was still evolving! But about Sanford and Benedict. On your website you describe having found there a then “rare clone” of Viognier. Could you tell me something about that clone?
MC What we have over at Sanford and Benedict is not really known to us because whoever planted it seemed to fall off the face of the Earth. They had grafted a bunch of Viognier onto Cabernet rootstock. Then a section of it died and they went in and replanted on some other rootstock, also unknown to us.
And why did the section die? Do you know?
MC We don’t know. I wasn’t around during that period of time. It was in the eighties. So, there was a lot of change-over over at Sanford and Benedict about who was farming. When I came on board there the guy who was farming was never seen. I never saw him! He was like a mythological creature. So when that job was taken from him and the new people took over, I see them all the time. They are very pro-active in that vineyard. Coastal Vineyard Services. It’s questionable, the clone. We just don’t know.
We were approached at one point by the former owner of Sanford and Benedict. He said he wanted to plant more Viognier for me. We wanted to get a specific clone but we couldn’t get it. We ended up getting a Davis clone. What is planted mostly in California is the Davis clone; that’s what’s there. So when we planted Le Bon Climat vineyard as my primary vineyard, we planted that with a Chateau Grillet clone.
Then when I was dealing with Vogelzang, they called me up and said, ‘Look, we planted what we thought was Roussanne but it turns out that it is Viognier’. (We call it the ‘R’ clone. As in ‘Randall’. It was supposedly brought in by Randall Grahm as Roussanne.) When they tasted that wine they swore it tasted like Roussanne. I said ‘You’re out of your mind! I don’t think it tastes anything like Roussanne’. Now, I like Roussanne. I don’t like Marsanne at all. I won’t work with Marsanne. I hate Marsanne. It is my least favorite grape in the entire world! But I love Roussanne. If I could get Roussanne here I would be excited. I would like to work with that grape more. But there’s not a lot of it around here. And quite honestly there’s not a lot of cool climate Viognier vineyards around here. Cold Heaven hasn’t gotten bigger and bigger every year because I don’t want to make wine just for the sake of having my name on a label. I make the wine I want to make, you know? Unfortunately, not every vineyard is up to snuff where that’s concerned.
Let me add that I don’t think the Davis clone planted in a hot sites is good. Our clone I work with is in a warm site, but I like it a lot because it seems to hold its structure better than the Davis clone does. It seems to keep its pH lower, it seems to have a little more acidity. So I particularly like this grape. It doesn’t go as tutti-frutti as I think the Davis clone does in warm sites. I like that clean, more acidic expression of the grape. I just think it’s more food-friendly. The Le Bon Climat is just a great catch-all wine for things you normally have difficulty pairing foods with: Mexican, sushi, Asian, Chinese, spicy, Indian… it is very interesting that acidity really blends so well with spicy foods.
It’s an anomaly in California. What I do is an anomaly compared to 9/10ths of the industry.
The Vogelzang tends to be (we call it) ‘blousy’. It’s bigger, more fruit forward… it’s big on everything! The alcohol is not through the roof. It’s 14%. But it’s well integrated. Then you move into Le Bon Climat. It’s so funny. People come into the winery and love the Vogelzang, but they don’t get the Le Bon Climat! Then you’ll have a sommelier from a restaurant come in and he will go absolutely apeshit for the Le Bon Climat over Vogelzang. That’s the great thing about making more than one expression. But they are not different styles. They are stylistically different in their clonal selection and their vineyard sourcing.
So the winery treats the different grapes in pretty much the same way.
MC We do. We don’t use any new oak. We don’t like any oak flavors in the wine. We have such naturally high acidity in most of the wines that we do barrel fermentation that rounds that out a little bit. Whereas stainless becomes a little too eye-popping, I think. I’ve done some stainless experiments. I did some Viognier in stainless this year. Once it was though primary fermentation, I put it in barrel for malolactic. It’s not that I’m against stainless steel. I use it when I’m kind of curious what kind of product it’s going to give. But my wines do better with some neutral oak. And I use neutral French oak, mostly Francois Freres.
I’ve been using neutral oak since 1996. It’s been our philosophy since the beginning. Then when Domaine des Deux Mondes came around, Yves used considerable new oak. I had to start buying barrels for the first time in 2004. So we use about a third new oak on those wines. And we use Ermitage as our barrel producer specifically for Viognier. I don’t like Francois Freres new barrels for Viognier. It’s not a good fit to me. Neutral barrels are fine. But as far as the oak, for whatever reason the Ermitage just seems to be a lot more seamless in the wine.
Do you specify the tightness of the grain?
MC I don’t. When we first started the project Yves told the guys at Ermitage what was going on, they actually just gave us three barrels in the beginning. Then one year old barrels were shipped from Yves cellar. They were cleaned but one wonders just how clean can you actually get something. Are you still getting some yeast cells in there, whatever? So Ermitage gave us these barrels. There wasn’t deliberation on my part. Since then I’ve stayed with that because it just seems a good fit. So, no, I don’t get into tightness of grain… all of that. But I am starting to more of that because I’m now making Pinot Noir. This year I have a lot of new barrels in the cellar and we’re constantly tasting the wines side by side. I am very, very curious what each barrel is bringing to the plate on the Pinot. I have a 2008 and a 2009 in barrel.
END OF PART 1
Admin
When in Lisbon, Portugal for the European Wine Bloggers Conference, I had the good fortune to be taken on a detailed tour of a few Colares DOC vineyards by Francisco Figueiredo, enologist for the Adega Regional de Colares cooperative. This rewarding encounted I chronicled in The Vineyards of Colares, A National Patrimony At Risk. I must stress that little of what follows here will be fully appreciated without first having read this part. For now comes a part 2, a continuation of our conversation, but with the accent on the field research the cooperative is doing with clones and trellising.
Colares sits is along the Atlantic Coast, in the western Estremadura, a region surrounding Lisbon. A simple and inexpensive train ride north from Lisbon takes the visitor to Sintra. From there a bus on regular rounds, wends its way to Colares proper. As recounted in part 1, its wines are particularly interesting, first because of the grapes permitted by the DOC, Ramisco, Malvasia and Molar (Negre Mole); secondly, because the Ramisco grape has been historically grown in sand, the vines never required grafting during the phylloxera plague of the 19th century. They remain quite rare in all of Europe.
And so I resume the conversation. With the wind howling, I ask…
Admin Is this a fairly steady wind?!
Francisco Figueiredo (laughs) Yes, yes!
When I came into Colares the other day it was completely still. But we are on the other side of the hills….
FF This is the place I was talking about. We are here making the clonal selection. This is planted with several cuttings from the area. We have here the three main varieties we use here: Ramisco, Malvasia, the white, and also we have a traditional red variety which is Molar. It is known by Negra Mole in Madeira where they also use it for their wines. This is trellised to help us study. It helps us watch the canes and more easily see the harvest.
This is a fairly large vineyard. Was this always a vineyard?
FF This was always a vineyard. If you ask me how the wine is we make from this vineyard I will tell you that it is different from the wine made in the other vineyards we’ve seen. The maturation period is quite different here. Here we have early maturation on that type of vineyard, the ones low on the ground, than we have here with the trellis. It can make a big difference in terms of wine quality because of the weather. That can be a big problem, especially the rain. So what we see, mainly in the white varieties, is that we have early maturation on the traditional vineyard instead of the trellised vineyard.
What are the bunches like on the Ramisco?
FF They are very small. Do you know Pinot Noir? They are more or less like that. Small, open clusters, with small grapes, a lot like Pinot Noir. Ramisco has very large seeds in relation to the skin and pulp of the grape. That’s one of the reasons why the Ramisco wine has a lot of tannins. We have to soften them in the wood barrels before we can bottle it and put it on sale. This region does not produce very high alcohol wines because of the climactic conditions. They tend to be 11 to 11.5 percent alcohol; a maximum 12 to 12.5 percent alcohol in the white wine. And it also has some natural acidity; so the wine improves a lot with this four-year aging in the barrel, and after that in the bottle.
Yes. I’ve had maybe eight different vintages from a couple of different producers since I’ve arrived. I’ve been doing lots of research!
FF Do you like the wine or is it a difficult wine?
Yes! I love the wines.
FF I ask because the usual consumer likes high alcohol wines with very sweet flavors. Colares is very different from that! It is a very good wine for food.
So are Colares wines sold principally in Lisbon?
FF Yes. Mainly in Sintra, in Lisbon and the Sintra area. We make a very large amount of the sales directly from the adega regional, from the cellar in Colares itself. Colares is a small production. We make around 5,000 to 7,000, to 10,000 liters a year. So it is a very small production. The clay soil wines have higher yields, a higher production. Those types of wines we tend to distribute more widely. But the Colares wine is mainly sold in the Sintra and in some wine shops in Lisbon. But not in the big supermarkets.
Now, I notice that all the vineyards we’ve seen are on the top of the hills or dunes. Are there some that grow on the slopes? [Back in the car, we drive east to another vineyard.]
FF A little. But the ocean is very near. Maybe 200 meters away. Different from the traditional vineyard, here we are looking at mechanizing harvesting along the rows, between the rows. So here we have a low trellis. This way we can still keep the leaves and the bunches near to the ground. Here it is a divided canopy to allow the wind to pass through so as to give us a little bit more protection against powdery mildew. The higher the vine the more protection is needed. These are very old vines. This vineyard is of the adega’s director. He is also an agronomist.
And you own a vineyard.
FF My parents have planted a vineyard, in 2007. But unfortunately it is not on the sandy soil. My parents’ land is on clay! (laughs) I’ve not put in Ramisco. But I have planted Molar because it is better adapted than Ramisco which does not mature well on the clay. It needs the sand, the hot sand. So I have planted Molar, which is also a variety from here. But it’s not Ramisco. It’s not DOC. It would be nice to have a piece of sandy soil… but nevertheless I have planted a vineyard. It’s my home.
How did you become associated with the Adega Regional de Colares?
FF I have known the director for a while. When I was studying and doing my thesis, he was doing his final thesis, his PhD. And we were using the same vine for collecting data for our own work. I knew him there, and then he invited me to work here on the 1999 harvest. So I came to Colares for a one month job during the harvest, in the adega itself. I came back in 2000 and again in 2001. He then invited me to work in the cooperative. And in 2006-2007 I assumed enology position in the wine production. I was working with the wine but before we had an ‘external’ enologist. From 2007 on I assumed that part of the job.
During the height of the tourist season, how many tourists come here? Are the roads busy?
FF Yes. During summertime it is a busy, busy time. As for the adega and vineyards, there are some companies who organize wine tours and trekking around this area. They also show the vineyards to the visitors. We also organize tastings. The adega gets a lot of tourists. We put on tastings all year round. Between tastings, wedding and dinner parties, we probably have around 12,000 people pass through the cellar. If some groups require a more technical tour then they call me and I will do that.
Do enologists and wine experts from around the world come here as well?
FF Yes, yes. I’ve received guests from Australia, from France… we have received a of of people who work in the field. And some wine blogs have made reference to Colares I can recall.
[We drive along the coast, past very large new homes.]
So these large houses are mostly second homes?
FF Mostly, yes.
Was there a building project that was an especially big battle over a vineyard?
FF No. It’s just chipped away little by little.
What other DOCs in the Estremadura are under threat from development?
FF Carcavelos and Colares are the two. They are also small. They are nearest Lisbon. And Bucelas, which a region demarcated only for white wine. They produce white wine from the Arinto variety. So they are a little bit threatened. But the remaining areas of the Estremadura are not threatened.
But one of the bigger threats must be the importation of foreign varieties, like Cabernet Sauvignon and Syrah.
FF That is now happening in the Estremadura. You have a lot of varieties getting in, mainly Syrah with a little bit of Cabernet Sauvignon. And the Portuguese varieties are being used less. People are probably now using only Touriga Nacional, which is good, and Tinta Roriz which is the Spanish Tempranillo. We see a lot of Syrah, a lot of Cabernet, Alicante Bouschet… and so our traditional varieties are being used less with the exception of Touriga Nacional and Tinta Roriz (which is not Portuguese, but it almost since it has been grown here for many, many years in the Douro and in the Alentejo.) But if a different grape is grown here in Colares, you can call it a regional wine, but the name ‘Colares’ cannot appear on the label.
Founded in 1931, the purpose of the cooperative was to produce all of the Colares wine as a legal protection, a guarantee of quality. And then the cooperative sells the wine to different storage companies, with different aging techniques, for example, their own barreling, their own blending, all under their own label. Back then the Colares cooperative didn’t even bottle their own wine. They sold the wine to different brands. Colares Chitas, for example, was one of them, and still is, one of the two remaining.
Now, however, since 1994, if a person came from outside and wanted to produce Colares, if that person respected the DOC law, they could do it all themselves, even the vinification. So there are now two labels and two producers who do the vinification, including the Adega Regional de Colares.
End of part 2
Read part 1 here.
The next and last installment will be a tour of the adega itself.
Admin
It has been an extraordinarily productive second year on Reign of Terroir. Founded in early December 2007, this merry band of writers has continued to improve and deepen our work. With undiminished passion for the culture, history and future of wine filling our sails, we expect to be around for many years to come. The guiding principle of this blog is that no topic, story or individual will be approached without the writer learning too. I share with my colleagues this principle: if we don’t learn alongside our valued readership there is no point to the work. We would prefer, we insist, that something durable, something of lasting value come of our untold hours of scribbling!
But for the purposes of this post I will speak only for myself. What follows are the ten (okay, eleven) of my favorite interviews of the year, listed in chronological order. I decided not to include narrative and/or more technical pieces, despite my fondness for many of them, in favor of those posts where the idea is to let another speak with limited interference. The interview format, each requiring hours of (mostly) faithful transcription, has proven a favorite of mine. Even my sole complaint, the hours of tedious transcription, is actually a benefit. I am compelled to listen closely, in some instances to replay a dozen times difficult accents or wind and noise-buffeted passages and sentences to finally understand the sense of my interlocutor. (I’ve had migraine-inducing days teasing the meaning from an international phone call with an Aussie! Did he just say he wore women’s dainties?) For it is not always easy to receive clarification in a timely manner.
Just as with learning a foreign language, through repetition I am left with a lasting memory of the encounter. Indeed, though posted, I often keep the tape, not only for the resolution of the rare dispute, but because the voices of these people are fascinating, their speech rhythms and word choice, very much a part of the story. Sadly, the ‘performance’ of the conversation cannot be adequately conveyed. Perhaps I’ll begin posting audio files alone. Seems lazy to me, especially in a culture where the written word is under threat.
And doubtless the greatest reward from the interview format are the details which emerge from the brains of these gifted people. Some individuals are more guarded than others, to be sure. But in the fullness of the time I spend talking with folks much does emerge that seconds ago was unsaid and, perforce, unknown. Of course, the reader, too, will have to spend time with the people mentioned here to learn these things. Let me assure you, there are some wonderful insights to be found.
Let me add that many of the interviews are broken up into parts. The ‘infinite’ WordPress page is not. Reader patience is also a consideration. In any event, links to subsequent parts may usually be found at the end of the post. Sometimes after the introduction.
I have a couple of hours of recorded voices still awaiting transcription. And I will be back on the phone in a few days speaking with a new, creative soul. Stay tuned.
The charming and delightful Ariel Ceja of Ceja Vineyards.
Forensics scientist John Watling.
Swiss winegrower Peter Schmidt.
Sonoma winegrower Will Bucklin.
A lovely soul, Neal Rosenthal.
What a voice! Clive Coates.
Founder of Santa Cruz Mountain Vineyard, the magisterial Ken Burnap. (I still have one portion coming. Fascinating man.)
The brilliant Jonathan Nossiter. His mind moves like quicksilver.
Portugal’s First Family! My friends, the Sequeira’s of Carcavelos.
