CATHARS & ELEPHANTS

I first visited the Roussillon in January. It was black, quiet and cold the morning I left Scotland for Collioure. My breath hung in the air and the pavement frost sparkled under the yellow streetlights. In the distance waves crashed. Leaving Scotland in January for the south of France seemed ideal. It’s good to travel early in the morning. It gives the sense that everything will be where you left it when you get back.

The taxi driver’s chat barely pierced my tired ears while an old friend sang on the radio.

I made it down with little hassle. I visited Coume del Mas for the first time and met Philippe. I made a note of the wines tasted, and marvelled at how deftly he clambered over barrels and the like.

Wines tasted at my first Coume del Mas visit:

Folio 07 barrel

Folio 07 tank sample

C’est Pas du Pipeau Roussanne/Vermentino 07

Syrah Mourvèdre Rosé (CdM Farniente) 07

Carignan Barrel 07

Syrah Barrel 07 [later to become Armistice]

Mourvèdre/Syrah/Carignan 07

Lunch at Philippe’s – Quadratur 2001

 

Winter here is rarely cold. Having spent several winters in both New England and Scotland, winter in the Roussillon is mild, even spring-like in comparison. At least in terms of temperature. It still looks like winter. Sometimes, it even snows. Snow can be good for vines. It melts slowly, irrigating the vineyard at a steady rate and doesn’t run off as much as rain can do on these dry hills. Sadly, snow doesn’t hit these parts very often, but when it does folks tend to be optimistic about the coming harvest.

There’s no snow this particular January, so we head inland, into the hills.

An open restaurant at this time of year is a bit of a rarity, but we find one and the gentleman is overjoyed to serve us. Rillettes to start followed by an entrecote steak. Andy teaches me how to order medium, which would be rare in any other part of the known universe. I’ve since grown fond of the rustic, slim steaks in this parts of France. Tough and toothsome but full of flavour as well. The frites are skinny and with a pleasant crunch. We’re the only ones there. A pichet of red appears and we drink and chat about the place. I discover the local version of crème brulee: crème catalan, which is crème brulee with a hint of orange.

After dessert, there’s coffee, and it’s pretty bad. I grimace but Andy assures me it’s actually pretty good for this neck of the woods. I’ll never understand how the French can love their coffee roasted so dark. It tastes as though it’s been cremated and mixed with the contents of an ashtray.

The vines we pass are between pruned and unpruned. The tendrils of the unpruned lash whip-like in the Tramontane wind. Vines are deciduous. Old vines in the depth of winter are bare, twisted, skeletal and fossil-like. All of their colour and vibrancy has gone, leaving them looking like de-saturated, lifeless husks. Their dried, crunchy leaves fly far in the harsh winds that rush down from the mountains. Driving inland up into the hills feels like driving into a black and white photo. The forests are still green, but not so you’d notice; you’d swear they were just a darker grey. The hills and mountains all stand jagged, looking like heaps of shattered stone piled precariously. It’s quiet. I look out the car window and my eyes trace the line of one serrated peak that looks like the lower jawbone of a dinosaur. Some of its teeth jut out strangely, and for a moment I think I’m seeing things. A fortification; a tower almost indistinguishable from the points around it. I raise my camera to my eye and through the zoom I can even work out the masonry. It’s not one tower, but several. Deserted. It’s a castle. It belonged to the Cathars.

We park the car and get out. My eyes stay on the castle as we wander a vineyard of young Mourvèdre vines. They’ve been pruned recently, perhaps only the day before, and look now just like grey stumps reaching up from the fragmented topsoil. The sky feels low. Those peaks and towers look more and more to me like a skeletal jawbone, discarded in a colourless desert. The image is eerie, and I’m very aware of the lack of breeze. The vines around me could be arms of the undead, frozen shortly after they’d broken through the ground that served as their prison.

I remember the Cathars. Not personally, of course, but I studied them and The Albigensian Crusades that saw their end. There’s something haunting about standing there in that valley, among the raw and naked vines, the only sound is that of shards of stone under foot. Staring up at the shell of a castle, knowing its inhabitants had been starved out or burned. Or both.

