SOUTHERN RHÔNE

RHÔNE WINE, we say, but it is badly said because a Rhône wine can be red, white, or pink, sweet or dry, still or sparkling. It can be from one grape variety or a blend of several. It can be among the handful of France’s noblest wines, or it can be a simple wine whose proper place would be in a carafe alongside a quick steak and french fries.

Rhône tastings are conducted in which such diverse wines as Gigondas, Saint-Joseph, Hermitage, Châteauneuf-du-Pape, and Côtes du Rhône are tasted blind, as they say, then judged and ranked. Such a grouping has a single characteristic in common: the grapes that produced them are grown near or somewhat near the Rhône River. There is as much difference between a Gigondas and a Saint-Joseph as there is between a Saint-Joseph and a Beaujolais, yet blind tasters would never square off a Saint-Joseph against a Beaujolais. The fact that Gigondas and Saint-Joseph are lumped together in Rhône tastings is a symptom of confusion, an unfortunate confusion, because each wine expresses itself in its own language, and in the Babel-like jumble of such a blind tasting one misses what each has to say. The winner is usually the most powerful wine, the one that speaks in the loudest voice, so one leaves having learned nothing.

Sorting out the Rhône is not difficult, and several wine books explain the different appellations. Dividing the Rhône into north and south is the first step. Such a division is altogether practical and natural. The two regions, north and south, are about an hour’s drive apart. There are profound differences between the two in terms of landscape, soil, climate, and grape varieties employed (although they overlap a bit as we shall see), and finally in the taste of the wines themselves.

South of Lyons (the French spell it Lyon), a few hundred yards past the limits of the old Roman city of Vienne, the vineyards of the northern Rhône commence in grand fashion with the Côte Rôtie, or “roasted hill.” For the great appellations of the north, it is best to keep in mind two dominating factors: Syrah, which is the only red grape permitted, and steep, because the vines are planted on dramatic terraced hillsides that rise from the narrow valley floor. One does not see these dazzling carved mountainsides in the southern Rhône. The dominant grape variety in the southern reds is the Grenache, which is usually blended with other varieties, and the terrain is comparatively flat.

The northern Rhône consists of a long, narrow, stingy stretch of vineyards along the river between Vienne and Valence, the source of such exalted growths as Côte Rôtie, Hermitage, Saint-Joseph, and Cornas. I hesitate to include Crozes-Hermitage because the committee that defines the limits of the controlled appellations has allowed commerce to be its guide, and most Crozes today comes from flat, sandy soil. An extraordinary Crozes is hard to find, and it is objectionable that the growers have the right to tack Hermitage onto their name.

By contrast, the southern Rhône is a vast, productive, almost circle-shaped area, and here one finds the vineyards of Châteauneuf-du-Pape, Gigondas, Tavel, Cairanne, Rasteau, and countless others. The most important city of the southern Rhône is Avignon, but the most important for the wine lover is Châteauneuf-du-Pape.

In terms of worldwide renown and prestige, Châteauneuf-du-Pape is the greatest appellation in southern France, which is not to say that it is always the source of the finest wine. A perfect Côtes du Rhône will inspire more pleasure than a badly made Châteauneuf-du-Pape. It is well to remember that the system of appellation d’origine contrôlée (AOC) is not a rating, not a judgment of the wine in bottle, but a definition of the terrain, the soil, the grape varieties … the raw materials!

Over the years, wine writers have yielded to the temptation to classify the top domaines of Châteauneuf-du-Pape much as the Bordeaux châteaux were classified in 1855. However easier such a ranking might appear to make the life of the wine consumer by helping him decide what to buy, such a classification is dangerous work. In 1832 a French writer, A. Jullien, placed La Nerthe at the top of the Châteauneuf-du-Papes. More recently an American author, Robert Parker, Jr., left La Nerthe out of the top category and rated Vieux Télégraphe, Beaucastel, and Fortia grand cru classé. Vieux Télégraphe’s vines are planted on a very privileged site. Thanks to this site, their vinification, and their consistency, it is one of the two or three finest domaines producing Châteauneuf-du-Pape today. But what is to prevent Vieux Télégraphe from buying another block of vines in a less privileged part of the appellation in order to pump out more wine and take advantage of the commercial possibilities created by their new grand cru status?