Another intellectual hero of mine, Portugal’s White Knight, Virgilio Loureiro.
Colares’ enologist, Francisco Figueiredo.
Happy New Year!
Admin
Jonathan Nossiter’s Mondovino, The Series, is a revelation from beginning to end. On four dvds, ten one-hour episodes, not only does it build upon themes pursued in the original 2004 theatrical release, but it substantially deepens them as well. For those who have only seen the original, they will be greatly rewarded by viewing the enormous amount of material that had to be set aside to fashion a marketable film. For those who come to Mondovino, The Series fresh, they are in for a hilarious, educational ride.
One of the most fascinating aspects of The Series is the sheer number of new insights uttered by all the original players. I well remember the harsh criticism heaped on Mr. Nossiter for his alleged politically motivated edit, especially of remarks by Robert Parker and Michel Rolland. Well, in The Series each gentleman greatly expand on their positions with respect to globalization, tradition and the use and abuse of history. Threadbare do the protestations of a slanted edit become when throughout The Series Parker and Rolland insist on digging deeper holes. But, one the other hand, they thereby become much more human, frail, seemingly caught in an echo chamber, a hall of mirrors of mutual admiration. For here recounted is no ordinary love story. Flaubert’s brilliant Bouvard et Pecuchét does come to mind. Yes, let us not forget Mondovino, The Series is high comedy.
And there are many new characters: Jan Shrem of Clos Pegase, Bill Harlan, Jose Espinoza, psychoanalyst Jean Laplanche of Chateau de Pommard, Catherine Montalbetti, editor of the Hachette Wine Guide, a very curious plastic surgeon from Paris, Dr. Eric Auclair, Steve Harvey of Folie à Deux, Pierre Siri, proprietor of the artisanal-class Iris du Gayou, Becky Wasserman, Charlie Rodriguez, José Mounier… the list of new and interesting voices is vast. Indeed, Mondovino, The Series swallows the theatrical release whole. (Though there are a small number scenes in the original that did not make it into The Series. But I’ll leave their identification to the film buff!) Incidentally, the world premier of this expanded film was in December, 2006, at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. I have not been able to determine if that release differs significantly.
What I would like to do for the balance of this post is to provide a brief summary of each of the 10 chapters for the convenience of the viewer. (All images below are used with the generous permission of Jonathan Nossiter.)
1) Where’s Asterix? (or Little Town, Big Hell)
This first episode expands on broader themes most closely identified with the theatrical release, the global versus the local, narrowly drawn, the battle was between the town of Aniane in the Languedoc, pop. 2,300, and the Mondavis of California. The conflict revolved around two nominally independent issues: the preservation of a forest and the resistance to a global corporation. But there is much ambiguity introduced into this new cinematic presentation. Of course we are introduced to Aimé Guibert of Mas de Daumas Gassac, wine consultant Michel Rolland (I wonder if he still smokes?), Laurent Vaille of Domaine de La Grange des Pères, the Mondavis and their winery staff, Bernard Magrez, the former socialist mayor, André Ruiz and his elected replacement, the communist Manuel Diaz. We meet Mr. and Mrs. Gay, the founders of Citizens for the Protection of the Forest. Many new locals speak about the conflict, and we hear more from the clergy and from a very entertaining police officer most concerned with parking problems additional tourism might bring!
Interestingly, the more the ‘players’ in this episode speak, the more nuanced do their positions become. A viewer upon finishing this first chapter comes away with a far greater appreciation of the multiple meanings, as much personal and political, of the battle to save the forest. There is as much bad faith as honesty, as much cowardice as courage. No political position is as it seems. It is in this discordance that comedy reigns surpreme.
2) Magic Potion
Next we’re off to Burgundy. In Volnay we meet Hubert de Montille, his wife Christiane, and their three children, Isabelle, Etienne and the sublime Alix. Lighting up the screen is the magisterial Aubert de Villaine of the Domaine de la Romanée Conti (pictured). Also in part two we are first introduced to Jean-Charles Boisset, Director of the Boisset Group, and young Alix Montille’s employer at the time. Jean-Charles Boisset will make numerous appearances throughout The Series, each more ‘revealing’ than the last. Of great amusement is Floris Lemstra, General Manager of Marketing for Boisset. He awkwardly spies on Alix’s every exchanges with Mr. Nossiter while they are on the Boisset grounds.
Of the Montille children, truly remarkable new footage is included. Our understanding of Alix and Etienne is improved, both fascinating people. We follow a harvest with the workers grumbling over labor issues and the family’s response. Greek and Libyan students on break from the University of London stir up trouble but are seemingly placated by a fabulous lunch prepared by Christine. Great exchanges are enjoyed throughout!
Back to Napa where we are introduced to Chateau and Estate Wines (Diageo) employees Gregg Fowler, the head of Vineyard Operations, and Peter Hall, VP of Consumer Strategies (can you say Red Chardonnay?) We close with a visit to Sterling, a subsidiary of Seagrams, a subsidiary of Diageo. Much mayhem is set upon the world! Here the noose tightens another inch on the issue of globalization.
3) Rome Wasn’t Built in a Day
This third episode is the most revealing, weird and refreshing one-hour look the wine industry likely to be shot for a very long time. Deserving of wide circulation, it is a virtually perfect series of contrasting personalities. We meet the eccentric Jan Shrem of Clos Pegase, a comic figure of the first order, reflecting on art, the good life and the triumph of a kind of western aesthetic imperialism. Throw in eerie footage of Bill Harlan haunting his own winery, opening and closing each and every door, briefly opening then drawing drapes in an apparent effort to contain or exclude some prowling malevolence; mix in the strangely remote Staglins, Sheri, Garen and their daughter, Shannon; add farm worker observations about working conditions and the absence of overtime with an explore of antiseptic environment of Opus One, all capped by a sunset barbeque with former farm worker, now winemaker, Luis Ochoa, his wife and neighbors outside their trailer/winery…. This is the merest hint of the brilliant cross-cutting hilarity Mr. Nossiter assembles. (I hasten to add that of all the dogs and cats we meet, it is in Luis Ochoa’s back forty where we see the one and only jack rabbit in the entire ten-hour series.)
There was one moment I found very affecting. Owing to the fuller fleshing out of characters the longer series permits, we are given, per force, finer shadings of the Mondavi brood. For reasons not entirely clear to me, when Michael Mondavi says, “I got my father back”, he relates a painful truth that was quite beautiful, at least to this viewer. Margrit at Copia is equally touching. Indeed, the Mondavi story, built fragment by filmic fragment through the ten-part series, will finally add up to a tour de force in its own right by the series’ end.
There is much else that is commendable but I cannot resist mentioning Bill Harlan’s reply to Mr. Nossiter’s question, “Does Napa have an identity?” Mr. Harlan replies, “To me the Napa Valley is kind of as it’s always been. It’s been in transition of becoming what it will be in another 100 years.” No post-modernist academic (or Stephen Colbert, for that matter) could have uttered a more confounding sentence. A pitch-perfect summation of episode 3.
4) Pax Panoramix
We begin in Jurançon, Pyrenees at the Domaine de Souch where we meet Yvonne Hegoburu. An exalted woman, she offers powerful insights into what growing grapes means. As well as in Sardinia, Bosa specifically, where next we land. Battista and Lina Colombu, again, express puzzlement at the increasing homogenization of wine globally. This episode is particularly rich in contrasting opinion. Neal Rosenthal hits back hard. Michel Rolland blithely goes about his business. There is more push back in Burgundy with wisdom from Hubert Montille and Aubert de Villaine. Michael Broadbent joins in. Patrick Leon of Chateau Mouton-Rothschild does not seem to know an artisanal-class winery’s vines are interplanted with his, those of Domaine Iris du Gayou’s. Pierre Siri, winemaker for Iris, is a shrewd addition to the film. There is shown a fascinating meditation on the 1855 Bordeaux classification from multiple points of view. Perhaps most delightful is an interview with Jean-Michel Cazes, owner of the 5th growth Lynch Bages. He takes the filmmaker on a delightful tour of the bizarre architecture of prominent Bordeaux wineries. “There is really no local architecture!”
5) The Appian Way
The viewer might be wondering what is left to prove generally about the globalization of a limited wine style having heard multiple voices either pointing to or demonstrating the affirmative. And yet we are only four episodes into The Series. Previously critics have laid the blame for the argument forcefully made in the theatrical version of Mondovino at Mr. Nossiter’s feet. It was his selective editing that was to blame. That argument can no longer be sustained. And with episode 5 the beat goes on. But a more aggressively drawn contrast begins to emerge. Here is considered the influence of Robert Parker. From Rolland to garagiste Jean-Luc Thunevin of Chateau Valandraud in St. Émilion, from a visit to Leo McCloskey of Enologix, the largest wine consulting firm in the US, to Parker himself, it is in this episode where the rubber meets the road. I defy anyone to sit through Mr. Parker’s greatly expanded comments on his own influence, on pricing, terroir, his indifference to history and not come away astonished at his arrogance. Michel Rolland, as well. And a new, fresh voice is heard here, Catherine Montalbetti, the editor of the Hachette Wine Guide. She speaks well of the standardization of taste. And she goes on to say, “Because no way can you tell whether it comes from California, Chile, Bordeaux or Languedoc.”
6) Quo Vademus?
What does an older bottle of wine taste like? Neal Rosenthal laments the way prominent critics interfere with the cultivation of a tasting culture. In a cross-cut Parker explains “As I get older, I like them younger.” Jean-Luc Thunevin, much to the displeasure of his wife, says “Well, I say I don’t like old women.” Quo vademus? Where are we going? This episode explores the ‘plastic surgery’ of wine, especially the increasing use of new French oak. Parker dwells on his liking of vanilla and toastiness, and considering its prevalence and that he likes wines younger, it is very amusing we are taken to the Paris office of plastic surgeon, Dr. Eric Auclair. Back in Napa, Leo McCloskey, CEO of Enologix, notes the similarity of palates of Parker and the Wine Spectator. Indeed, so closely have become the palates of leading critics that Enologix specifically works with wineries to predict what the critics will say! Tom Matthews of the Wine Spectator is interviewed. More from Burgundy. Marketing has assumed a central role. Among the Montille’s family, Etienne explains that the enemy is ignorance and standardization, over-simplification and money, of course. Diversity, he insists, is the highest value. It was a pleasure to see Becky Wasserman and Russell Hone make an appearance. Yvonne Hegoburu, Aimé Guibert, Aubert de Villaine, and Michel Lafarge all join in discussing the matter of marketing.
Tourists are caught plundering the grapes of Romanée Conti! Aubert de Villaine’s reaction is priceless. We close with a brief moments with the eternal Charlotte Rampling.
7) All Roads Lead to Rome
Episode 7 is framed by the question of authorship versus midwifery in the creation of a wine. We begin in Paris at the Ministry of Finance. Alain Châtelet of the Govt. Bureau on Wine Fraud leads us through the delicate question of consumer protection with respect to fraudulent wines. Very difficult to prosecute owning to the reluctance of victims to step forward. Great ego investment in wine. And what can you say about a wine that is both pleasurable and a counterfeit? Indeed, this entire episode could be called “the psychoanalysis of wine” for we next meet Jean Laplanche of Chateau de Pommard. “I have a complex life, to tell the truth. Did you know that?”, he asks. Laplanche remains one of Jacques Lacan’s greatest students. Author of a dozen books on various aspects of the Freudian oeuvre, Laplanche introduces us to what might be called the ’strong’ argument: that only the author’s signature on the bottle is the guarantee of quality and authenticity of the contents. In stark contrast to his position are those of Montille and Villaine who hold that they are simply midwives. In broadly psychoanalytic terms you have a repositioning of the question of the Father and the Mother. (The consumer plays the role of child, constantly put on the spot to declare his unconditional love for one or the other.) Great anxiety! But what all gentlemen can agree upon is that for Robert Parker, as Laplanche puts it, “The complexity of Burgundy repulses him.” This is, I believe, a brilliant insight. There is a tremendous amount of important material here. Why do consumers feel the need for the strong hand of wine gurus? Why the anxiety over being cheated or of not knowing how to taste? How is it that powerful marketing forces have come between the consumer and their palates?
We next meet Scott Harvey, winemaker for Folie à Deux. That winery was named after the founders’ madness of the same name: the condition of two closely related people sharing the same delusional idea, in this case, of starting a winery. But perhaps the most interesting moments of this episode belong to Jean-Charles Boisset, Director of the Boisett Group, #1 in Burgundy sales. I shall not soon forget his unique method pf punching down the cap! Or his plan to produce a limited edition of a super-blend of wines from diverse Boisset holdings, a wine with no origins, possessing neither Mother nor Father, neither terroir nor authorship. The episode closes on a very painful recollection by Bernard Magrez. It seems his father used to pin a very public sign on his back reading ‘I am a lazy boy’ when he was a child. As he says, “If you’ve lived through that it is much harder to love anyone”.
8 ) Crossing the Rubicon
9) Et tu Brute…
Intrigue and regret in Italy. Here is recounted, finished in episode 9, the story of the Antinoris and the Frescobaldis, both aristocratic families of great antiquity. It is a grand tale of betrayal and familial discord, of false starts and of finding the courage to go on. A deep history is on display. Ornellia’s loss is recounted. It is a particularly ugly aspect of contemporary wine culture that history counts for so little. From Rolland to Parker, Boisset to Mondavi, there is simply no room for historical reflection in the pursuit of global markets. Unless one may make a buck off of it. But as The Series reveals again and again, whether it be Lafarge recounting German occupation of his family’s winery, Aubert de Villaine describing Burgundy’s religious patrimony, or Aimé Guibert railing against the erasure of cultural memory, real families, real histories are grinding forward.
Among the most bizarre and destructive of personalities on display is that of James Suckling. His casual child’s play with the meaning of the lives of others is both laughable and chilling. I’ll say no more except that his comments are greatly expanded from those presented in the theatrical release of Mondovino. Episodes 8 and 9 are truly a tour de force.
10) Veni, vidi, vendidi (I came, I saw, I sold)
In the final episode we may take a bit of a breather. Introduced to Chile, Brazil and Argentina (and the film crew’s mysterious denial of entry into Paraguay) we meet many fresh faces, many new winemakers. But we are also introduced to the persistent racism and class struggle that have blemished so much of the southern continent’s history. Rolland’s shadow falls even here. There is a strange, indeed, terribly tragic way in which the world of wine is repeatedly limited, boxed in, by the presence of so few authorities and consultants. How strange to wander the back country of Argentina and still hear the names Parker, Rolland, the monotonous incantation of so few names. But now, at the episode’s conclusion, we, too, have names, new names: Charlie Rodriguez, Isanette Bianchetti and Mauro Tedesco, José Mounier…
I highly recommend Mondovino, The Series.
Admin
Colares is centuries-old wine growing region on the Atlantic Coast of Portugal. A forty minute train ride from Lisbon, Colares enjoys a very different, adaptive agricultural practice than that found in vineyards only a few kilometers inland. The vines are planted in sand. Actually that is not quite true. The sand is excavated and the vines planted on the clay layer beneath, often to a depth of 3-4 meters, and then the cane is progressively buried in sand as the it grows. As the reader will discover, this practice has had a number of interesting consequences, including the survival of the perhaps the greatest acreage, around 12-14 acres, of pre-phylloxera vines in the whole of Europe. Granted DOC status in 1908, the authorized grapes are equally adaptive and rare, Ramisco and Colares Malvasia. But details of all of this may be read below. Enologist/winemaker Francisco Figueiredo of the Adega Regional de Colares was my guide.
