Back in
Paris again! After a brief hiatus in the north of France, I returned to the
capital and just in time for the Salon des Vins Rue89 in the
Bellevilloise. The Bellevilloise is a building that used to serve as a Co-op
where local farmers in Île de France (the department surrounding Paris) could
come to distribute their goods. Today, it seems as though little has changed.
The building served as the meeting place for approximately 45 vintners to
reunite in the name of natural wine.
If the
combined presence of these natural vintners wasn't enough to inspire faith in the
movement, the Salon was also graced by none other than Jonathan Nossiter, the
director of Mondovino. Mondovino (2004) is one of the only documentary
films to ever gain recognition at the Cannes Film Festival and it was one of
the first films that exposed the realities of wine monopolies and the
globalized trade of this 'commodity'. For those wanting to learn about Robert
Parker, Michel Rolland, the Mondavi family (who go crazy for funk ceramics...a
joke for those who've seen the film) and the differences between industrial vs.
artisanal wines, then this film is a must see.
Nossiter
was joined by Gilles Azzoni, a natural wine producer from France, and together
they gave a lecture/debate called "Mondovino 2013: L'Artisanal va-t-il
devenir illégal, et autres considérations sur la standardisation"
(Mondovino 2013: Will Artisanal Become Illegal, and Other Considerations on
Standardisation). I will attempt to summarize an hour and a half long
conference in a few sentences: Nossiter believes that the act of making natural
wine is a political one- and a necessary one. The world is at its survival
brink and we have the choice to improve it by rejecting the norm. He said "Sortir
du norme est une décision dangereuse...être libre aujourd'hui est une
contestation" ("To break the norm is a dangerous decision...to be
free today is a contestation.") That's what he feels the natural wine
movement is doing: David refusing Goliath knowing the risks are high, but also
that the refusal is paramount. Azzoni, on the other hand, does not feel like
natural wine is a contestation (bien au contraire). Instead, he believes
that it's a movement that needs to take it's time and mature.
After the conference,
I had the chance to briefly talk to Nossiter about the potential growth of the
natural wine movement in the US. While he acknowledges that it is, indeed,
taking place, he says that America still emphasizes the individual and the
notion of individualism. In the States, it's often accepted to do
something just for yourself, while in France there is a greater sense of the
collective goal. The natural wine vintners seem united in their objective,
while the US seems to accept the idea of natural vintners as outliers pursuing
their own fulfillment.
At this
point, it was time to taste. And when say taste, I really do just mean taste
and not drink. Everyone around took full advantage of the crachoirs,
or spitting buckets and I am glad I did the same. The idea of spitting
wine in my real life (the life that doesn't take place in beautiful Parisian
nooks where wine abounds) is almost sacrilegious; how could I waste such a
delicious nectar that's rare to come by? However, at the Salon, the pours were
very generous and I wanted to visit each table. Had I not learned early how to
accept the spitting practice, I would have quickly turned bourrée (which
I learned comes from the term "buttered", meaning a little tipsy). So
to avoid compromised research, I learned to make fast friends with the
bucket.
I also got
friendly with several vintners who were extremely passionate about their work
and eager to talk about their terroir, their "preparations"
(those who were biodynamic) and their ongoing love-hate relationship with
sulfites.
Late in the
the afternoon I also had the pleasure of meeting Daniele Fherm and
Antonius Berthagen. They approached me as they did everyone else- in
enthusiastic, amiable English. Despite the crowded, busy Salon, Fherm and
Berthagen were instantly engaging and were as eager to learn what could have
brought an American student to Paris as they were to share their own mission.
They both work as professional sommeliers in some of Stockholm's finest
restaurants. However, they also run their own company, Viniologi, which
imports exclusively natural wines to Sweden to be sold in restaurants. They
travel around Europe (mostly Italy, France and Germany) looking for natural
wines that would appeal to the Swedish market. They say that when they share the
wine with costumers, they want the costumers to be able to imagine the face of
the vintner who made the wine. Therefore, they work especially hard to visit
every vineyard and get to know the people running the operations. They also run
a website and blog and hope to open up their own wine bar in Stockholm by this
upcoming spring. They have an extremely clever logo of a giant, severed foot
stomping on a bundle of grapes. Fherm spent six weeks making wine in South
Africa and he explained that because he was the largest man there, we was
responsible for stomping and macerating the grapes. In the logo, his foot has
seven toes to represent the seven days of the week that wine should be enjoyed.
The logo is so distinctive and comical that vintners at the Salon were eager to
wear them as stickers and by the late afternoon, there were people everywhere
sporting the image of "the foot". Fherm and Berthagen said that the
very same thing happened in London the previous week.
When the
Salon ended at 19.00, Ferhm and Berthagen agreed to let me interview them,
which proved to be one of the most valuable interviews of the day and it will
no doubt, add depth and character to our project. Side note: it was certainly
the most enjoyable interview of the trip, as this one took place on a park
bench under the elusive, but beautiful, Parisian sun while sharing a bottle of
natural Alsacian Pinot Noir from the Salon.
From there
I left to meet the lovely host who is letting me stay at her flat as a
Couchsurfer. I brought her wine as a thank you and she prepared pancakes, the
perfect meal to absorb the wine that I had refused to spit. And then I quickly
settled into a deep sleep- dreaming of Bacchus, funny severed feet and the
incarnated dream figures of new words like "cépage, contestation or
cracher."
À bientôt !
No comments:
Post a Comment