Classifying a domaine or a château rather than the soil or terrain misses the point. Rating the specific vineyards of Châteauneuf-du-Pape is a good idea, overdue, in fact, because the area of the appellation is so enormous (over seven thousand acres) and includes nobler and less noble sites. If domaines had plots of vines in several parts of the appellation, which is often the case, they would have to vinify their grand cru separately if they wanted to name it on their label. A perfect example of such a system can be found in Burgundy. La Romanée-Conti (the vineyard) is a grand cru, but the Domaine de la Romanée-Conti (the winery) is not. If it were, the proprietors could bottle a simple Bourgogne rouge and call it grand cru.

Henri Brunier of Vieux Télégraphe agrees that the vineyard site is of supreme importance. The source of his wine’s quality, he says, is his stony terrain, situated upon the slope of the highest ridge in the Châteauneuf-du-Pape appellation. Because of the superior elevation, it was on this ridge that a telegraph tower was constructed in the eighteenth century, one of the relay points for communications between Paris and Marseilles. The crumbling stone ruin of this tower gave Vieux Télégraphe its name, and there is a rendering of it on the domaine’s label. To the eye there is no soil here and one would think it is barren, but living vines poke out from the thick layer of smooth, oval stones. Walking the Côte Rôtie vineyards, one is impressed by the difficulty of climbing such steep hills. In Brunier’s vineyard it is hard to walk because the stones slip and slide underfoot. An unreal landscape, it sticks in the mind like the volcanic Kona coast of Hawaii or the surface of the moon. It is totally unprotected from the elements. I have been there in the summer when the stones are too hot to touch. I have heard the sound of vine branches cracking in a fierce mistral. Nowhere does the mistral blow with such force. It can knock you over, and when it turns cold, the mistral cuts right through you. You cannot move your fingers, your teeth chatter, your nose and ears turn red. You are glad you are an importer who can head for the fireplace and a glass of Vieux Télégraphe and not the poor fellow out there pruning the vines.

One visitor from California revealed perhaps the difference between the American and French mentality when he asked, “Why did they move all those stones into the vineyard?” The French cultivated this ridiculously stony site, this nearly impossible surface, because it gives a special character to the wine. Typically American would be to plant on the valley floor and use land-moving equipment to move in a layer of stones.

They look like Sierra riverbed stones and were formed by the same geological process. They are glacial deposits, shattered and shaped by the weight and crunch of the glacier’s movement, then rounded and polished by the flow of water as the ice melted.

One tastes the influence of the stones in the wine. Experienced tasters in the area recognize a Vieux Télégraphe by its expression of pierre à feu, or gunflint. A great Châteauneuf-du-Pape tastes almost as if it had been filtered through the stones, and indeed rainwater is filtered by this thick stone layer before it reaches the underlying soil which nourishes the plants. In addition, the stones account for Vieux Télégraphe’s characteristic power and generosity because they reflect and collect heat, and it is believed that during the ripening season this store of warmth works throughout the night contributing to the grapes’ maturity. Brunier considers adding some sandier parcels to his holding because in hot years he wonders if his wine is not too alcoholic, lacking perhaps a certain finesse, which a proportion of less-ripe grapes would palliate. Americans who buy Vieux Télégraphe are not at all of this opinion. The hottest years producing the strongest wines, such as 1983, are the object of a real buyers’ scramble. A more elegant vintage like 1984, by no means a light wine and which Brunier prefers to his massive 1983, is slower to disappear from the shelves.

One is immediately at ease with Henri Brunier. He typifies the Provençal qualities of warmth, friendliness, and candor. The rugged cut to his features and his ruddy, sunbaked cheeks attest to the years he has spent outdoors with his vines. He looks the way the winemaker of a robust wine like Vieux Télégraphe should look.