As has been true of my every waking moment since touching down in this astonishing country to attend the European Wine Bloggers Conference, Colares, too, provided both intellectual pleasures and something like heartache. I spent time in pre-Olympic Barcelona and returned years later to find old neighborhoods I had known utterly transformed. Much was swept away in the march toward modernization and something like international respectability. A similar transformation is also underway everywhere in the small portion of Portugal I traveled. And wine making traditions themselves are in the crosshairs, as my earlier interview with Virgilio Loureiro made perfectly clear. Colares is yet another example. Development, especially of weekend homes for Lisbon’s wealthy, has taken many vineyards.
The Ramisco grape produces wines that are out of international favor. Lean, low alcohol, high in acid, requiring many years of cellaring to become approachable, the wines of Colares are challenging; a different kind of reflection about wine is required of us. And if the challenge is refused or ignored, then Colares inches closer to oblivion.
Below you will find a mix of historical and current pre and post harvest photos, many from Francisco. I arrived well after the harvest. Some of the topics he discusses are best illustrated by images taken before my arrival.
This is the first of a two part interview. (Part 2)
Admin How long have you been working here?
Francisco Figueiredo Ten years. This has been my tenth harvest. For the first few years I worked here only at harvest time. I was still studying. I’m an agronomist and have done post-graduate work in enology. Since then I have worked here in Colares. I also give support to growers/producers not in the Colares region but in the Estremadura region. I’ve always been in this region. My parents live here. So I’ve known the region well since I was a child.
The Colares DOC is a very small wine region. It is between the Sintra Mountains and the Atlantic Ocean, which is very near. It is a short line along the coast, the demarcated region. And we have to meet two conditions for the wine to be Colares DOC. The vines have to be planted in sandy soils, and as we will see, it is loose sand, like beach sand; and we have to make the wine using mainly two local grape varieties. The red is called Ramisco and the white is called Malvasia.
The vineyards are very traditional and quite unique. They are old vines, mainly, ungrafted and pre-phylloxera, some of them still. Because of that we don’t have to use American rootstock. We plant the vines directly on the clay that is underneath the sand, not in the sand itself. To plant a vineyard we dig down in the sand to the clay layer, which can be from 1/2 a meter to 4-5 meters deep. The vines are planted in the clay for the roots to get the moisture, the humidity and the nutrients; then gradually we place sand around the vine as it grows. It takes about two years until the terrain is level again.
Is there a qualitative difference in the grapes whether a vine is planted 1/2 a meter or 4 meters?
FF No, not exactly. The main difference is that if we get the clay layer closer to the surface we can produce a little bit earlier. We don’t trellis the vines. We are doing some experiments but in the traditional vineyards the vines are not trellised. They are left on the ground. And that is important for maturation because of the heat off the sand. The heat reflects off the sand and helps the maturation go a little bit faster. That is important because we are in a region with a lot of humidity and moisture, lots of wind and mists, fog. It is usually 10 degrees celsius less here than on the other side of the mountain and Lisbon during the summer. So the maturation is slow. We usually harvest late, around the beginning of October. The last week of September, beginning of October we are harvesting the sandy soil vines.
The sandy region called Chão de Areia (meaning sandy soil), has a sub-region called Chão Rijo where the soil is only clay. It means ‘hard soil’. They are more like trellised vineyards, with higher production [yields] as well. We use different varieties on those clay soils. But we can’t use the Colares DOC designation on the labels. They are sold as table wine or labeled Estremadura regional of regional Lisboa.
Is sand constantly being added to this area or is there erosion?
FF No. We protect the terrain with free stone walls. And we also use dry cane palisades to protect the vines from the strong ocean winds. So there is constant shelter. The vines and the sand is protected.
What kind of yield do you get from an average Colares vine?
FF We get very low yields; one and a half to two tons per acre. In the clay soil you can get around eight to twelve tons per acre. Much more. That’s a big difference!
How many winegrowers are there in the Colares DOC?
FF There are 55 associates. But most are small. The total sandy soil area is about 12 to 14 acres. A very small production. Unfortunately the area has gone down. Not now. It’s stable now for the last ten years, with a small increase. But we have lost a lot of vineyards. In the 60s and the 70s there was a lot of development. We are very near the mountains and the sea. This is a place people want to build homes, people from Lisbon. Most are weekend homes here. [We are driving along the coast. Large homes and apartments climb up the hillsides] All of this used to be vineyards. Not in my time! I am 30 years old.
About the matter of the preservation of the Colares vineyards. Do you go before city hall to argue that a development shouldn’t proceed because of the vineyards it would destroy, that your patrimony is at stake?
FF Yes. We are inside Sintra/Cascais Natural Park, which should be protected. But it isn’t. It is very difficult. And of course for someone outside even if they wanted to invest in a vineyard would find it very difficult because the price of the land is very, very high. People are expecting to sell for construction, not vineyards.
What legal protections do the winegrowers have?
FF Practically none.
So someone could walk up to a grower tomorrow and offer them a large sum of money and there would be no objection.
FF Yes.
Francisco added to this subject in a separate email. “I can’t recall any government role in the direct preservation of vineyards. Indirectly the government supports wine sales, mainly outside, through ViniPortugal and partially funding exportation projects. The only thing I can recall regarding the Colares vineyards were two specific measures which gave some annual funding to the grape growers. The objective was for growers to maintain the landscape aspects related to the sandy soil vineyards (conservation of the free stone walls and the dried cane palisades). One of these fundings came from the Sintra-Cascais Natural Park Authority (the protocol only lasted 1 of the intended 5 years due to lack of money!). The other was a specific environmental measure from the Government which lasted 5 years and ended 2 years ago). None of these fundings were directly made to avoid selling the vine land. Wine is one of the agricultural products that the government supports more intensely, but not by trying to avoid the selling of property (that would be difficult because we are talking about private property). I can’t recall any protest related to the selling of a vineyard.”
FF This road we are on used to be all dirt. It is asphalt now. They put the sewer line down the middle of the road. I am beginning to worry about this. We are in one of the main growing areas, a place called “Chão Verde”, outside the small town of Fontanelas. These are probably the only vineyards in the world with a sewage system outside the vineyard! It is very difficult.
Are there people in the government who are sympathetic to the issue of preservation?
FF Yes. It is not with me directly, but the directors of the Adega Regional are in constant contact with associations and politicians to try to make some progress for the vineyards. But it is difficult. It’s difficult.
[We get out of the car.] This is an old vineyard. You can see the stone walls and the dry cane palisades. In the vineyards we usually grow the vines with apple trees. They are also low. It is very common to see this type of association.
The apple trees are blossoming now…
FF That is because we had a lot of heat in the past few weeks. You came at the wrong time of the year to see vines. It’s after harvest. These are very old vines. They still produce. This is one row. Over there, beyond the free stone wall is another vineyard. One of the things we do is raise the grapes so that they are not in direct contact with the hot sand. They can get burned. We prop the bunches up with a small stick.
It sure doesn’t look like Napa Valley! Someone driving through who did not know of Colares’ viticultural history would not ’see’ anything.
FF That is true. (laughs) It is obvious that there can be no mechanization in these vineyards. So we are doing experiments with low trellis systems to see if it is possible to mechanize the vineyards, to make them more economical and more affordable. All the picking now is done by hand. But so it the spraying and the digging of the vineyards for planting. And it is all done with the family.
With respect to the families, do these vineyards pass from generation to generation? Are the young interested in continuing?
FF I am afraid that the next generation isn’t very interested in wine growing. Some of the growers are old people from 60 to 70 years old. But I don’t see that their sons are very interested in the wine growing business. They have other jobs doing other things. The wine growers themselves have other jobs. Some work on different agricultural products. Others keep the vines as a hobby. The cooperative has to make some effort to try and keep tending those vineyards that will be left behind when the older generation passes. That is the only chance for the region: the cooperative will have to work directly taking care of these vineyards when the time comes.
So that I understand, all the 55 associates of the cooperative harvest their grapes and then send them to the cooperative. All the grapes are mingled, fermented together, and bottled under the single Adega Regional de Colares label.
FF Exactly. We just separate the grapes from the sandy soils [Chão de Areia] from the clay soils [Chão Rijo]. With the clay soils we differentiate two types of vineyards: the ones that produce ‘less quality’ grapes, let’s say, so those grapes go into simple table wine; and the best grapes from the clay soil go to the better Regional Estremadura wine. In the sandy soils there is no need for any differentiation. This is, by the way, the only DOC where the Ramisco grape is grown, and the Malvasia Colares. But it is also permitted in the Estremadura Regional, of course.
So is the Ramisco grape itself in danger?
FF Fortunately, no. I will show you another vineyard where we, along with the School of Agronomy, the Technical University of Lisbon, have selected throughout the region several cuttings from the best vines, and we have planted them in this vineyard. There are several clones in the region. They are now being kept, safeguarded in the vineyard. The idea is to protect the varieties.
This is a very old wine region. We have records of consistent wine production since almost the foundation of our nationality, since the 1100s.
These rocks that make up the walls, where did they come from?
FF Usually each grower has a piece of land on the sandy soil and on the clay soil, sometimes more pieces of land. So when the planted the ‘hard soil’ vineyards they took out the stones and they brought them to the sandy soil terrain to build the walls.
Notice the trenches of this vineyard being filled. As you can see, we plant after making a trench, a ditch. We put the sand to the side and gradually fill it in as the vine grows. In this area we had to dig about three meters down. I saw how deep when they were paving the road. It was about three and a half meters down to the clay layer.
We see a gentleman cross the road ahead of us.
Oh, this is Mr. Gonçaol. He is an associate of the adega. You are lucky. His vineyard is closed but this way we can see it. You can see again the apple trees. Always the protection, the shelters. These rows or groups of rows separated by the dry cane palisades of vines we call manta. The direct translation of manta would be a blanket. The clay in this vineyard is about one and a half meters down.
I see he has dug around the vines. What is this for?
FF On of the jobs that is done this time of year, this season. The job is to take these roots out, to cut them away. Sometimes we will also add manure for the vines at this point. The roots are of no interest to us. We want only the deep ones. And there is no irrigation. It is all dry farmed. That is the importance of planting the roots on the clay. No drip irrigation. We have some modern vineyards, not from our association, but from another association, which they drip irrigate. You can easily see that they are not strong vines because of that. So this is the natural way to have water, to plant them directly on the clay.
And over here he has new plantings.
So all of these vines are ungrafted, of course. And the source of all the cuttings?
FF All the cuttings are done here. There is only one nursery site for Ramisco vines just in case someone needs cuttings for a vineyard. For the traditional growers like Mr. Gonçaol, they do their own cuttings. And they choose only from the best vines.
Now, you don’t have phylloxera here. What are the disease and pest pressures?
FF The main pressure here is powdery mildew…
And second homes…
FF (laughs) …and building construction. That’s a real pest pressure! But of simpler pests we have what we call Cicadella, sharpshooters. Growers like Mr. Gonçaol didn’t know about the pest. It started about five years ago. We have seen some increase in the average temperature. And the sharpshooter came from the Alentejo to the north.
We say goodbye to Gonçaol and continue on our tour.
End of part 1
Admin
I came to Portugal knowing very little apart from what was commonly available in standard English language wine texts. Before touching down in Lisbon in advance of the European Wine Bloggers Conference, I could recite from memory, as any studious schoolboy could, all of the country’s major wine growing regions, perhaps a dozen of her most important grapes, the names of some of the larger producers, and a few truisms about the Portuguese wine culture as a whole. While it is good to know such things (it can render you an instant ‘expert’ among a crowd of English speakers, for example), such information does not get at the heart of the matter of the meaning of wine in Portugal. To acquire that knowledge a kind of cultural submersion or surrender is required. To speak to the right people is particularly important.
During my time in Portugal I can only claim to have inched closer to an understanding. It was certainly not the understanding that I was expecting. I spoke to many people, perhaps no one so well informed as Prof. Virgilio Loureiro of the Instituto Superior de Agronomia in Lisbon. The former winemaker at the Dao’s Quinta dos Roques and Quinta das Maias, Professor Loureiro has been working very diligently for many years to document and to preserve elements of Portugal’s threatened wine traditions, history and culture. As may be read, much has been lost, yet much may still be saved.
It is my curious fate to have listened closely to the man and to have thereby had impressed upon me the ethical obligation to join in Prof. Loureiro’s effort. Passing along his words is a start.
Admin Thank you very much for agreeing to speak with me. I’ve recently been to Carcavelos and Colares. Quite fascinating histories may be found in those DOCs.
Virgilio Loureiro Colares is amazing. The vineyard landscape is really unique. Have you tasted the old whites?
Not the old whites yet, no.
VL They are absolutely amazing! The reds are very interesting. But the whites are really amazing. It is possible to find 40 to 50 year-old whites, like the best Montrachet’s in Burgundy. But here in Portugal, unfortunately people don’t understand this style of wine. It is really a pity. They have no idea how to speak to the world of wine about what treasure we have. This is a pity.
I am here for a wine bloggers conference. I come from America but most assembled are from Europe. What happens when the world fully wakes up to the quality and uniqueness of Portuguese wines? Is there a risk to Portugal’s wine culture?
VL It is not only a risk. The risk is already fact. The loss that we have actually realized is a tragedy. Most of the best wine regions we have in Portugal are producing wines in the Californian and Australian style. They put in a lot of American oak; they put in 6 to 10 grams of sugar to round the style; they are extremely aromatic and with very low acidity, all so that wines may be drinkable very early. This is now a normal approach for most wineries and of most enologists.
Mr. Nossiter, when he was here for the first time, he was very sad because he didn’t know the situation in Portugal. But he knew very well the situation in Spain. And the problem of Portugal is that it is in the last position of European development, but is moving in exactly the same direction as Spanish wines. It is a pity.
I don’t know if you know of the famous Spanish figure of Don Quijote de la Mancha, well, I am the Don Quijote of Portugal trying to fight against this globalization of Portuguese wines. And I have some friends, one of them is a very important person, it is Mr. Nossiter. So I’m trying. (laughs)
Now I have a very exciting project to put on the map the important historical regions for Portuguese wines. I have here some pictures I can show you to make clear the potential we have. Because we still have time to preserve a lot of treasures of wine production mostly in the Mediterranean area in general, treasures that have been almost completely destroyed in Spain (in Italy there remains a little).
We have real Roman wine being made exactly as it was 2000 years ago, in clay jars, in the south of Portugal, in Alentejo. Here the wines in clay jars are protected with pine resin, like in old Greece, and the wines are made exactly as in a Roman villa 2000 years ago in the territory of what is now called Alentejo. The people from the small villages in the Alentejo make this type of wine for family consumption.
This winery has 19 jars. They produce whites and reds. They produce around 20,000 liters per year. But the owner does not completely respect the old technology because he puts his wine in glass bottles. Still it is a good approach. Some of the jars are as old as 400 years. And what happens in them is amazing in enological terms. I really don’t understand the process scientifically, but when we have a lot of oxidized wine, if we pass that wine across the solid parts of the bottom of the jar, the oxidation is practically eliminated. The wine becomes o.k.
I am now writing a book titled ‘Portuguese Wines From the Bronze Age To the 21st Century’. I collected a lot of history in this region. When the wine was sold out they imported wine from the center of Portugal. But when they passed that wine from the center of Portugal across the solid parts of the jars the style of wine was changed to that of this region!
Today, first they drink this wine and then they drink the modern technological wine. Why? Because it is a very, very special wine. The technological process used is the opposite of the technology described in modern treatises of enology. Both white and red are made with native yeasts, of course, but also with the solid parts of the grapes in the jars. And after fermentation the cap falls and acts like a filter. The effect on the wine when it passes through this filter changes it completely, it changes the aroma; and in the whites, they become lemon-yellow in color, fruity, with a very, very special style which is completely typical of the wine.
Today in Portugal we no longer have the artisans to make the jars. We are trying to recover the art.
We also have Cistercian wine from the center of Portugal which is made exactly like that of the monks in 12th century Burgundy. It is special because it is the only survivor of this type of wine in Portugal. And the reason is very easy to understand. It is a micro-climate they have in that region which gets wines with 14 degrees of alcohol and with it the possibility of developing into vinegar.