Eight hundred years ago and the emptying of this region under the banner of crusade was such that it never refilled. Many flocked to the Cathar cause, and were punished for what was viewed by the church as heresy. Even the Count of Toulouse, one of the most powerful nobles in all of France, bowed to authority in the end, renouncing his protection of the Albigensians. The remarkable mountain strongholds they built provided incredible, but temporary, protection. For 20 years at the beginning of the 13th century, the French crown, with the blessing of Pope Innocent III, flushed the Cathars out and, not entirely coincidentally, vastly strengthened its influence in the Languedoc and lead it closer to Catalonia. Villages nowadays are far apart and quiet. The folks here farm and grow vines, though each year it’s harder. Many come from elsewhere, seeking solitude, and they find it.

In classical times, the Greeks traded along the coast. Then came the Romans and the Narbonne Province. It stretched from the coast up to Toulouse and the hills. Grapes were grown then, as was everything else. It was the Romans that built the terraces, steps on which to grow things in the hills without losing crops to the flash floods that came with the rains. It wasn’t just vines, but olives and fruit and the like. Vines were important, though. As well as producing grapes for wine, they served as a sign of immortality. Stone coffins for the dead bore intricate carvings of grapes and vines and olive trees; symbols of life to take through to the next world, whatever branch of mythology that next world bore resemblance to. There’s a museum in Toulouse, near the university. It’s a treasure of a museum, small but perfectly formed. It used to be a mediaeval dormitory, and stands on the ruins of a mediaeval hospital. Next to it towers St Sernin, an awesome, in the proper sense of the word, cathedral whose architecture represents both the classical and Middle Ages.

The Musée de St Raymond (everyone in mediaeval Toulouse was named Raymond) is well-situated, considering the cellar itself is an exhibit. The floors above hold countless marbles and mosaics, dioramas and artefacts, but downstairs are tombs, casks and gravestones. The classical brick that constructed the ancient city surrounds you, and the remains of an ancient hospital wall bisects the lower level. It has the damp stench of the old that somehow manages to be both musty and somewhat cleansing. Most of this room is devoted to the dead; it’s like an abandoned necropolis. The inhabitants have shuffled off this mortal coil, leaving only their final dwellings behind; their tombs and headstones, graves and those precious items seen fit to bury them with. An ancient wine glass sits on a glass shelf, dating back to the 5th century.

I found myself there by accident, wandering in a hush. I paused often to take notes and photos. The vine carvings on the ancient caskets held fantastic symmetry, though I sometimes mistook olive branches for grape vines. After a time I began to see the difference between them. Much like in life, the wine grapes tend to be round, while the olives were elongated and oval. Also, the leaves on the vines were much larger and broader than the olive leaves. Every tomb coats death in the ideal of so much life: wine and food and revelry. Wild boar hunts are depicted, reminding me of the gunshots that echo from the hills at harvest and the broad smile of our neighbour at Coume del Mas as he would show off the carcass of the huge beast. Not a bit of it would go to waste. They use the whole pig down here.

This unbroken connection to the past often goes unmentioned and un-noted amongst winemakers. Sure, they know wine has been made here for millennia, but it’s not something that drives them. It’s the season that drives them; that yearly cycle that leads to the reaping of the fruit and then its shaping into something else. It’s for nerds like me, those with one foot in and one foot out of this remarkable business, to look into how those working the vines now are doing much the same as those who were doing it a 1,000 or 2,000 years ago. And it’s likely that the cyclical, repetitive nature of it all is what accounts for both its longevity and its relative lack of retrospect. It’s not just cyclical, it’s continuous. Pausing too long to look back and admire the course of their history is a luxury that winemakers can seldom afford.