When he shows off his new vinification cellar, completed in 1979, he stands back with his hands on his hips gazing up at the towering stainless-steel cuves like a sculptor regarding a grand new work. “Eh, voilà,” he says, as if letting the installation speak for itself. He is still awed by his creation. The envy of many of his neighbors because it is so rational and functional, Brunier’s new winery permits him unusual control over the elaboration of his wine no matter what the vagary of the vintage. Each harvest means different problems, yet most winemakers are predestined to a certain vinification by virtue of the equipment at hand. Their vinification will be essentially the same whether the grapes are shriveled, thick-skinned, and sugary, or plump with water from unseasonal showers. Brunier’s cellar is built up against the hillside next to his house. The grapes arrive at the rear and enter on conveyer belts, a rather gentle reception. They can be partially or totally destemmed, or not at all. They can be partially or totally crushed, or left intact. Henri is free to decide according to the constitution of each variety as it arrives. By an ingenious system of movable bins, the grapes then fall directly into whichever vat he chooses, without having suffered the stress of mechanical pumping. Once the must is in the fermentation tank, Henri can control its temperature, which is of exceeding importance in the south of France, where it is often brutally hot during the harvest. In 1985, for example, many growers saw their wines cooked right from the start because temperatures soared in the vats during an unusually ebullient fermentation. The result is a wine lacking freshness and fruit and marred by excessive volatile acidity. At Vieux Télégraphe, Brunier kept the fermenting mash down around 30 degrees centigrade, and his wine shows splendidly ripe fruit without a trace of volatility.

Dwarfed by this costly, gleaming, high-tech facility, one might imagine that Brunier had forsaken the chewy, old-style wine that made his reputation … until he explains that here the wine spends only the first twelve to fifteen days, the most tumultuous days, of its life. It could be compared to an obstetrics ward, because during this initial fermentation a wine is born and it can develop certain faults or virtues that will remain with it and mark its personality.

The second fermentation, the malolactic fermentation, takes place in glass-lined tanks under the most sanitary conditions possible. Brunier then has a clean, healthy wine which is racked into his huge oak casks, or foudres—the traditional aging vessel of the Rhône—to develop slowly for six to eighteen months.

When I arrive in the fall after the new vintage has finished the initial fermentation, we begin our business by tasting the new wine drawn directly from the glass-lined tanks. There are several cuvées to taste. The final assemblage will occur when the wine is racked into the oak foudres.

We usually begin with a cuvée of 100 percent Grenache. The aroma is reminiscent of pit fruits, like cherry, plum, and apricot. Certain years produce a sumptuousness that is blackberry-like. Typically, there is an extravagance of alcohol (sometimes between 15 and 16 degrees) and a lack of acidity. The wine fills the mouth, but there is no center.

The next sample is from a cuvée with a high proportion of Syrah. Disputes occur because I often arrive with the aftertaste still lingering from tastings of the noble Syrahs of the northern Rhône. The Syrah expresses itself in more vulgar terms in the southern soil and climate, where it seems more peppery and earthy, often leaden with rude tannins. The Bruniers see the violets and raspberry, the stuffing and length of it.

Mourvèdre dominates the next cuvée with its wilder (the French say sauvage), more vegetal aromas of garrigue and herb. The Bruniers value the Mourvèdre for its structure, nervosity, and, in contrast to the Grenache, its resistance to oxidation. However, there is also a sapid, delicious fruitiness recalling black cherries picked ripe off the tree, and an intriguing soulfulness, a darker, more mysterious nature than expressed by the pure Grenache. Mourvèdre has a leaner, intense feel to it, and in fact it normally ripens to only 12.5 degrees to 13 degrees alcohol.

Brunier still has some Cinsault in his vineyard, but little of it is destined for the final assemblage of what will be sold as Vieux Télégraphe. For the most part, it is blended with Syrah to make the Bruniers’ everyday house wine. A pure Cinsault passes over the taste buds without sticking, almost like water.

ROYAUME DES CRAUX

 

In a normal year Vieux Télégraphe is 75 percent Grenache, 15 percent Syrah, and 10 percent Mourvèdre. Recently, they planted five more acres of Mourvèdre, which, when the vines are old enough, will significantly alter the proportion of Mourvèdre in the final assemblage.

Then we move into the old cellars to taste the previous vintage. The walls are humid and moldy, lined with foudres. From twelve to twenty foudres contain wine, depending on the size of the year’s crop. Each foudre differs in size, but the average in Brunier’s cellar holds about seven thousand bottles of wine.