Ten years ago when I discovered this wine there were around 5000 wine growers. Today there are perhaps less than 500. But now I think it is protected by law, a law we promote, so it is probably safe. But that is not enough. We need to push it so that it can become known in the world of wine. And this is the challenge we now have.
Another wine is from the Azores Islands. The vineyard landscape of Pico Island, as you can see, is absolutely amazing. It is flat, with walls made of volcanic rocks, more rocks than the Great Wall of China. Only with this idea is it possible to conceive of the work done in the islands. And the wine is very, very special. It has strong acidity, and with good technology it is possible to make wines with extreme longevity. They become very nice at ten to fifteen years old.
In that picture you can see that there is no soil, only rocks. And each square has two or three vines, no more. This is unbelievable work. Forty kilometers! And most of the wine freaks from all over the world didn’t know this wine or its vineyards. And this is the typical winery used by them, with wooden screw presses, a Cato press, like those from Roman times.
In this picture you can see that the rocks are broken. They put the vine in the cracks. This has been the way since the 15th century. The technology didn’t change! (laughs)
Today I have another project, financed by the regional government, to improve the aging process of their fortified wines. They are very similar to the wines of Madeira. When the wines are well done they are of the same level of quality as the best wines of the Madeira.
I will soon have published an article on these matters in an American journal Chronica Horticulturae. I think it will be out in December. Next year we are organizing here in Lisboa the 2010 International Horticultural Congress. We’ll have workshops on winemaking and climate change. They invited me to write a small article on the history of wines.
I am also trying to recover the old grape varieties from the Douro. I’m making wine in the Douro Superior, near Foz Côa, near the Spanish border. It is a more preserved area of Douro. And I identified three small vineyards with pre-phylloxera vines. Most of the vines are of unknown varieties. Now I am trying to make a ‘new old’ vineyard by grafting buds from these very old vines of unknown varieties. I already have some wines! This year I made two different wines. Last year I made another one. And one of the red grape varieties has color in the juice [and flesh], like Alicante Bouschet and like Grand Noir. There are a very small number of these varieties [teinturier grape varieties, I believe he means. Admin]. And this is one such variety. The wine, again, is very special, really special.
Do you have allies in the Portuguese wine industry? Do you enjoy support from people who think like yourself?
VL Yes. But unfortunately they are not V.I.P.s. There are some people with sensitivity, with high culture and background, but unfortunately not V.I.P.s from the wine sector. This is the reason I call myself Don Quijote! You see? This is the reason why I so quickly established a friendship with Mr. Nossiter. He understands me.
What is the Portuguese government doing to protect these endangered wine regions?
VL Unfortunately, the Portuguese government is doing almost nothing to protect our historical wines, because they are neither considered an economical activity nor a historical patrimony. Furthermore, it is encouraging the vinegrowers to “modernize” their vineyards and wineries without criterion. In fact, the “wave of progress”, supported by public aids, is provoking a fast destruction of the remaining traditions (as happened in Spain and Italy recently). In some cases it would be better if the vineyards were under control of Ministry of Culture instead of the Ministry of Agriculture!
The vineyard landscape of Pico island is under protection of UNESCO. The only recognized (not really protected) Portuguese historical wine by law is the Cistercian wine of Ourém. At this moment, we are trying to protect the clay jar wine of Alentejo by a proposal submitted to the CVR of Alentejo (Regulatory Commitee).
How should Portuguese wines be marketed?
VL Today, the marketing strategy of Portuguese wine companies is based only on low price. It is impossible to promote these types of wines with centuries, millennia of historical age behind them. I think the best strategy for a small country like Portugal is to invest in the tradition and the culture; to say to the world that we have a lot of specialities, like France, like Spain. But Spain has practically destroyed this type of heritage.
The Portuguese wine heritage is different in all the world. I’m trying to convince the growers in Portugal that it is possible to protect it. How? Paying a fair price. For what? For the next generation, so that it has the stimulus to continue. Because, as you know, the younger generation today are very egoistic. They want to go to the big cities and abandon the traditions of the small village. The stimulus is to be found through the strengthening of the culture and by being paid the fair price to continue.
You, and Mr. Nossiter, people from the New World and also people from European culture can repeat this. There is one more thing I would like to say. These types of wines are completely out of fashion. As Mr. Peynaud of Bordeaux has said, ‘It is impossible to taste a wine from another age with a palate of this century”. We need to understand wines, of course. But I think ten minutes of talking is enough to understand wine! And with two or three tasting experiences it is enough to love wine. It is like tonic water. The first experience is not good, but the second is o.k.
Excellent. A quick observation about the Douro Boys.
VL The Douro Boys is another concept of wine. I respect them. I am a friend of most of them. But I think that they have some responsibilities that they don’t assume. They are known all over the world. They have the obligation to promote what we have here in Portugal.
Please give my regards to Mr. Nossiter. Next time you come we can arrange a visit to the past.
Sir, thank you.
VL Ken, it was a pleasure for me. I thank you because you can help me in my fight.
Admin
On my last day in Lisboa I had still not properly thanked ViniPortugal for my visit. It is true that I had a brief exchange with the organization’s president Francisco Borba. And I had sent an e-mail. But I was still hoping for a longer face-to-face encounter. The opportunity came to me with a visit to ViniPortugal’s tasting room located in the Ministry of Agriculture premises in Praça do Comércio. What follows is an interview with Maria João de Menezes. She has been with ViniPortugal since its formation.
Admin I had the pleasure of meeting Francisco Borba, ViniPortugal’s president, at the European Wine Bloggers Conference commencement. He offered a dignified welcome to the bloggers. What is it ViniPortugal does? What are its aims?
Maria João de Menezes It’s like this. I think you understand that in Portugal wine is one of the major products of our economy and our culture, one of the most important that we produce. Before ViniPortugal came into existence 12 years ago, the last big promotional campaign of wine was before the Revolution of 1974. When we have a product so important to us and we don’t promote it, the wine producers felt the need to get together; and the most important associations and federations of Portugal connected to wine, all joined together and created ViniPortugal. This was 12 years ago. It was created with one aim: To promote Portuguese wine.
We use tax money that every producer has to pay to the government for every bottle made. It is something that happens all over the world. All bottles have a seal, and that seal means that the wines are certified. The producers pay for that seal. This called the ‘promotional tax’. The government collects that money for promotional efforts. ViniPortugal was created to do this promotion.
So you are tax-funded by the government.
MJdM Exactly. The government gives us a part of this money, not the total amount, yet. The aim is to reach the point to where all the taxes the producers pay to the government for promotion should come to institutions like ViniPortugal, all associations which promote wine. That is, after all, why the producers pay. But these are political matters, and I believe what we now receive is 25% to 30% of the total amount of tax [revenue] to promote wine.
So, the first thing ViniPortugal decided was to ask what strategy would it take. It started with a study. And we asked Porter [of Price Waterhouse] to do the study. We knew that we had to concentrate our efforts in the United States, in three or four states, and in the UK, in Brazil, in Germany and northern countries for a start. And now we are growing. We are opening into the Asian markets, and also to Angola and India. These are new markets that we are studying to see if they will work for the Portuguese wine producers.
We have campaigns, different kinds of campaigns depending on the country and on the markets. We go to festivals and wine fairs, like the London Fair, or in Germany, the Pro Wein Festival. And we invite journalists to come here to visit our farms and wineries so that they might write in their magazines for their respective audiences about us. They learn a little bit about Portuguese wines. And perhaps it will facilitate the locals to buy our wines we export.
We also to tastings in cities around the world in important markets, in New York, an Francisco, but also in Portugal. Here we do campaigns as well. We have places, tasting rooms like this one; also in Oporto. We have two showrooms where people can come and try Portuguese wines for free. These tasting rooms are not only for locals but also for foreigners and tourists. When you came in you saw some of our publicity and guides. These are distributed to let people to know there is a place for them to come and taste Portuguese wines.
The majority of the people in the tasting room already know to come here. It is different than one year ago when a number of people who came in were just passing along and found our door open without knowing what we did, which is to offer tastings and information to the public.
This is our main aim. That is what we do. I am not good with numbers but I know that we have increased exports in all markets I mentioned. This is good. It is a slow process when you start something like this. Success does not happen over night or even next year. Even when the numbers are not very exciting we have to be persistent! We have to keep on doing what we believe is the right thing to do, and be patient enough to wait for results.
Yes. Of course, there are large producers and there are small producers. Are there any special efforts made to assist the small producer to compete in the marketplace?
MJdM No. We represent them all. In Portugal we have ViniPortugal on top of the pyramid. We talk to each certifying commission from each region. And each region has its own producers. We talk with the wine certifying agencies, not the adegas. There are 11 or 12 regional wine certifying commissions. Each regional commission certifies the wine from only their region. It is with them that we speak. We call them CVR, Regional Commission of Viticultura. Each CVR is one of our interlocutors. They, in turn, talk to each producer.
We never help one producer more than another. We don’t help the larger producer more than the smaller. We talk about Portuguese wine in general. We talk about regions and grape varieties. We never talk about labels. Or producers. That is not what ViniPortugal does.
So you don’t keep a data base of who produces how much. etc?
MJdM No. That’s the work of another institute called the Portuguese Wine Institute, the IVV [Instituto da Vinha e o Vinho]. It use to be one of our associates. But it stopped being so about one year ago because one of its tasks is to perform a ‘fiscalization’ of our work. [I believe she means that the IVV determines the cost/benefit of ViniPortugal itself.] They could not determine our value while also being a part of us.
It would have been a conflict of interest.
MJdM Yes. Exactly. So because they are of the state, of the government, they could not be a part of us. ViniPortugal is a private association. We are not part of the state.
But you get your money from the state. Does the state have any influence over your work?
MJdM No. No. We only have to show work. At the end of the year if they don’t think we are doing well then they can say, ‘OK, next year we are not going to give you money.’ It has never happened because we work hard! (laughs) But if you, yourself, had a plan to promote Portuguese wine you could come and compete for the job. ViniPortugal presents their ideas, and other people and organizations, bigger or smaller, they can come and compete, too. There are some rules. But if you abide by those rules you may compete and the government may say, ‘Yes, I like your promotional plan for Portuguese wines better. It makes more sense and is less expensive so I’ll give the money to you.’ It is in that way we are private. The government is free to distribute the money to whomever has the best plan.
Very good. How big of a staff does ViniPortugal have?
MJdM Today we have 15 staff at the most. It used to be two in the beginning, twelve years ago! We’re growing. And the work that we do is different today than back then.
I love the tasting room. It is quite elaborate and detailed. It rather surprised me. You’ve got interactive video, wines from all over the country, historical wine-making tools, a few…
MJdM Yes. We’ve been open here for five years. We have a second in Oporto, in one of the most important places of the city, the Palácio da Bolsa. It is a building you have to see. This one is smaller, but also very nice. Twenty-five thousand visit just this one every year.
Twenty-five thousand?!
MJdM Yes. They come in to taste and we invite them to write down their notes and opinions which we keep to show our producers. We think this is important because when you write something down you have to think about what you are drinking. So they look at the wine with more awakened senses. And it is very important to the producers. Some of them are very wrong when they think their wines are more appreciated in Germany than in the US, for instance.
So you also ask for their nationality.
MJdM Yes. Nationality, age, sex… not a very deep questionnaire, just enough for some indication.
Well, great. Can I get a couple of pictures of the place?
MJdM Of course, as you wish.
We head downstairs to the tasting room for a few pics.
And a picture of you?
MJdM Of me? (laughs) You said something about the small producers. They don’t always have enough for export.
Of course. One thing that I’ve been hearing a lot is how inexpensive Portuguese wines are. Even the small producer. But there is a problem. There is a lot of work put in by these winemakers, perhaps more work per person on the smaller properties. They work on small budgets; often with family members who go unpaid; they are under tremendous economic pressure to sell their properties, in Colares, for example. So it should not be a question of a low prices, but of a fair price.
MJdM (laughs) Yes, that’s true, that’s true. I think it would help.
Thank you.
MJdM Thank you very much.
Admin
One very significant question I failed to ask was how the wines are chosen for the tasting room. I will contact ViniPortugal for elaboration and post their answer here asap.
I am very pleased to present the third and concluding part of my sterling interview with writer/film-maker Jonathan Nossiter. The immediate occasion of the talk was the October 13th release of his extraordinary book, Liquid Memory, as well November’s release of his 10 part documentary, Mondovino, the Complete Series. I’ve interviewed many people but perhaps no-one more singularly engaged with both the cultural meaning of wine and the with deepening of our understanding. Of course, wine cannot be understood in a conventional sense. It is an ongoing, perpetually renewed encounter. And the greater part of the work or spiritual exercise, pun intended, is to be performed by us, by our subjectivity open to difference. In other words, it is dialectical. This is why Mr. Nossiter’s discourse on wine shares many themes and concepts with other arts, with Cinema, Literature and Painting, for example. Like them, wine, too, can be an art-form subject to new approaches and new evaluations through time. Wine lives, both practically and ideationally. It is movement, music, and dance. It is Liquid Memory.
Great thanks to Mr. Nossiter for his participation in this effort. He took valuable time away from editing his latest film, Rio Sex Comedy, to answer my many post-interview questions and requests for clarification.
A final personal note. It has been my a abiding thought since the founding of this blog that one day I might interview Mr. Nossiter. It is not too much to say that it has been a key motivation to write Reign of Terroir. So when he picked up the phone in Rio the pleasure was, well, something I shall always remember. I therefore dedicate this last portion of the interview to the many wine bloggers out there fighting the good fight, working to make thoughtful contributions to the complex discourse on wine. Marchons, marchons!.
Part 1
Part 2
Admin How was the reception of Mondovino when released, especially in the United States?
Jonathan Nossiter One of the scariest things that happened with Mondovino was when it was released in the US. I have never in my life seen so much personal vitriol. I’m accustomed as a film director to all kinds of reviews, but they’ve always dealt with the work. And so, of course, I’ve never responded to any of them, either the good or the bad. But Mondovino elicited personal attacks that floored me. And one of the most absolutely insane expressions, a moment of pure Bushian mania, was the outburst on Robert Parker’s website. There were hundreds of pages of absolutely staggering ad hominem attacks; gratuitous, uninformed, contradictory and hugely inflammatory (the vast majority from people who’d never even seen any of my films, including Mondovino, but once urged on by Parker’s former attack dog, Rovani, they barked and nipped with frothing, rabid fury). I tried to respond but was overwhelmed by the level of rage and willful, gleeful ignorance. In retrospect, it’s comic. I was called both a left wing fanatic and a Nazi sympathizer.
Mind you, it wasn’t everyone on the board. I was also happy to see a number of brave souls (laughs) who tried, even if they did not particularly like Mondovino, to defend the notion of respect and a minimal level of civility.
But it was pretty shocking. I am interested to see that that board seems to be imploding. There are more and more threads that have apparently been shut down. There’s been a big scandal with Parker’s collaborators accepting paid trips from wineries that they subsequently reviewed. And lots of people have abandoned the board because it’s basically been censored like a kind of Stalinist propaganda arm by its administrator, that uproarious Dickensian character Mark Squires, already a figure of fun in Portugal where, to their consternation, he’s been assigned by the grand Poobah, despite not speaking Portuguese or knowing the culture. It seems that threads on the Squires/Parker board were being censored, with certain people with dissenting ideological views censored or even kicked off the boards. Ignorance and vitriol will in the end often self-implode. I was also told that one of their regular (non-censored!) posters recently issued a death threat to me. The hangover from Bush-Cheney hasn’t disappeared, alas.
Have you heard of the WineBerserkers site? It was founded in part, it’s said, by folks either fed up with or bounced from the Parker board.
