Holy Saviour's Wine Club
Feb. 3rd, 2007 06:06 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shewhomustLast night we were invited by our friend Helen Savage to join her at Holy Saviour's Wine Club for a tasting of organic and biodynamic French wines. There's a fine poetic connection in there somewhere, but I can't quite put it together, so rather than stare at the screen until it's time to go out, I shall acknowledge it, and move on.
Helen is just back from an organic wine fair in Narbonne, and had clearly had a wonderful time meeting the growers, visiting the vineyards and - well, yes - tasting the wines. Most of the wines we tasted last night came from one particular producer, the Domaine de Clairac, near Béziers, a domaine which has been producing organic wines since 1966 (indeed, I think![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
durham_rambler and I used to buy their wines from Vinceremos - who still stock them - twenty or more years ago), but is now converting to biodynamic methods.
I don't know if this is a French thing, or a wine thing, or if it is generally the case, but biodynamics seems to be seen as super-organic, organic but more so - and I don't understand why, the two seem to me quite different approaches. They are not so much opposing as at right-angles one to the other. Organic producion is about the use of physically healthy methods, the avoidance of chemicals which are at best unnatural and at worst toxic; bio-dynamic methods aim to be spiritually healthy, and are - I'm trying to avoid the word "loopy" here, as it isn't polite, and anyway some of the results are excellent - not obviously rational: the enrichment of the ground, for example, by stuffing cow manure into the horn of a cow, burying it and leaving it to decompose. BD production avoids chemical fertilisers and pesticides, but it doesn't so much build on organic production as agree with it on this particular point.
With my usual lack of refinement, I preferred the cheaper wines of the Domaine de Clairac: the Cuvée Joubio range. The white was fresh and zippy, with good acidity but enough fruit to give it body: it would have been better colder, and better still on a sunny afternoon. The rosé, a cinsault / carignan blend, was tawny under the fluorescent lights, full of cinder toffee and strawberry jam flavours: this is the rosé I was looking for all last summer, when the supermarkets were full of dark, almost red, fruit-heavy wines. And the red (syrah, grenache, cinsault and carignan) was rich and dark, but with an edge - a fellow-taster compared it to pinotage - and made me hunger for hot, rich food: bring on the cassoulet!
I didn't particularly like the fancier wines from Clairac: the cabernet sauvignon rosé and the syrah. They had the same almost acid edge, and while it worked for me on the cheaper red, I found it excessive in the rosé and out of place in the syrah. The real puzzle, though, was the white, a marsanne which Helen praised highly. I often dislike the "school glue" flavour of the Rhône marsannes, but this was quite different: dark gold in colour, burnt honey flavour but bone dry. People were asking whether it was oxidised, but no, this was how it was intended to be (and one of the other white wines, Château le Chabrier's Cantate du Paysan, had much the same characteristics).
The star of the evening was not from the south-west, but a classic - but biodynamic - Burgundy, Bret Brothers Les Fournaises Saint Véran: chardonnay in the burgundian style, full of flavour without being overwhelmingly either fruity or oaky, a creamy texture, hazelnuts and just a hint of pineapple at the finish. I'd buy more of this if I could afford it - but of course I can't.
Helen is just back from an organic wine fair in Narbonne, and had clearly had a wonderful time meeting the growers, visiting the vineyards and - well, yes - tasting the wines. Most of the wines we tasted last night came from one particular producer, the Domaine de Clairac, near Béziers, a domaine which has been producing organic wines since 1966 (indeed, I think
durham_rambler and I used to buy their wines from Vinceremos - who still stock them - twenty or more years ago), but is now converting to biodynamic methods.I don't know if this is a French thing, or a wine thing, or if it is generally the case, but biodynamics seems to be seen as super-organic, organic but more so - and I don't understand why, the two seem to me quite different approaches. They are not so much opposing as at right-angles one to the other. Organic producion is about the use of physically healthy methods, the avoidance of chemicals which are at best unnatural and at worst toxic; bio-dynamic methods aim to be spiritually healthy, and are - I'm trying to avoid the word "loopy" here, as it isn't polite, and anyway some of the results are excellent - not obviously rational: the enrichment of the ground, for example, by stuffing cow manure into the horn of a cow, burying it and leaving it to decompose. BD production avoids chemical fertilisers and pesticides, but it doesn't so much build on organic production as agree with it on this particular point.
With my usual lack of refinement, I preferred the cheaper wines of the Domaine de Clairac: the Cuvée Joubio range. The white was fresh and zippy, with good acidity but enough fruit to give it body: it would have been better colder, and better still on a sunny afternoon. The rosé, a cinsault / carignan blend, was tawny under the fluorescent lights, full of cinder toffee and strawberry jam flavours: this is the rosé I was looking for all last summer, when the supermarkets were full of dark, almost red, fruit-heavy wines. And the red (syrah, grenache, cinsault and carignan) was rich and dark, but with an edge - a fellow-taster compared it to pinotage - and made me hunger for hot, rich food: bring on the cassoulet!
I didn't particularly like the fancier wines from Clairac: the cabernet sauvignon rosé and the syrah. They had the same almost acid edge, and while it worked for me on the cheaper red, I found it excessive in the rosé and out of place in the syrah. The real puzzle, though, was the white, a marsanne which Helen praised highly. I often dislike the "school glue" flavour of the Rhône marsannes, but this was quite different: dark gold in colour, burnt honey flavour but bone dry. People were asking whether it was oxidised, but no, this was how it was intended to be (and one of the other white wines, Château le Chabrier's Cantate du Paysan, had much the same characteristics).
The star of the evening was not from the south-west, but a classic - but biodynamic - Burgundy, Bret Brothers Les Fournaises Saint Véran: chardonnay in the burgundian style, full of flavour without being overwhelmingly either fruity or oaky, a creamy texture, hazelnuts and just a hint of pineapple at the finish. I'd buy more of this if I could afford it - but of course I can't.