Henri’s son Daniel does the work of drawing the samples from the foudres. He has a robust, self-assured presence like his father. In his mid-twenties, he is curly-haired and well built, with a firm cut to his jaw. He has an irrepressible mischievous streak that grows more and more effective as he learns how to disguise it behind a serious expression. “Which one do you want to taste?” he asks, tossing a glance at the row of casks.

“Well, all of them,” I reply.

He grimaces. “They’re all the same.”

“Let’s taste them and see.”

Theoretically, each foudre contains the same wine because the final blend was made when the foudres were filled. However, the foudre itself has an influence, subtle or profound, on the wine as it ages. Therefore, I like to taste each and select the ones to be bottled and shipped to me.

Daniel grabs the wooden ladder and slams it up against a foudre. He pounds down on it once or twice to make sure it is secure, and climbs up on top, crawling between the cask and the roof.

All of us taste, Henri, Daniel, his brother Frédéric, and I, but they don’t contribute much in the way of opinion. I wish they would because they certainly know their wine better than I do. On the other hand, they appreciate all their offspring. How often do you hear a father say, “This child I don’t like”? And perhaps they like to stand back and judge my judgments.

Each sample means Daniel must scramble up and down the ladder one-handed because he has to carry the glass “thief” with which he draws the wine from the top of the cask. After the fifth or sixth cuvée he starts acting like it is a real pain in the ass, but over the years it is always the same routine; it is a playful pose for the sake of his father and brother.

Henri says, “C’est bon, ça,” about one cuvée, “This has the aroma,” about another. If I comment that one foudre seems to me the most complete, he says, “That cask always makes a good wine, but it really is strange because they were all exactly the same to begin with.” Each year he seems to learn anew that the evolution within each foudre is different.

As usual, when we went through the 1984s I jotted down a quick note on each foudre to remind me later on of the differences among the twelve to twenty tasted:

# 1. Spicy, a bit hard.

# 2. Lacks nerve.

# 3. Closed. Excellent palate. Finishes dry.

# 4. Nose lacks charm.

# 5. Spice and black pepper. Ripe, stony, long.

# 6. Most complete so far. Spicy, vibrant, deep, long.

# 7. Closed. Quite round but finishes abruptly.

# 8. Still full of CO2. Difficult to judge today.

# 9. Deep purple. Classic V.T. nose. Powerful, tannic, long.

# 10. Short.

# 11. Well-balanced, a bit dumb.

# 12. A bit tarry; lacks finesse.

# 13. Lovely robe. Finesse. Typical flavors. Finishes a bit short.

And so it continues. Finally Daniel marks foudres 5, 6, and 9 with a KL in chalk. One cannot say that I necessarily receive the best. For one thing, returning three months later, I might replace one of my selections with #8, which was that day so difficult to judge. Or another might develop unexpected qualities, which often happens. Finally, it would be surprising to find two tasters who could agree on a ranking of so many similar wines. However, I do get my preference, which adds a certain personal involvement to my work.

When I reminded them to bottle my foudres without filtering, our annual to-filter-or-not-to-filter discussion begins. With the 1982 vintage they began bottling my selections unfiltered, but the rest of their production was filtered. We have been arguing filtration a long time. Daniel sums up their position when he says, “There are filtrations and then there are filtrations. And then there is the system we use. It doesn’t change the wine at all.”

“If it doesn’t change the wine, why do it?” I ask.

“Just to take out the heaviest sediment.”

“Oh, you have a filter that thinks, that looks through the constituents of your wine and decides what needs removing? That is quite an advanced system.”

Then they surprise me by pulling out two bottles of 1983. “One is filtered, one unfiltered,” says Frédéric, the quiet Brunier whose expression tells you more than his utterances.

For years I have been waiting for just such a face-to-face comparison. Bizarre as it seems, it is the first time I have been provided with two glasses of the same wine, one filtered, the other unfiltered. Up to this moment, my lecturing winemakers all over France has been theoretical. One would think all winemakers would bottle such samples as a matter of course in order to experience with their eyes, noses, and palates the results of their manipulations.

The entire family is assembled for our blind comparison. Maggie Brunier leaves her pot-au-feu on the stove to join us. There is silence as we taste, then a secret ballot.

“It is unanimous,” Daniel announces, and pauses dramatically. “The unfiltered wins.”