JN Is that right? I’ll have to look it up.
I can’t imagine the reception when your book comes out here. Of course, there was some push back from Parker when the French edition appeared.
JN He hadn’t even read the book and he called me a leader of ‘the wine gestapo’. A nice touch from a non-Jew addressing a Jew. And further evidence, if he goes after a small-fry like me, that his power (and whatever reason he ever had) are in steep decline.
How does the English edition differ from the French?
JN The English edition is much shorter. I worked with a great editor at FSG, Courtney Hodell, who kicked (with grace) my ass; and she was right. I’ve never written a book before and I’ll probably never write one again; I’m a filmmaker, not a writer. I got a kind of master class from her about writing with more precision and purpose. So I was able to weed out a lot of stuff that was repetitious and hone clearer ideas with an English language readership in mind. About a third of the chapters in the French edition are not in the American edition and it has been substantially reimagined. And thanks to Courtney and my Brazilian editor Luiz Schwarcz, hugely improved.
I’m much happier with the American (and just released Brazilian) version of the book because it’s a book intended for a much larger audience. I don’t mean in terms of numbers, but in terms of breadth. I hope it will be of interest to people who already like wine, who like to think about wine, but it’s also intended to try and open up a cultural debate about wine for people who didn’t think that wine matters.
It’s an absolutely extraordinary book. It’s provocative in the sense that you are constantly thrown outside of yourself, your comfort zone. You really do have to think a great deal about your relationship to wine. The richness of it’s ideas… just when you think it’s all been said, it’s all been written, along comes your book.
JN Thank you. It’s nice to hear that. That’s the beautiful thing about wine. That’s what wine does. It forces me -forces all of us- to rethink all kinds of things constantly. Which is why these new movements like the ‘natural winemakers’ are so exciting because they’re challenging me as a wine drinker; and I know they’re challenging other winemakers to rethink what they thought was the right way to make wine.
I think that wine is the greatest stimulant for making us rethink questions of taste and identity, of our own and of others.
The book is a powerful defense of ‘otherness’ and the necessity of entering into that dialogue.
JN That seems to be one of the critical things about wine. That’s why I felt it was mad that in the US after Mondovino I was labeled as a kind of fanatic. The point about wine, it seems to me, is that the element of subjectivity is so huge, it’s so determining, that when we think that we’re certain, we’re denying what wine is, which is why mathematical scores are an abomination. Wine is vital, living, polymorphous, and constantly changing.
To me the beauty of wine is the fact that you cannot grab onto it and define it absolutely. I’ve stopped going to professional tastings. I cannot stand it anymore. For me, whether sit-down or stand-up, vertical, horizontal or abdominal, those pucker-faced tastings -like a Miss World contest- strip all of the pleasure and beauty -and most of the meaning- from wine.
A single bottle of wine, even of the most marginal value, you need to get to know it, like you need to get to know a bloody person. You need to spend at least an hour with it. You need to see it evolve from the time you open it, from the time that it itself opens, to how your palate changes, to how the atmosphere changes. How can you possibly have a sense of what the wine is in front of you by tasting 50 wines (if not more) in the space of an hour, spending at most only a minute or two in front of each, as many critics do? This is madness to me. Madness. And it has become the predominant method for wine critics all over the world. And then imagine that after that most superficial of contacts with a wine, a mathematical value is attributed to the wine’s value and quality! Lewis Carroll is alive and well.
Wine is a living, breathing entity. That’s the beauty of it. It is fully alive. And that means it is fully changeable, and our perception of it is too.
I think you know that this is not a relativist or fatuous postmodernist discourse. It doesn’t mean that everything is subjective and that whatever you like is great and that we’re all equal. Obviously the book tries to examine the tension between what is infinitely subjective and what is verifiable, or what is at least concrete. What is concrete in wine is the earth, the roots that go into that earth, the vine itself that produces the grape, the crushing of the grape. There are undeniably objective elements to wine, much more objective than in movie-making or literature, or other arts. So that we’re not just talking about bullshit and air.
At the same time, I think it is more profoundly subjective than even our subjective understanding or perception of many other works of art.
I hope the book is an invitation for each one of us to reconsider in our own way, on our own terms, what the tension is between that subjectivity, our subjectivity, and the things which are concrete. The more we’re aware of our own subjectivity, the more we try to understand ourselves, the more free we are.
What is additionally true in wine is a vineyard that has been continuously planted for several hundred years, or a thousand years, with an evolving clone of the same grape or with different grapes. And the history of man’s relationship to that. These are real things. That’s why I was horrified during the release of Mondovino in the US: the arguments were often flipped on their heads! The idea that terroir can be dismissed as European marketing, or worse, that terroir is anywhere you want it to be.
I hope the book is an invitation to rethink things on their own terms, obviously in a dialogue with my propositions, with things I’ve tried to show. I’ve tried to offer up my own subjectivity in as naked and transparent a way as possible. I lay my cards on the table. And I invite the reader to reconsider his subjectivity; and to reconsider mine as well!
The reign of terror also includes the emerging power of critics in the last twenty or thirty years and how they’ve distorted the wine landscape, in my opinion. The book is very much a call to the reader to question and consider the role of so-called wine authorities who are not winemakers, and a plea to listen to the words of the often hugely learned and articulate winemakers themselves.
And the 10 hour, 4 DVD set of Mondovino will simultaneously be released.
JN Yes, that’s right. That’s a coincidence. I’m happy about that. Particularly for wine lovers, the 10 part series, to be released in November by KimStim, is much, much more interesting than the feature film. It really goes into much, much more detail with winemakers themselves and with wine itself. Mondovino as a film is not really about wine. Wine is the MacGuffin of Mondovino. It’s only marginally about wine. It’s about a lot of other things.
The 10 part series is much more about wine itself and deals in depth with characters like Aubert de Villaine and Michel Lafarge for example. Therefore, I hope it is of greater interest to wine people.
I was curious that in your book there is no mention of the wines of Portugal. Are you familiar with them?
JN A little bit, actually. In Portugal they were very disappointed I didn’t mention them. In the Portuguese edition of the book, the preface is written by one of the best winemakers in Portugal, in my opinion, Luis Pato in the Bairrada (and a fascinating example of someone who makes wines in a modern idiom, fruit forward and easily comprehensible but that are still redolent of the Bairrada terroirs). He’s become a friend, but he chided me in the preface for not having spoken of Portuguese wine! Actually I love his preface, because he takes issue with many of my positions. And this dissent, this skepticism of anyone’s views, is really the key to the book.
But I told him that the book, like the film, is not the work of a wine specialist seeking to take an exhaustive view of the wine world. I’m a layman. I made a bunch of wine lists for a bunch of different restaurants in different cities over the course of twenty-five years. I’m not an enologist. Even though I’m technically a sommelier, I’m not really a sommelier. I’m an outsider. The book is not in any way an attempt to offer an encyclopedic guide to the world of wine. It’s an extremely personal view of why I think, culturally and historically, and also in terms of sensual pleasure, why wine matters. It’s an extremely personal memoir from a film director bitten by the wine bug (not phylloxera!) since he was a little kid.
I speak only glancingly about German wines, but I probably drink German wines a third of the week and believe they’re among the finest white wines in the world, perhaps the ones that give me the most pleasure and sense of well-being. But I don’t speak German, I don’t spend that much time in Germany; I don’t feel that confident discussing them in a larger context because of that.
Portuguese I’ve only learned in the past five years since I’ve lived in Brazil. I didn’t know Portugal or Portuguese well before. But in the past two years, the past year and a half, I’ve been going there quite a bit. I’m looking on my bookshelf above the editing table, there’s a bottle of Donati, an empty bottle of Domaine de Beudon, their sublime 11,4% Humagne rouge, and a wine from Colares, which is just outside of Lisbon, in Azenhas do Mar, which is a seaside resort.
Colares has a sandy soil that has pre-phylloxera vines. They make a red that is absolutely unbelievable! It’s sad that Portugal has followed Spain a little bit, it seems like. There’s been a huge embrace of sort of the new world style, a sweet, fruity, alcoholic beverage. It’s a pity because these Colares wines are completely ignored in Portugal. But it does mean that they’re dirt cheap. And there are a couple of different producers, including an excellent cooperative called ARENA. Even in a big supermarket the last time I was there, I found a ‘97 Colares from Bernardino da Silva for about 12 €. An 11 year old red from pre-phylloxera vines that is absolutely delicious! But not much regarded in Portugal, like the sublime white of Buçaco made by a great gentleman, Alexandre de Almeida. Nor are the spectacular whites and red Dão and Bairrada wines of Caves São João even much discussed over there. I have dozens and dozens of half bottles in my cellar of the Frei João whites from the last 20 years’ vintages, astonishing Bairrada whites that run about 2 € a (full) bottle. They’re made in a slightly oxidized Rioja-style, sort of bitter-sweet. They are very beautiful, haunting wines.
But it’s also a cultural patrimony that is all too often ignored at home because the wines are not made in the fashionable oaky, sweet, alcohol-laden style. And imagine that the leading Portuguse wine magazine, Revista do Vinho, upbraided me for defending wines of terroir, which they characterize as strictly elitist and not democratic, while they shill for $100 whites invented yesterday in the Alentejo by flying winemakers and promoted heavily via paid ads in their magazine! Who’s not democratic again? It’s too funny.
I myself am looking forward to visiting Portugal in October. I shall look for the wines you’ve mentioned, and many more! Well, this has been a extraordinary experience.
JN I’m glad you’re not disappointed by the level of bullshit! You must have been prepared for it. Anyway, since you’re a neighbor, give my best to Randall Grahm. I like Randall a lot.
I will. His search for terroir goes on.
JN As It does for all of us.
Admin
This, part 2 of my interview with Jonathan Nossiter, contains among some of his finest ideas, ideas elaborated with great lyrical passion in his forthcoming book Liquid Memory to be released to the English-speaking world by Farrar, Straus and Giroux October 13th. To fully understand all that follows please read part 1. But even if this portion is read in isolation, it is undeniable Mr. Nossiter’s views here have the force of a kind of revelation. Even if we had only this much to read we would nevertheless understand far more about how the world’s cultural forces intersect in wine than we did before. He mingles or interweaves concepts not often lucidly or convincingly placed near one another. I remember reading in my student days the great intellectual Walter Benjamin. He would rearrange the books of his library at random, mixing genres, subjects and historical periods in unexpected ways. His task was then to think new conceptual associations and liaisons among the titles.
Note the picture of the wine bottles on a shelf above, kindly provided by Mr. Nossiter. This photo, in my view, is very close to the spirit of Benjamin’s intellectual ambition, and superbly captures the adventure of reading Liquid Memory. From the book,
“Terroir has never been fixed, in taste or in perception. It has always been an evolving expression of culture. What distinguishes our era is the instantaneousness and universality of change. Before, the sense of a terroir would evolve over generations, hundreds of years, allowing for the slow accretion of knowledge and experience to build into sedimentary layers, like the geological underpinning of a given terroir itself. Today layers are stripped away overnight, and a new layer is added nearly each vintage.”
Part 3 will post the week of September 27th.
Admin What has been happening in the world of wine since Mondovino’s release?
Jonathan Nossiter I think the global outlook for winemaking has improved radically in the last couple of years. I think there’s been a concerted global rejection among winemakers recently of the ethos that has dominated for the previous 20 years, which was increasingly towards making wine as a product for a world consumer culture, and stripping it of identity, subtlety, delicacy. I haven’t been back to the states in years, but every time I go to Europe, every country I go to, I am really, really stunned by the number and variety of wines that suggest this seismic shift.
I was in Italy in May because my wife had made a film on Brazilian winemakers [Vinho De Chinelos/Immigrant wine] that was in the Slow Food Film Festival in Bologna. We came across dozens of exciting wines from tons of regions, regions that 15 years ago in Italy were producing the most cynical industrial swill or else the most cynical market-driven pseudo-boutique, globalized style product. I was very despairing at the state of Italian wine before.
But it’s just amazing the number of winegrowers in Italy now, from Sicily to Friuli, who seem to be reversing course or inventing new stories, or emerging from obscurity. In Bologna at a very good restaurant called Camminetto D’Oro with a wonderfully (caminetto d’oro_carta pdf) adventurous list, we drank the sublimely fragrant and fish-friendly “Frappato” red from the Sicilian Silvana Occhipinti ; an insanely oxydised but energetic and complex white (or orange!) wine from the Colli Bolognesi called Vej, which the guy on his label calls “antique wine” and another white by a guy named Zidarich in the Friuli, clearly inspired by Josko Gravner’s organic, earth-related experiments. They’re expressions of what the French call “vin naturels”, a definitely natural, organic, radically non-interventionist and frequently oxidised style. But it’s a form of oxidation that is homeopathic…that makes these wines beautifully resilient and alive. I don’t know if in the US there is a term for those kinds of wines.
Not quite yet; natural wine, perhaps. But I know there will be, and that they will be subject to certification of some kind. I can already see the signs.
JN Yeah, I’m sure. Those wines are going to piss off a lot of people. They’ll be denounced as unclean and unhygienic, unsound, just as Cassavetes, Fassbinder and Pasolini were denounced as unclean and unsound. But, you know, I love the opposite style also, Kubrick and Max Ophüls, works of high polish, maniacal control and sophistication! I’m not a fanatic. I’m not strictly partisan in that sense. But I think the resurgence of “vins naturels” –because clearly many wines from before the 2nd half of the 20th century were made this way- is a great contribution to the wine world. Whether you like those kinds of wines or not -I personally love them- but there is no question they open up the debate about the nature of wine and about the nature of taste, and also about the nature of the relationship to a place because these wines often allow a -literally- more unfiltered view of the landscape, of the terroir. And it’s incredibly exciting to see this phenomenon occuring across Italy.
A wine like Angiolino Maule’s “Pico” from the Veneto for example, is much more sophisticated than this Colli Bolognesi, putative white, “Vej.” That wine is filthy. It’s three years old and it was already a kind of russet orange. Deliberately made in a dangerously, thrillingly oxidized style.
What’s great about these wines, like the radical filmmakers -say John Cassavetes- whether you get pleasure from them or not, is that they are going to have an influence on even mainstream winemakers. They are going to make people think. ’‘What is it that we’re doing? Why are we doing it?’’ Someone may not want to go that far. And I’m not sure I’d want to drink those wines every night. I’m very happy to drink an incredibly lush, rounded and juicy Dominique Lafon Meursault, if I can, after drinking one of those.
But the point is that this diversity wasn’t so readily available or visible even a few years ago. And people weren’t even trying to think in that way, on such a comprehensive scale, even ten years ago, certainly in Italy.
I was going to tell you about this guy, Camillo Donati in Arola, the Colli di Parma. He’s amazing! I had never never been much of a fan of Lambruscos. Not until my Brazilian-Italian wife, because of her family’s origins, started prodding me, and got me to overcome my ignorance and snobbery. I started tasting other Lambruscos, which I felt were really interesting and really good. But when I tasted the Lambrusco of Camillo Donati it flipped my world upside-down. Suddenly, the whole point of Lambrusco became clear to me. It’s actually very sophisticated, very earthy, and insanely vital, at least his style of it from the Colli di Parma. (It’s not the central area of production for Lambrusco, generally. There are lots of different areas where Lambrusco is produced.) He’s been working biodynamically since the early 90s, like Domaine de Beudon, interestingly enough, from the Valais, which is a recently discovered passion (last month in fact!).
We drove up to Parma to visit Donati after the [Slow Food Film] Festival in Bologna with a critic from Slow Food-Gambero Rosso. They’’ve actually now split, thankfully. Gambero Rosso became as corrupt as most of the other wine magazines. And Slow Food is planning on launching a new guide, a new magazine that, hopefully, will not be as a corrupt as Gambero Rosso. Their intention is to offer a guide that is less ratings-driven and less concerned with social status and power. Anyway this guy was very interesting, one of the people involved with the new Slow Food effort. We invited him along because we had a lot of respect for him.