It’s like pruning itself. The act of cutting back the vine harshly to promote new growth, the sort of growth that, weather, fates and wee beasties willing, will bring forth great fruit in the next vintage. There’s little point in reflecting on those bare tendrils getting snipped and dropped. Either left in the vines as a very slow decaying fertiliser, quietly feeding future vintages, or they are burned in great piles at the end of the rows for the ash to be spread as fertiliser. Those bonfires smell quite sweet; they are as much a part of winter here as frost in the mornings and snow atop the peak of the Canigou.

Along with the Romans came the enemies of the Romans, and it is thought by some historians that Hannibal brought his armies and elephants along this craggy coastline to avoid the mountains and take advantage of the natural resources surrounding the area. I was told this story, not in winter, but during harvest, by Kris, the hippy Australian that helps in the vines and works his own grapes. He was basket-pressing his white grapes outside of Coume del Mas in the late afternoon sun when he told me the story. A retired classicist/archeologist had told him the story. Hannibal crossed through the river valley that Banyuls-sur-Mer sits upon. This retired scholar mentioned that the terraces dated back that far as well, though many of them were used for fruit orchards and olive groves rather than vine training. I never met the man himself; I heard about him from hippy Kris. Hippy Kris knows a lot of people because he’s friendly, speaks a couple of languages, and does that Australian thing of not being horrendously socially awkward. Hippy Kris is also one of the reasons the Mighty Clio smells as awful as it does: one of his mystic bird guano fertiliser tubs spilled in it (and probably some other mixtures of his own creation). He chats, and expects you to chat back, and when he engages in conversation, he expects it to be that, not simply an exchange of greetings designed to feign interest. He’s interested.

So standing there, cleaning whatever it was I was cleaning, while he spoke about this morsel of information, it seemed utterly obvious to me that Hannibal had done this very thing. I’m not going to check it. I have friends who are both archeologists and classicists and could probably confirm in an instant whether it’s accepted as likely or not. They wouldn’t say whether it’s true or not, but they’d say whether it was probably true. The further back you get, the more that’s how history works.

But I don’t want to check. Not because I’m enamoured of believing hippy Kris or his retired professor, but because I’m enamoured of that being one of the stories of this place, whether it’s true or not. It was a beautiful afternoon, and in between tales of Hannibal, Kris debated quite seriously with himself whether to add a sulphur tablet to his press juice. It smelled funky and yet he really wanted to be as non-interventionist as possible. We talked a bit about it, while I turned out towards the dry river bed that runs beneath Coume del Mas. The Med had turned its late afternoon topaz and the deepening sun saturated the green of the leaves on the hills that framed that small wedge of sea. Maybe it was a different river bed, not the one in Banyuls, but this one. Maybe over 2,000 years ago, young Rome’s greatest threat lead his Carthaginian army, complete with its remarkable elephants, right by this very spot. His scouts may have used the very hill I stood on as a look-out point.

My mind wanders when I’m cleaning.

Hippy Kris told me the retired professor lived in the back woods behind Banyuls, where the wilderness starts. There are still vines there – some wonderful ones in fact, but it’s a bit out of the way.

Kris smelled and tasted his press juice and broke a sulphur tablet in half, dropping it into the wine with a fizz. They work just like Alka-Seltzer. We kind of nodded and went back to our work. There wasn’t much else to say. I cleaned and looked out to the valley again and thought of a column of elephants.

As far as I’m concerned, as far as Banyuls and its little corner of the Roussillon go for me, Hannibal passed through. He probably caused quite a ruckus, and no doubt availed himself of the local wines. They would have been a far cry from what we’d consider wine. Tradition at the time was to sweeten and infuse. Indeed, as there had been prior Greek influence in the region, they may even have added seawater to certain wines. It might seem strange, but I still love myself a glass of good Manzanilla, which is about as close to drinking seawater as you can get without actually doing it.

Carthaginians and Cathars in one region, separated by a millennium and change. It sits well with me.

 

The wineries lie quiet at this time of year. Often they’ll be packed with pallets of empty bottles, waiting for the bottling truck to arrive. Philippe and Andy will pop in once a day to make sure the tanks are sealed tight and to taste. Sometimes there’s blending to do, but that’s usually sorted earlier on, in the middle of Autumn, a month or so after the harvest.