What a victory! It is not astonishing, after all, because the difference between the two bottles was striking. The filtered was a limpid, one-dimensional ruby color, boring to the eye. The unfiltered was deeper-colored, shimmering with glints of purple and black.

The filtered smelled as clean as it looked, but what little nose it had seemed superficial compared to the unfiltered, and it gave an impression of fatigue, which is not illogical because filtration involves pumping, or pushing, the wine through a long series of cardboardlike plaques. The less you work a wine, the more vitality it retains. The unfiltered had a deep, healthy aroma. One might say that its aroma had texture; it seemed dense and full of nuances of spice and fruit. It smelled as good as the wine fresh out of the foudre.

On the palate, too, the filtered bottle lacked texture. It had body, but it didn’t coat the taste buds with flavor like the unfiltered, which was chewy and substantial.

A FOUDRE AT VIEUX TÉLÉGRAPHE

 

The difference in the aftertaste was dramatic. The filtered wine clunked dryly to a halt. In the unfiltered, the typical Vieux Télégraphe perfumes kept returning.

The Bruniers are keeping a stock of each bottling in order to compare the evolution over the years.

The difference between the two was dramatized by the face-to-face comparison. The filtered is not a bad wine. The Bruniers are conscientious and skilled; they do not practice severe or sterile filtrations. However, side by side, the filtered seemed merely decent, the unfiltered grand. There was more wine in the wine!

“But look at this,” Henri says, and he holds up to the light an unopened bottle of the unfiltered. “That’s what I don’t like, that petite tache.”

There was a petite tache, or smudge of deposit, that had settled on the underside of the bottle. Already. Even though the wine had very recently been bottled.

“What’s wrong with that, Henri?”

“It’s worrisome.”

“It’s nothing. I like it. It shows that you respect your wine too much to subject it to filtration.”

“The clients don’t like it.”

“Wait, I’m a client and I like it. For someone who doesn’t understand fine wine you are going to trade the color, the aroma, texture, and flavor for a spotless appearance?”

“What can one do? They return bottles like this. They think the wine is not clean.” He shrugs helplessly.

“Don’t sell to clients like that,” I insist. I could see that even after my secret-ballot victory the battle was not yet won. “Almost all my reds arrive now with this petite tache. People who love wine prefer to have it intact, even if it means there is a little sediment, which falls harmlessly to the bottom anyway. You watch, Henri. Soon it will be fashionable, the sign of a serious winemaker, to bottle without filtering. Your customers will be demanding an unfiltered wine.”

Daniel speaks up. “We’ll have to uncork our bottles and add a little deposit to make them happy!”

It is a relief to terminate with laughter what is actually a dispute of passionate importance to both of us.

One must not have the impression that the problem of filtration is easy to resolve. It is not as simple as saying, “I shall, or shall not, filter.” Foremost is the problem in the marketplace. If a vintner chooses not to filter, he limits himself to the minority of wine buyers, the true connoisseurs who care about quality and will accept some gunk at the bottom of the bottle. For superstar producers like Brunier, the problem is not as big as he makes it out to be, because there is never enough Vieux Télégraphe to supply the demand. He has certainly reached the point at which he can choose his clientele and bottle the finest, most natural wine possible.

But there is also the question of how to bottle a wine without filtering. One cannot proceed just like that, leaving out the filter. Above all, it is a matter of clarification by natural methods: fining, racking, and time, allowing the unwanted material to fall to the bottom of the cask and drawing off the clear wine. The ancients understood how to do it; they had to because they had no filters. However, today’s is a hurry-up world, time is money, and fining and racking require more patience, care, and attention than mashing one’s wine through a filter pad.

Also, winemakers in France pay a tax on their stock. Thus, today’s scarcity of old bottles and the rush to bottle and sell as quickly as possible. Châteauneuf-du-Pape used to spend three to four years in foudre. Some growers today bottle before a year has passed. No one likes taxes, especially a Frenchman.

Vieux Télégraphe was not filtered until the 1979 vintage. One might claim that they earned their reputation with unfiltered wine, but in fact very little Vieux Télégraphe was bottled at the domaine until the 1978 vintage. For the most part, it had been sold in bulk to négociants.