But Camillo Donati, as soon as he heard ‘Gambero Rosso’ critic, he put his dukes up! (laughs) Most winemakers will want to curry favor with a Gambero Rosso critic. In fact, he said [the critic] ‘‘You never sent us your samples. I’d like to try your wine. We’ve heard about your wine from many people”. Camillo said ‘‘Why would I send you samples? If you want to get my wine you’re welcome to get it like anyone else. It only costs 4€”. And then the Gambero Rosso critic said, trying to establish his street cred, that he wasn’t just another critic sitting around behind his desk, he said, ”You know, I go to vineyards a lot. I’m always in the vineyards. I’m always helping winemakers. I often prune vines”. And Donati cut him off in mid-sentence. He said, ”Not here, you wouldn’t. Every single vine on my land is a vine that I know personally. I’’m the only one that touches them”. (laughs) That got him [the critic] to rethink a little! It was great. Afterwards they got along very well. Donati realized that he was not in front of a critic just looking to show off and to spew out a stream of useless adjectives, but someone who actually was eager to learn.
Donati makes not just a Lambrusco but also Sauvignon Frizzante, and Sauvignon in the region of the Colli di Parma stretches back at least to the 18th Century, so it’s not part of the international fad. He also makes a Trebbiano Frizzante, Malvasia Frizzante…. He is simultaneously recuperating traditions of Lambrusco, dry, earthy, complex Lambrusco and somewhat newer traditions, like Sauvignon, but still a 200 year-old tradition. And he is also experimenting. He’s planted Cabernet Franc. He makes a Cabernet Franc Frizzante that’s wild.
Donati to me is kind of a classic example of exactly why the debate is dead between a modernist and a traditionalist. He’s both, of course, like anybody who’s progressive. He invited us to lunch; he lives in a modest house, with his wife and his daughter. We were stunned by one wine after another. My wife Paula asked him, ”You only charge 4€ for all these wines? Surely you could charge a little more without becoming an expensive, super-elitist wine”. He looked at Paula, and he said, ”Look, wine is, first of all, for everybody, and it should be made and sold for as democratic a price as possible. And second of all, most important for me, is that by selling my wine at 4€ a bottle I earn enough to pay my debts. I live well enough for me to be happy. What do I need more money for?” And then he passed a plate of luscious culatello from a prosciutto producer down the road and bit into a chunk of sweet parmigiano made by his neighbour.
I wished I’d met Donati when I was filming Mondovino. Especially when I saw that instead of putting up all the prizes his wines have won and articles in magazines on his walls, as many, many wine producers do the world over, he had a few photos of his deceased parents and two certificates attesting to the fact that his dad was a partigiano [partisan], in the resistance against the Nazis. And from the begnning of the war, not from ‘44 when it was a much easier for people to join the movement. I chuckled when I thought what if I had actually filmed with him and shown these documents. All those snide attackers of the film for having mixed politics and history with wine would have snarled that this was yet another setup or fabrication!
But really, there are all kinds of cynics that can dismiss an engagement like Donati’s as sort of, you know, romantic claptrap, a kind of quixotic, unpractical view of the world, and heaven forbid, as anti-capitalist. But there is a fairy-tale aspect to it, and I say screw them. Because part of what is beautiful about the world of wine is that fairy tales are sometimes very true, much more true in the wine world than elsewhere I think.
There’s another wine that the same critic [from Slow Food-Gambero Rosso] had us taste, from the Marche, called ‘Barricato’, which doesn’t refer to barrique but to the barricades. It was started by a couple of hippies in the Marche region in the 70s. The wine has become a kind of cult wine in Italy and is apparently sold on the gray market for, I don’t know, a hundred bucks a bottle. And they got really pissed off! And they’ve now put on the back label: This wine should be sold for 11€.
Ten years ago, obviously that wine existed and so did Donati ten years ago, but you didn’t get access to them. You had to be local or to be lucky to know them. Or it had to be one of the new finds of a Neal Rosenthal or Marc De Grazia or a Terry Theise. But anyone who wasn’t lucky enough to be discovered by a zealous American importer didn’t even have much visibility even in his own country.
What’s amazing today is that there is a growing movement everywhere, and it’s a movement that’s interconnected. It goes back and forth between little Camillo Donati and his Colli di Parma, to Domaine de Beudon in the Valais in Switzerland to the hugely talented newcomer Bruno Duchêne in Collioure with his daring Grenache whites, to Dominique Lafon in Meursault, to Nicolas Joly in Savennieres, to people of all different levels, of socio-economic levels, prestige levels… They are creating a global dialogue, producing concrete results and concrete effects. It’s not just a nice global dialogue about how to deal ethically with the planet. People are really, actually, doing something concrete. And I feel tremendously encouraged and moved.
The twenty or thirty year reign of the transformation of wine into a pure product of greed and social ambition, I think that reign of terror is coming to an end. Maybe it’s not coming to an end, but it is being met by a very powerful counter-movement.
Indeed. One of the most beautiful sections of your new book Liquid Memory is titled ‘All Roads Lead To Burgundy’, in my opinion the heart and soul of the book. As I read your of beautiful encounters with Dominique Lafon, Jean-Marc Roulot and Christophe Roumier, a question constantly occurred to me: How did Burgundy degenerate to such a degree by the 70s such that their rejuvenation had to take place? What on earth happened there?
JN Well, you’re better off asking a Burgundian. Honestly, I think that importers had a lot to do with it. I think it’s a combination. I think it’s a combination of a new generation of winemakers, like Christophe Roumier; that’s why I wrote about them, that’s why I tried to give them, allow their words to come through unfiltered. It’s a generation that was born in the late 50s, early 60s, who came of age in the late 70s and the 80s; who simply said ‘’We’re throwing away a national treasure, an international patrimony by creating chemical-driven, diluted wines’’. I think they influenced their fathers.
And I think there was a powerful movement on one side, and I do think the work of Kermit Lynch and Robert Haas, Becky Wasserman, Neal Rosenthal, has been critical. I think that it really provided an outlet. I think all of those people from the 60s on, particularly in the 70s and 80s, really encouraged these people to think locally, as a way to think internationally with maybe a little more understanding.
Obviously, given the geography and the history of the division of Burgundy domaines, they’re much smaller, it’s easier for people to react there against global trends. It’s obviously much harder for a Bordeaux chateaux, given the Bordeaux environment and because of the size, to try to go against fads and fashion. It’s always easier for individuals to go against fads and fashion.
That’s for certain. Now, I look at the blogosphere. And, of course, among them there are some very well known critics we can perhaps touch on in a bit. But the question is that, yes, one can write any kind of nonsense that one likes, any vapid tasting note, assign any score, all in the name of democratization. Yet at the same time, there is no push back from committed growers. And the comments section on various blogs and forums don’’t fill up with outrage that marketing and homogenization tendencies are eviscerating memory, as you might say. Critics often follow the path of least resistance.
How do you educate what is cynically called the ‘consumer’, assumed to be devoid of memory, assumed to be one who passively accepts advice? How do you educate the individual to take a more critical view of marketing approaches?
JN That’s an unanswerable question. What can any of us do to counter-act things we think are not right? We can try and act. That’s all. It’s up to anyone who likes wine to dig as deeply as they are able to into what wine is and why it is interesting to them; and why it has been interesting to other people.
The more people gain confidence in themselves, the more they’ll reject the imposition of monolithic views of wine, like the Wine Spectator and Robert Parker, et alia. I think that critics like Parker or Michel Bettane, or magazines like Wine Spectator function on fear and ignorance. It’s a double-edged sword. For those who feel they don’t know about wine, they look to these magazines, these critics as guides and gurus. And to those who feel that they’ve become instructed, they feel like they’re members of an exclusive club. Unfortunately it creates a cycle of recidivist ignorance.
I think the first gesture has to come from winemakers. The great news is that I think it’s been coming from winemakers all over the world. And when they start to make different wines, and then when, you know, it’s a chain isn’t it when importers like David Bowler, from the younger generation, start to go after these winemakers, and hustle on the street to convince restaurateurs, sommeliers and wine shops that ‘Hey, there’s a different kind of drink out there, there are different ways of thinking the same kind of drink’. All of this has a cumulative effect.
It goes without saying that critics who would rather think in a different way about what wine is rather than as a consumer product with a pseudo-mathematic value that can be attached, that exists in an equally spurious mathematical relationship to price, everyone is contributing at that point.
These are all drops in the bucket. But enough drops and you fill the damn thing.
Part 3.
Admin
—Very special thanks to Patrick Petruccello of Kahuna’s Food and Wine for his invaluable technical assistance.
While I prepare the second part of my interview with the Mondovino’s director, Jonathan Nossiter for Tuesday’s post, I thought it would be quite sublime to intertwine another portion of my conversation with Ken Burnap, the retired founder of Santa Cruz Mountain Winery first begun July 14th. The reason is simple. As discussed in the first installment of Mr. Nossiter’s interview, his 2007 book Le Goût et Le Pourvoir is being released October 13th as Liquid Memory. Among the book’s multiple concerns are the ideas of the preservation of place, of terroir, receptivity to otherness, and the respect for cultural difference and history, all intersecting in wine. One of America’s foremost winegrowers of any era, Ken Burnap’s career is certainly in keeping with these values. It is highly recommended that parts 1 & 2 be read before continuing. Detailed background may be read there.
Part 1
Part 2
Admin I wanted to ask about the experience of finally discovering the vineyard, the David Bruce vineyard. There is this wonderful story about you drinking a bottle of Champagne when it was seen. There you are, up there in you truck, finally having settled on a vineyard, made the big decision…. The pivotal moment.
Ken Burnap Well, it was a pivotal moment. I’m hearing things from you about me that I’ve only told to one person in my entire life. (laughs) So I’m kind of startled! But that’s absolutely true. There’s nothing I’m trying to hide.
I think it was Jeff Emery, he wrote up a series of ‘historical’ notes which included a few details. And it may have been when I interviewed him. But to speak with you about it is, of course, best.
KB I had decided because of the research I did on where I should grow grapes in California that the three best possibilities was along the Russian River in Sonoma, perhaps around Livermore, near the water because of the stabilizing effect a large body of water has on temperature, and the Santa Cruz Mountains. I gave up on Livermore pretty quickly because some of the areas… and I got most of my information on Livermore from a book written in 1941 by Schoonmaker. There was a lot of information from a test station they had in Livermore. I knew Myron Nightingale, a big booster of that area. He and his wife made the first botrytised wine, to my knowledge, ever made in California. It was a Sauvignon Blanc they had growing out there that used to get attacked by this terrible mold. They tried to kill the mold. They finally plated it and found that it was Botrytis and they thought, ‘Hey! Wait a minute. We should try to make it.’ It [the Sauvignon Blanc] just didn’t want to develop. He actually wound up infecting a whole bunch of grapes with some laboratory plates of mold, (laughs) he and his wife. They made a fabulous botrytised wine.
I apologize. That’s the worst thing about me. My mind tends to wander. But I gave up on Livermore fairly quickly because the areas that seemed to have the best promise for Pinot Noir (and actually it wasn’t that great for Pinot Noir to begin with I didn’t think), but most of the areas that did have potential were very rapidly having housing tracts put on top of it. So I gave up there and concentrated efforts in Sonoma, the Russian River area, again because of Joe Swan who was making those fabulous wines. Sometime, if we ever get together, I’ve got to pour you some Zinfandel made in the ’70s and ’80s by Joe Swan. His wife said one time ‘You and Joe have the same problem. The best wine either one of you ever made was the first wine you made. And you’ll never be able to make another one. It’s driving both of you crazy.’ (laughs)
So I spent a lot of time out there. But I really liked some of the stuff David made. And he was doing some pretty avant garde stuff. It turned out a lot of it was stupid, but then a lot of the avant garde stuff I did was stupid. I don’t know what it is. Every generation in any artistic field it seems like they have to test the limits, and they totally ignore what people have learned in earlier generations. They’ve got to do it themselves, to screw it up or make a success out of it.
Anyway, I finally decided the vineyard would be somewhere in the Santa Cruz Mountains; it’s where I wanted to be. I was living in Orange County at the time and I was making two and three day trips up here with my geological maps, my car full of scientific instruments. (laughs) But I would invariably stop by David’s [David Bruce] place because I loved his wines. David is just a great guy. He’s just enough off-center to be interesting to talk to sometimes. So we we’re having dinner up there. He’d decided to cook one of the ducks that’d been giving him a hard time. And he had a great cellar. I’m not sure where he got all these great Burgundies, but he had some really great Burgundies. He didn’t bring them upstairs very often but every now and then he would. And he got one and said ‘OK, Ken. How’s it going? Have you found the great place where you’re going to make the fabulous Pinot?’ I said, ‘Naw. I’ve been up and down these mountains and I can’t find anything.’ He said, ‘Well, I’ve got a piece of property that you should look at. It’s breaking my heart but I’m gonna have to sell it. [....] I don’t want to, but I think that is the perfect place to grow Pinot in the Santa Cruz Mountains. I’m so convinced of it that I pulled out 100 year old Zinfandel vines that were making fabulous wine.’ I asked, ‘Is that where your ‘68 came from?’ That was the wine that made David’s reputation. The ‘68 Zinfandel came off of that vineyard. Fabulous, fabulous wine. I think he bought it in ‘64. They pulled all the Zinfandel up and planted Pinot Noir. He said he hadn’t been able to make a wine off of it yet because it’s now in its third year. There might be some grapes this Fall.
So I asked, ‘OK. Where is it?’ ‘Ah, you can’t miss it. You go down this road, you go up that road…’ I went up there and I couldn’t find it. I went up and down this road.. I’d stop and look. But you couldn’t see anything, certainly there were no grapes I saw anywhere growing. I called him on the phone and said ‘Dave, I can’t find this place.’ He said ‘Well, did you go do such and such? Do you remember that mailbox?’ I kind of vaguely remembered the mailbox. He said to make a left hand turn there. ‘I don’t think there’s a road there.’ He said ‘Yeah, there is.’ So I went up this thing. It was dirt and had weeds as high as the hood ornament on my truck. That’s where it was, right on top of the mountain. God, it was a beautiful, beautiful vineyard.
I took a bunch of soil samples. Next day I had a guy come up with a backhoe. We dug a trench to take some more soil samples. I took them back to Orange County. I got all my results in. Oh, shit! This is it! This is the place! So I went back up there to look at it for the last time. I had been telling my wife, my business partner and everybody that I was doing this, that I really wasn’t going to grow grapes. I was just curious whether or not there was a spot that you could grow great Pinot Noir in California. And once I found it I would say ‘OK. That’s the spot.’ And I’ll tell anybody where it is if they want to know. And I really, honestly, maybe in the back of my mind I thought I want to grow grapes, but it was really more… I wasn’t looking for a place for me to buy, I was looking to see if there was a place that fit the criteria that I had come up with. I honestly didn’t want to buy the property to grow grapes at that point.
So, anyway, after I got the [soil] results, I went back the following weekend. I just wanted to see it one last time. And that was it. I was going to see it off. And I went to a wine shop in Santa Cruz and bought a bottle of, I think I bought a bottle of Cliquot, I’m not sure what they had in the cooler. It was cold. I got some plastic cups (laughs) and went up top the hill and sat down and opened the Champagne. And drank the whole bottle! (laughs) And somewhere along the line, the sun hadn’t gone down, but here’s the Monterey Bay… somewhere along the line, I really don’t think it was the Champagne, it might have been a contributing factor, I thought, ‘Shit. I want to do this. I want to grow grapes. That’s why I’ve been doing all this!’ That’s when I made the decision to try and buy it.