The equipment of vintage is packed tight and the floor of Coume del Mas becomes something like a jigsaw puzzle; the press, de-stemmer and elevator all carefully fitted away to take up as little space as possible. Climbing up to the ‘attic’, the space above the chill room where the grand cru wines are aged, you’d think the cave was more a storage garage than a winery. It’s calm, still, silent, and the echoes sound strange as so much of the empty space is filled.

The first time I visited, it was this time of year. The wineries I’d visited before were grander in scale, the winemakers boasting armies of assistants and the very latest in technology. I never saw any of the dirty work. Equipment stored for the winter would not have been on the winery floor. Outside of harvest those places become marketing tools; used to show journalists, merchants and visitors the grand scale of investment; the cutting edge level of winemaking technology.

This small cave on the outskirts of Cosprons was not like that. It felt as though it worked for its wine. That afternoon Philippe climbed from barrel to barrel, wine-thief in hand, extracting samples and explaining each one with precision. I stood in rapt silence as he bounced about, knowing the order in the chaos of the resting wine. My French then was even worse than it is now, but somehow I felt I comprehended anyway. He spoke of each barrel’s grape and soil and aspect to the sun and, importantly for him, its closeness to the sea. He apologised for the winery being in such a mess. At one point he climbed the ladder above the cool room to draw juice from a tiny cask, something folks in the whisky industry would probably call a quarter cask. What came from it was a deep, inky purple. A late-harvested Mourvèdre. I’d never tasted anything quite like it – somehow utterly pure and yet still earthy, dark and warming. He wasn’t quite sure what he was going to do with it later. We sampled pre-blended wines, wines ready for bottling, whites and reds, sweeties and dry wines. Wine from the barrel is quite a sensory assault. It fills every corner of the mouth. If it’s red, the tannins tend to be forward and rasping. If it’s white it often smells sweet, but depending on where it is, it can be bracing and backwards and quite a shock to the system.

After the tasting we drove over to Philippe’s home in Banyuls. The streets in the old part of town are maze-like. Philippe lives on the hill that forms the first part of the town, on a street so steep and narrow that I still don’t quite know how anyone successfully navigates it. As well as his home, it’s also the registered business address for the Coume del Mas. That has caused issues in the past, with lorry drivers carrying tons of equipment getting stuck along the narrow lanes, causing the sort of nigh-unsolvable traffic havoc perfectly suited to these small corners of the Mediterranean coast.

It was a simple lunch. A cousin had sent him some fresh perigord truffles and he made a fresh, fat-noodled pasta to shave them over. He opened an older bottle of Quadratur, the 2001. It was the third vintage he made. The dark berry fruit had given way to softer stone fruit and it tasted as though it had been soaking in Christmas spices. We chatted about the wine and life and the food was good. Philippe’s house had the feel of somewhere built for the coziness; not too hot in the summer, but warm and comfy in the winter.

Wine folks often talk about what wines they like outside of their own area. That afternoon, I asked Philippe his favourites. He explained his love of the Côte Rôties from Jamet and the Sancerres of Gitton. I professed my love of Chambolle-Musigny (and Musigny) from Freddie Mugnier.

There was cheese to follow the pasta and truffles because it’s France, and because it’s France the cheese was delicious. The sort of cheese you keep picking at long after your stomach has told the brain it’s full.

We had a wee coffee and then headed off and I felt I’d learned something, but I’m still not sure what. Regardless, I felt richer for it.

My first vintage, later that very year, I never noticed Philippe noting the particular parcels of vines being picked, or the filing in his head of each barrel and tank, commensurate to the truckload of grapes from whence they came. But he noted them all regardless, whether I noticed or not. I thought about that lunch, and the tour and tasting that preceded it, a lot that first harvest. It prepared me, in a way, for what was to come. Not the work, not by any stretch, but that one afternoon in January gave me a glimpse of everything a winemaker needs to be aware of to do their job.