I honestly wasn’t looking for a place to buy. I was looking only to prove my point.
Then we went into that buyer/seller dance. David and I immediately decided it was better if he got a broker and I got a broker. We didn’t talk to each other directly! (laughs) Twenty-five acres, about eleven of them in vines and grapes. And I am embarrassed at the price I bought it at so I’m not even going to repeat it.
Everything that I’ve been able to do since I retired is because of the value of that land. I’ve had several businesses in my life, and when I wind up selling them the thing I made the money off of is the land it was sitting on. I never rented property. I would always buy it. It’s the one smart thing I’ve done. It worked out best for everybody. David got to settle up with his wife. He kept his house, and he kept his winery intact and [another] vineyard. And I got what I to this day think is the greatest place to grow Pinot Noir in California.
And I am really sorry that I had to sell it. Anyway…. They pulled out all the vines and replanted everything to some sort of clone that they felt was better. I think it was a Pommard clone. I forget the wine writer, an English wine writer from the 30s when he wrote this, these flowing, ornate descriptions of wines, that actually referred to Pommard, ‘that treacherous Pommard’. There was some thought that there might be some Grenache in it back in those days.
What do you drink now? Are you still learning from your own wines?
KB I’ve been a sailor pretty much all my life also. One of the things that my wife and I did, about seven years ago, I commissioned a boat to be built. I had a race boat for about thirty years. But I got older. That kind of boat is really hard work. I didn’t want to have to depend on a crew of seven other guys anymore. I sold the boat. Then after about two years I thought ‘I can’t go without a boat’. At this point Nancy, my wife, and I, we’re an item. She also likes boats. We met because she was on the [ ] crew that delivered my boat back to Santa Cruz from Hawaii after one of the TransPac races.
We had this cruising boat built. We had this idea that we would sail around the rest of our lives on a cruising boat. My racing boat had been cut down to where there was nothing on it. I mean, there was no refrigeration, it was just Go Fast. So, I had a boat built that had freezers on it, a big refrigerator, air conditioning, electric winches. It was really nice for two-handed people, you know, one guy getting along in years, the other a lady. We could handle this boat just great.
It was built in France. We picked it up in France. We took delivery. We went down the coast and into the Mediterranean. Up then to the Adriatic we went to Turkey, we went along the North Coast of Africa; we crossed the Atlantic into the Caribbean. All of that took about four and a half years, 29,000 miles we sailed.
In that process, it was no problem when we were in France (the boat was built in La Rochelle). We went to the open market every day and we bought a lot of French wine and a lot of cheese. My wife had goats and made goat cheese at one time. She had a very successful business of goat cheese. So she’s a cheese nut. We found some wines during that extended period on the boat that I really didn’t know existed before that are now some of my favorite wines.
I am actually getting around to answering your question! (laughs)
Albariños, for instance. We we’re in that part of Spain and the wines suck. I don’t like the reds. I’m talking to somebody there that’s in the wine business. He says ‘Oh, you gotta try this. Albariños are really nice whites.’ ‘Oh, come on. Whites from Spain? I don’t want to do that.’ ‘Try this.’ Well, I’m crazy about them. To this day we buy some Albariños every now and then.
And when we were in Italy, we were drinking Pinot Grigio, white. That was kind of new to us too. Now six years later the world is awash with Pinot Grigio, 85% of it bad. Well, not bad but very simplistic. Very blah.
So the wines that we drink today… very few whites. I really dislike Chardonnay. That’s probably why I didn’t have very much success with it. I really didn’t realize it at the time but I just don’t like Chardonnay. Something about the grape pisses me off.
We drink a lot of red. We have a home in Mexico. And boy, when you’re down there, you’ve really got problems with wine. They’ve got a trade treaty with Argentina. The Argentine reds are pretty good. There’s a Wal-Mart that moved in not too far away. Bless their purchasing agent, they buy a lot of French wines. I’m buying French wines in Mexico.
The wines that I really love today, if I could have good ones and not drink anything else, would all be from Burgundy. My favorite Burgundies are Morey Saint-Denis, maybe eight miles in each direction from Morey Saint-Denis… ah, make that six miles.
I like the whites from Burgundy if they haven’t spent a lot of time in wood. In fact, I like them better if they haven’t spent any time in wood. Macon Villages, that to me is the greatest cheap white wine in the world. Unfortunately it’s not as cheap as it should be! Meursault is my favorite. But my favorite white right now is Sancerre.
You know, when I was buying Sancerre in a bistro in Paris in the 80s that was almost the cheapest wine on the list. The Muscadets were the cheapest. Now a Sancerre, we just got back from France a couple of weeks ago, is 55, 65 euros! Which means eighty, ninety dollars a bottle in restaurants!
End of pt.3.
Part 4 will appear next week. Pt. 1 here Pt. 2 here
Many months ago I contacted the esteemed gentleman, Neal Rosenthal, asking after the email address of Jonathan Nossiter, the director of Mondovino. Mr. Rosenthal, you may recall, enjoyed very important on-screen moments in that film. To my surprise, he responded in the fullness of time. I cannot say why. Perhaps each bottle of wine he imports contains a GPS locator under its label or embedded in its cork and he, therefore, knew where I lived! In any event, I owe him great thanks for opening the door for all that follows. As well do I owe great thanks to an assistant to Mr. Nossiter who informed me that he was shooting a film in Rio, his home. Time passed, and here we are.
Mr. Nossiter is best known as a film director. Among his credits are Resident Alien, Sunday, Signs and Wonders, Mondovino, of course, and the forthcoming Rio Sex Comedy. He is also a producer, editor, cinematographer, and writer. And this last talent found literary expression proper in the 2007 release of Le Gôut et le Pouvoir.
The book received great critical acclaim. Well, not quite.
We all remember well Robert Parker’s remark upon the book’s release.
“[A]nyone with half a chimp’s brain can see through Nossiter’s transparency easier than a J.J.Prum riesling…it is Nossiter and his ilk(call them the scary wine gestapo)chanting the same stupid hymn that demand wines be produced in only one narrow style….”
With all the wit and wisdom heard at our recent healthcare Town Hall meetings, Parker’s discursive instability should, at the very least, give us pause concerning the fate of the work of winemakers, never mind writers, should they ever venture an opinion not in line with his.
But just as the screamers at the Town Halls have not read the proposed legislation, so does Parker’s rhetoric give those with “half a chimp’s brain” comfort not to read the book. But it should not be this way.
The truth of the matter is that the book, soon to be released as Liquid Memory, has not the remotest relation to Mr. Parker’s utterance. Read it. To be released October 13th, Liquid Memory brings a different tone to the discussion of terroir, taste and power. For discussion there will be.
Of course, the basic requirement remains that the book actually be read in order to be a faithful participant in the talk to follow. I have. And I am here to tell you it is a beautiful, cultured book, a book of passionate, subtle ideas. It is a book about the cultivation of difference and the joys of its discovery; it is about the preservation of the ‘other’ and their increasingly marginal histories.
As Mr. Nossiter writes,
“A true expression of terroir . . . is a very precise means to share the beauty of a specific identity, a specific culture, with the rest of the world. It is using the local not to exclude, but to include any one of us in the mystery and distinctive beauty of an ‘other.’”
Perhaps most importantly, it is about the ethics of taste, and therefore, necessarily an intimate look into the nomadism of Mr. Nossiter himself. Again,
“What is taste? It could be described as the expression of a preference between, say, A and B. But what distinguishes taste from mere opinion is that such a preference emerges from a sensory, emotional reaction with the subsequent ability to intellectually decipher that reaction for the self (and, if really necessary, for others). But ultimately, the defining characteristic of taste is the coherent relation of that preference to one’s own conduct, to an ethical relation to oneself and to the world.”
Though sympathetic to the cause, Liquid Memory is not an anti-globalist manifesto; neither is it a demand, through the dog-piling of torrid tasting notes, that the reader submit to a singularly original palate. God, no.
Liquid Memory is the playful, reflective, sometimes darkly comic search for an ethics of meaningful engagement with the world of wine and more. And the reverse? An individual locked in a repetitive, defensive opacity, policing strange and exotic intruders, believing themselves to be the measure of all things, such an individual will never learn a new thing, either about wine or the world. That, in my view, is the moral of this book.
But a full book review must wait for a later date, though much of its content will be touched upon in the conversation moving forward. What I offer here, and over the next two Tuesdays, is my recorded conversation with Jonathan Nossiter.
I phoned him at his home in Rio late last week.
Admin Hi. This is Ken Payton calling from California.
Jonathan Nossiter Hi. How are you doing?
I’m doing very well. A little nervous.
JN Why is that?
It’s an extraordinary opportunity to speak with you.
JN Trust me. My wife would beg to differ! (laughs) And my three kids would say you’re about to waste you time. But feel free to ask whatever silly questions you’d like and I’ll give you even sillier answers.
May I record the conversation?
JN Yeah, yeah, of course. I am always grateful when someone does. I am very skeptical of peoples’ ability to take notes without listening to tape.
What I do is transcribe interviews word for word, with very little editing, little paraphrase.
JN Yes. So shoot…
I am curious about your current film project. Can you say anything about it before we discuss the book?
JN Sure. It’s called Rio Sex Comedy. It stars Charlotte Rampling, Irène Jacob, Bill Pullman, Fisher Stevens…. It’s kind of an anarchic comedy about foreigners fucking up in Rio, fucking up and fucking in Rio. (laughs) It will be done early 2010, I think.
You’re still in the process of editing?
JN I’m still cutting, yeah. A window of opportunity opened up now because I having huge technical problems. I’m not able to edit for the next couple of hours. So, take advantage.
There’s a wonderful Wim Wenders film called Lightning Over Water.
JN Yeah, yeah. I’ve seen it.
He follows [co/director] Nicholas Ray through his last days as he slowly dies of cancer. At one point Wenders mentions that one of the scenes he’s shooting for Hammett will cost $200,000. [This film was released in 1980.] He asks Nicholas Ray what he would do with $200,000. Of course, he replies that he would make ‘lightning over water’. I don’t know the size of the budget of the film you’re currently working on but what would you do if given a very large budget?
JN I would spend most of the budget on Romanée Conti and save the little I need to actually make a film to make the film. (laughs) What else would someone in my position do?
I mean, if someone wants to offer me a huge film to make I’m not saying I’d never do it in my life, but I feel we made an epic. I shot for five months. It’s a cast of literally thousands. Half the city of Rio is involved in the film. I’m working with people that I consider some of the greatest actors in the world. It was a longer shoot than a lot films with twenty times the budget. I’ve been cutting for eight months; I’ll probably be cutting for another four months, which is a luxury that most big budget films don’t even know about because there is so much money at stake. They can’t take the time. Of course, they don’t need the time most of the time because they know exactly what they are doing. I don’t really know what I’m doing so I need the time.
As far as I am concerned I am able to do exactly the kind of films that I dreamed about doing, that I continue to dream about doing. I’m not sure what I would do with more money. You know, I’d love to live better than I live. (laughs) But I’m not sure for the film itself.
It’s an interesting project because the actors are the co-producers of the film. We all agreed it’s a kind of cooperative affair. We don’t have real producers on the film. We‘ve sort of co-produced it ourselves with financing from France and Brazil, a very small amount. Everyone got paid the same amount. The crew was 10 people. I’m here cutting by myself. There is someone in Paris I’m going to be working with who I’ve worked a little bit before, a very good editor, Sophie Brunet, the editor for [Bertrand] Tavernier. She edited Hôtel Terminus and other Ophüls films.
But otherwise, you know, (laughs) it’s not like there’s a 1000 people involved. For me that is part of the pleasure of making films. I suppose in the wine world it’s the equivalent of someone with a two or three hectare domain. You’re not going to get rich from it, but you have complete control over what you do. More than control you have complete liberty to do what you want to do. And that to me is the most exciting thing about filmmaking.
As you know it’s often one of the most exciting things about wine is when people are completely free. I was just in Switzerland, and was on the jury of the Locarno Film Festival. I tasted a couple of, I tasted a bunch of Swiss wines and was blown away by one domaine, Domaine de Beudon in the Valais. I had heard them about from an agronomist who works at Slow Food University, among other places, and teaches Biodynamics, Biodynamic farming all over Italy. He told me about this place that has been making biodynamic wine since ’93. And I ordered a case and had it sent to Locarno Film Festival. I opened it with the jurors, with my fellow jurors, pretty much every night for the whole length of the festival. I had never tasted Swiss wines with as much depth and purity. Dôle, Fendant [called Chasselas outside of Valais], Humagne [Rouge], 11.4 % alcohol. Incredibly fresh, bright, beautiful, beautiful wines made by just a couple!
I contacted them afterwards. They’re a couple who I guess are in their late fifties, early sixties. They’re working slopes. They have to go up on a téléphérique [aerial tram, gondola] to harvest half of it. They’ve got, I think, five hectares, maybe six. They struggle to survive financially, but they’ve also… they’re also creating something that is incredibly beautiful and moving. It was moving to drink those wines partly out of my own ignorance because I don’t know the Valais wines very well. I knew the wines of Bovard, Gilliard, and a few others but….
I am more convinced by the beauty of biodynamic wine-making each year. Which is obviously not to say there are not great wines made by other methods, including other biological methods, or organic methods. But it also seems true to me that the more that I taste biodynamic wines that are not made for reasons of fashion, that are made out of conviction, an ethical sense of a winemaker, a farmer’s place on the earth, and also a desire to translate a sense of place. And that was the astonishing thing about those biodynamic wines of Domaine de Beudon; I felt for the first time that I was in contact with the terroir of the Valais, that something distinctive was singing through.
I think the process of biodynamic farming allows for the soul of a place to express itself with greater transparency. That to me is thrilling. Because that’s like traveling. It’s certainly a hell of a lot more fun traveling like that than on an airplane. (laugh)
There are quite a few biodynamic producers here in California. But there are no rules about what essentially goes on in the winery itself. Biodynamics covers vineyard practices, and often one hears different things. I did a story recently on smoke taint removal from affected grapes. It is a very technology-driven undertaking. There is a curious tension between the technology available to a biodynamic producer in the winery, certainly here in the United States, and what one reads from Demeter about practices required for certification in the vineyard. Do you have anything to add?
JN As much as I am an advocate of, or feel like I’m an advocate, or rather a fan and admirer of those people who farm biodynamically and who are interested in a more holistic vision of the earth that they work, there are also a hell of a lot of charlatans involved, and also a hell of a lot of people who are doing it who aren’t charlatans but are doing it because it’s become a fashion. There are other people who probably don’t fully understand why they are doing it.
There’s little to add. There are no absolute pronouncements that can or should be made. I also think that it’s dangerous because winemakers are artists in one sense. And an artist’s practice is really up to the artist. I think it’s dangerous to pass sort of a blanket judgements about. And I want to very clear that I am not saying that biodynamic farming is the only correct practice. It’s a correct practice. It’s a laudable practice.
So what people do afterwards? I feel very much in sympathy with Jean-Marc Roulot who is very articulate and very clear about his vision of terroir and also his vision of what organic farming means. He’s been farming organically for at least a decade, probably longer. He’s fascinated by biodynamics; he’s extremely good friends with Dominique Lafon, his neighbor in Meursault, who is one of the great biodynamic advocates, as you know. But he himself hasn’t taken the plunge yet because he doesn’t want to do it until he’s sure that it’s something that he fully understands for himself, and that engagement with biodynamic farming is something that will have a personal dimension, a personal necessity for him. That to me is a sign, yet another indication of why I think Jean-Marc Roulot is a real artist. Not just a great actor. He’s got a lead part in the film, by the way, in Rio, Rio Sex Comedy. He plays Irène Jacob’s husband. He’s as good an actor as he is a winemaker.
But I completely respect it. I think there is an element of… it’s an act of faith to engage in biodynamic farming. And the worst thing is to deal with an act of faith when you’re not sure of your own faith. I think these things are obviously very nuanced.
You read my book. I think Christophe Roumier is one of the greatest winemakers in the world. He’s also one of the people I admire the most as a human being. Christophe doesn’t farm biodynamically. He doesn’t even farm on strict organic terms. He occasionally uses products, which he says himself. He has a vision… I think he has a profound respect for the land as part of planet Earth, and I think he has a profound respect for the land that he farms as an historical expression of a culture. He certainly makes some of the most delicious wines I’ve ever had in my life! (laughs) And I completely respect his skepticism. Interestingly Christophe also has told me that maybe one day he’ll get to bio. He can see himself perhaps one day arriving at farming biodynamically. But like Jean-Marc, he needs to find his own path to get there. And I think that is essential.
And I also completely respect people who don’t advertise the fact that they’re farming biodynamically, as if it were some sort of label of purity. The parallel in cinema is obvious. Just because someone is an independent filmmaker doesn’t mean that the films are actually independently minded. Ninety-five percent of independent filmmaking has historically been nothing more than a low-budget version of what Hollywood does.
Yes. I’ve had conversations with winemakers here in America, certainly in Oregon and Washington, who make it very clear that they’re a little annoyed that though they’ve been farming organically for many years, but they’ve never sought out certification because of the paperwork involved and everything else. They can’t take advantage of that [their organic practice] on the label.
JN Which is also what Jean-Marc says. He’s not interested. It’s a bit of the Groucho Marx thing: Don’t want to be a member of a club that would have you.
Partly it’s an administrative hassle to fill out paperwork, and partly because the whole point, it seems to me, about making wine, just like making films, is that you’re trying to express some form of individuality, individuality of place, individuality of yourself as a person. Therefore any adherence is always delicate to any sort of society. It’s delicate, it’s a delicate question. So I understand people’s skepticism.
That said, given the terrifying state of the planet, given the terrifying state of what people are doing on this planet, there is also something to be said, and part of my admiration for people who farm organically, who make wine from organically farmed grapes and biodynamically farmed, my great admiration for them is precisely because this seems to me a very powerful way to react to the terrifying state of the world, a powerfully positive way.
The planet is in dire danger. The idiots who have power in all countries seem to be hastening, wanting to hasten, the end of the planet. With exceptions, not many. And even when they don’t want to their hands are often tied behind their back by others. I wish that I knew one one-hundredth the number of filmmakers with the same engagement, the same desire to try and contribute to the well-being of the planet as I do winemakers.
Part 2.
Admin
Skyping with Franny Armstrong
At long last, after years of hard work, delirious, sleepless nights, 100s of miles of pavement walked, a 1000 doors knocked upon, half a million phone calls made, keyboards worn to dust, finally, all of this work done by director Franny Armstrong and producer Lizzie Gillett is going to reach its brilliant summation September 21st with the Global Premiere of The Age of Stupid in New York City, and throughout the United States. On September 22nd it is the rest of the world’s turn.
As you may read from an early March, 2009 post I wrote promoting the world premiere in London on March 15th of this year, I have never lost sight of the fortunes of the film. Little did I think I would, 6 months later, be speaking with both Franny and Lizzie! And what a pleasure was their ‘virtual’ company. Franny is rather like a combination of a downed power line crackling with dangerous energy and an old-school boxer entering the ring for the 15th round. But to see her on the street she could be easily mistaken for a conscientious school librarian, a very funny librarian. She both rages against the machine and is driven by a great love for this world. Lizzie, less publicly known, seems to me the emotional center, the velvet glove over the iron fist.
Speculation on their personalities aside, the two of them have persevered to bring to America and an international audience, what I think will prove to be the most important film yet made on the social and environmental consequences, if we do nothing, of climate change. But will we act? Ours is called The Age of Stupid for a reason.
Though I’ve yet to see it, no wonder there, I shall be sharing the collective experience at a local theater, one of 440 around America alone, on Monday the 21st. And I strongly encourage readers of this post to do the same. For a complete listing of theaters please see this. And for critical reviews, please read.
Please watch this Guardian documentary on the making of The Age of Stupid.
—–
Admin It’s an extraordinary pleasure to meet you.
Franny Armstrong Have you got video?
Yes. I can see you. Can you see me? Let me turn on the video.
FA No. Turn on the video, yes.
How’s that?
FA You’ve got your back to the window. You look like a scary silhouette. You look like an axe murderer! (laughs)
Terribly sorry! (laughs) [I pull the drapes closed.] How’s this?
FA No. Still axe murderer.
Let me shift. Funny thing is I thought about this for the longest time, how best to set up the background. I’ve never Skyped before.
FA It’s great once you get into it. It’s free. You can waste a lot of time on here, I can tell you! (laughs)
Good morning from California. At least we’ve established that the world is round. Though there are still some ‘flat earthers’ out there. Just as there are those who deny climate change.
FA It’s best to ignore them at this point.
Yeah, definitely. So how are the New York preparations coming along?
FA You saw the email that went out yesterday. [Searching for my copy.] You’re on the mailing list?
Yes, I am.
FA It’s unbelievable! It’s totally ridiculous! The more crazy it gets, the more people get involved.
It’s very viral he way it spreads.
FA Yes. And we’re in the center of the storm here.
How did all the arrangements with California theaters come about? There are dozens of them.
FA There are dozens. It’s all through this one company, Fathom who do these one night only events. We had to petition them to take the film. They eventually took it after a lot of persuading. It’s 440 cinemas across America. All through their own team. One of the good things about it is that it’s not the ‘independents’; it’s the mainstream cinemas. So we’re really getting out to the mainstream.
Have you gotten a little taste of the toxic political environment here in America?
FA Well, I’ve just come from Australia, and I have to say that was even worse.
It’s not at all clear that out president can even tie his shoes without there being some right wing blowback.
FA The health thing is a bit upsetting. isn’t it?
Isn’t it astonishing?
FA Yeah, it’s really bad.
And the talking heads on television only represent 20% of the electorate.
FB If that. Less than 20% I would have thought. But what the hell is the argument against good health care for everybody? What’s the gist of it? ‘We want the money?’ ‘We would rather be rich than you lot have health care.’ Is that the basic argument?
I haven’t a clue. I just know it has something to do with ‘death panels’, I think. (laughs) How do you think our new president is doing with respect to the environment?
FA Well, this time last year we had a climate change denier in the White House; an oil industry man in the White House. So in terms of that we’ve progressed so, so far. Obama has achieved more in the last six months than America did in the twenty years beforehand, the twenty years we’ve known about the climate change problem. So, in one sense he’s doing fantastically well. But in another sense he’s not doing well enough because it’s slightly a win or lose game, this. Either we keep the planet habitable or we don’t.
And if America’s proposals get accepted at Copenhagen, then we’re pretty much committed to run-away climate change and huge catastrophe. So from that point of view he’s doing disastrously! But in terms of where we started from, he’s doing well. In other words, we’ve still got the three months left until Copenhagen. He could go to Copenhagen and say we’re going to go for a deal as strong as the science demands. And if he did that could change everything. Having said that, if Obama goes to Copenhagen and makes a very, very strong deal, as strong as we need, then he still has to come back and get it through the Senate, doesn’t he?
So there is a lot of work for the American people to do, really. Meaning: public opinion has got to shift far enough and fast enough so that Obama’s team in Copenhagen can make the right deal knowing that with the public support it will get through the Senate. Because at the moment that doesn’t exist.
So, definitely, Obama’s brilliant, but it’s not all down to him. There is a huge and very important role for the American public as well.
No doubt. Just out of curiosity, how have the lives of the principles in your film changed since its debut?
FA Dunno. They’re all going to be there at their local screenings. So the Iraqi kids are going to Amman [Jordan], Layefa is going to Lagos… and we’re going to try and get photos of them all emailed to us so that we can put it out on the satellite links so everybody can see. It will be so good!
Piers, the windfarm guy, has got one more big windfarm accepted in the UK. The one that’s in the film got turned down again. The appeal got turned down. But he’s not giving up. Now the proposal is only for two turbines for that one, even though it started with 16, then 9, and now it’s 2. (laughs) That’s pretty hopeless!
And Layefa?
FA Actually, Lizzie spoke to her. Lizzie’s right here. Lizzie, this is a blogger in California.
Lizzie Gillett How’s Layefa? Well, she wants to be a film star now! Which is very sweet. She’s still studying medicine, but she wants to be a film star. She’s written a romantic comedy script which she wants Franny and I to produce and direct, funnily enough. She is going to the Lagos premier. It’s a huge cinema, it’s like 250 seats. That will be the first time she’s seen the film, actually. [phone rings] I gotta’ go. Sorry, another call. Bye.
Franny Armstrong Did you hear that?
Yes, loud and clear. And Alvin?
FA Yup. Well, he’s coming to New York next week. I’m so excited to see him. We’ve not seen him since 2006 or something, whenever it was. He’s turned into pretty much a full time New York reconstructor as afar as I could tell. Like doing community projects, rebuilding. He’s rebuilt his whole house very ‘eco’, not the old house that got squashed but his new house. During the film he retired from Shell. We’re expecting him to get quite a lot of press.
And Mr. Wadia?
FA Actually, I haven’t heard from him for a while. He and I used to be in quite close contact. But I haven’t actually heard from him. I’m hoping he’s going the the Mumbai screening, but I haven’t actually heard. Although I’ve heard that his airline is having a take over. Either that or he’s taken somebody else over. Presumably that’s why I haven’t heard from him because he’s busy with that.
So when do you manage to sleep. And do you have a social life?
FA I don’t have a social life at the moment. When do we sleep? Badly, because of all the time zones and because I’m always waken up. I’m always dreaming that the next thing we’re doing is happening today and I haven’t finished doing what it is. Sometimes I wake up in the night and I actually call Lizzie in my sleep! (laughs) She gets very annoyed. Because I’m panicking that we’ve forgotten we’re in Australia but the tape is not here and the premiere’s starting and blah, blah, blah! And then I call Lizzie and she’s like “Stop Calling Me When You’re Asleep!”
To be serious though, there are not that many times in your life that you have the opportunity to do something really good. And to do something really effective. And I can see that this is going to be the best opportunity of my whole life to do something, you know? We have so much influence right now that we’ve put all the rest of life on hold. Next year we’re going to have a whole year off. Not this year!
We want to make the most of this opportunity.
It must astonish you all the doors that have opened, the kinds of people you can call and get through to!
FA At the moment I seem to able to get through to anybody! (laughs) Although we are dreaming of getting Obama to speak at our premiere, on the phone or on a video link. I have to admit, I can’t get through to him! (laughs)
You’ve attempted to call the White House?
FA We’re contacting his press people, to participate in some way. Yeah, it’s a stunning thing, really. It’s surprising to me that you can just make a film and then suddenly you become somebody that’s involved in the debate. I’m speaking to all the people who are making the policy! And I’m throwing ideas in and they’re like ‘Oh! That’s interesting. I think I’m going to look at that.’
I mean the people who are in power are just ordinary people like us. They just happen to be in power.
Another thing that’s scary is that they swap departments, you know? So one minute they’re doing Education and then suddenly they’re on Climate Change. And they don’t know anything about climate change; they get briefings and stuff, but they don’t actually know that much. (laughs)
Who has been a most unusual contact you’ve met through this process, somebody out of left field you never anticipated speaking with?
FA Well, I guess Gillian Anderson. We’ve worked with her a lot now. She’s coming to the New York premiere, and she’s doing us a little promo video. I speak to her quite a lot. I don’t actually watch telly. But I know lots of people who are very excited about the X-Files. (laughs) People like that, it’s quite strange. And Colin Firth. I mean, lots of these celeb types who want to help climate change. They get in touch.
Could you say something of developing economies? I’m thinking of China, for example. Have you made inroads with the Chinese authorities? Will the film be shown there at some point?
FA We haven’t made inroads with the Chinese authorities although we’re trying to get the Chinese Environment minister to speak at the premiere. We hear a rumor that he’s going to be in New York. It would be brilliant, obviously, if he could. We’re working on that one.
And we were approached by a big Chinese T.V. broadcaster the other week. This is a big aim to try and get on T.V. in China. There is some progress there. Hopefully. But we don’t want to make the mistake, as some people do, of saying that it’s all China’s fault. In terms of who caused this problem it is not China; it is America, it’s Britain, the Western countries. We caused the problem. Yes, China is soon going to be contributing to the problem; but in terms of who caused it, it’s us.
Their position is completely understandable, which is that those who caused the problem need to act first. And then if you lot do (that’s us) then we will too. It’s a completely rational position.
Have you heard about our 10:10 campaign?
That’s what I was going to ask you about next. Indeed, I signed up for it the other day.
FA Oh, did you? That’s our response to the developing country…, to that argument. The people who caused the problem have to act first. That’s why, at the global premier, 10:10 is going to go global, meaning anybody who’s consuming more than they should be, they can then sign-up to cut their emissions by 10% in the year 2010. At the moment it’s only the U.K. even though you’ve already done it! You’re not supposed to be able to!
Is that right? Well, I did.
FA Oh, well. No, it’s great that you have. So hopefully, before Copenhagen, the developing countries can see that the people in the rich countries are ready to cut their emissions, meaning, then, that hopefully that can help the right deal get made. That’s the theory.
That’s the theory. Well, we’ve gone over our ten minutes. May I continue?
FA Sure.
What are you doing today?
FA What are we doing today? Today I’m writing my Huffington Post blog, which is quite a laugh. And then we’re going down to the site. I haven’t seen it yet, where the premiere’s going to be. We’re meeting up with all the technical guys, and we’re going to go through the whole event and see all the problems. I’m then meeting up with some NGOs who are helping us market the whole event.
We’re going to meet with these guys who want to arrive at the event by swimming (laughs) in the Hudson! We’re gonna go talk to them and see whether it’s actually physically possible. We think it would be quite good fun if they arrived swimming. So we’re going to do a swimming test.
[We were suddenly cut off. Then reconnected.]
I have no idea what happened!
FA Yeah. Well, that’s Skype for you. So what can you do to help spread the word? We’ve got 115,000 tickets to sell in America. That’s quite scary.
I’ll do all that I can to get the word out. Are you getting real time updates on ticket sales?
FA I think we get weekly, although I haven’t seen them.
Weekly, well… between now and the premiere is a week.
FA Don’t say it’s a week. It’s a week and a half! (laughs) Alright, great. Nice talking to you. See you.
It was an absolute delight. Thank you.
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I am an an avid collector of travel guides. And the Baedeker series occupies pride of place on my crowded shelves. Begun in the early 18th century by Karl Baedeker, by 1900 this little red book could be found in the knapsacks of poets and statesmen, artists and perpetual tourists. Virtually all of Europe, her countries, regions and major cities, as well as Egypt, Palestine, Syria, Asia Minor, Canada and the United States were covered by frequently updated individuated editions. Written by hundreds of pens, the guides were quite democratic in nature, providing precise info on everything from thrifty to expensive lodgings, museum entrance fees, front row theater and balcony prices, and train fares in first class or coach. Capturing the spirit of Nietzsche’s notion of the ‘Good European’, even if rather bourgeois, the Baedeker guides offered dignified commentary on the Western World’s shared history and culture, a common language for understanding monumental architectural forms and art, all for the ennoblement of the traveler wishing to learn as much about distant peoples and places as about themselves.
Now this may seem an odd way to introduce David Downie’s Terroir Guides, but I am convinced that his work, the patient, herculean task he has successfully completed in three healthy volumes, Rome, The Italian Riviera and Genoa, and most recently Burgundy, is deserving of a similar admiration. And this is why. Focussing on food and wine, his Terroir Guides are generous and rich acts of resistance to globalization and homogenization. As he dryly writes in The Italian Riviera and Genoa,