The domaine’s origins go back to the turn of the century, according to Henri. “My grandfather, Hippolyte Brunier, was a peasant, meaning he lived off the land. He grew melons, lettuce, almonds, apricots, wheat, and he had two acres of vines in the heart of this plateau, which was known as the Royaume des Craux.” (Royaume means realm or kingdom. Crau is an arid plateau dressed in stones which supports little in the way of vegetation.)

“My grandfather put a little of his wine in bottle. He saw that it pleased the clients, so he and my uncle purchased another forty acres. Forty acres of garrigue, scrubland, woods. After the first war, they began to transform it to vines. My grandfather worked the land, my uncle handled the business side of it, and my father built the original chais with his own hands.”

Henri began working with them in 1940 at age seventeen. During World War II, they acquired additional acreage. “It was cheap. No one wanted it. There was no market for wine then. Some simply gave us their land. It was believed worthless because it was covered with scrub. To clear it by hand … Then you Americans arrived and introduced us to the bulldozer.” He lets out a deep chuckle. “And then, after the war, people began to ask for the wine again.

“When I sold my wine to the négociants, I always received the highest price,” he says proudly. “Our wine was called a vin de médecin because the négociants used it to remedy the ills of their less successful cuvées.”

Henri Brunier is a proud man without a trace of haughtiness or self-importance. Such a man, who rightfully takes pleasure in his achievements, is rare and a joy to behold. With so many people who have attained success, one has the impression that their thirst for it will never be quenched because they never take the time to celebrate their blessings. Above all, the source of Henri’s pride is his family; they are close yet notably individualistic and independent, and they love him. As he surveys the great plateau, the Royaume des Craux, one sees his pride now that it is planted and productive. He succeeded in introducing modern technology into his cellar without compromising the robust, old-fashioned character of his wine. He guided the commercialization away from bulk sales toward domaine bottling with his name on the label. And you see his pride when he says, “It is a wine that pleases.”

*   *   *

Price and celebrity; adorned with these diadems, Châteauneuf-du-Pape reigns upon the throne of the wine aristocracy of the southern Rhône. As to quality…? Yes, bow and scrape, but not to all pretenders to the throne. At Châteauneuf-du-Pape, one finds the drinkable and the undrinkable, the majestic and the tired, orange-colored, overalcoholic flop. Drinking a great one is an event.

There is both an official and an unofficial hierarchy of appellations in the southern Rhône. Officially, Châteauneuf-du-Pape is not ranked above Lirac, Tavel, or Gigondas. The four have the right to stand on their name alone.

Bulky as it is, the official hierarchy defining the areas of appellation contrôlée is not engraved in stone; it is ever-changing, overcomplicated, and confusing. In its present form it exists more to soothe the pride and commercial instincts of the thousands of local growers than to serve as a guide or guarantor of quality to the consumer.

After Châteauneuf-du-Pape, Lirac, Tavel, and Gigondas, there are the villages and communes (twenty-seven in 1985) that have the right to state their name on their label as long as it is tied to the designation Côtes du Rhône Villages: Rasteau, Côtes du Rhône Villages, for example.

Then there are the forty-seven communes (in 1985) that can also call their wine Côte du Rhône Villages, but which are not allowed to specify more precisely their origin.

There must be a better system than this!

By far, wine from the largest surface (producing 1.4 million hectoliters in 1983) is bottled under the vaguest label, Côtes du Rhône. Without question, the logic of the system appears to be: vagueness equals inferior quality. In fact, one can encounter unpotable Tavels and snappy Côtes du Rhônes. Actually, a precise label means only that the official controls on production, grape varieties, and alcoholic content are more severe. Still, there is an implication of quality control, and the consumer responds to that implication.

Meanwhile, there is a humble vin de pays, or “country wine” (an upstart, an outcast, because its vines lie just outside the official Côtes du Rhône zone), whose wine can outluster a good many of its titled neighbors. The vineyard is the Domaine de la Gautière, near Buis-les-Baronnies. Paul and Georgette Tardieu are the proprietors of the Domaine de la Gautière. It is worth visiting and they look forward to visitors. Paul especially likes Americans. He gave me a discount because I am an American. He remembers the war. Their domaine is only about forty miles northeast toward the Alps from Châteauneuf-du-Pape, but give yourself plenty of time because the territory in between has an endless, ageless allure, and there are several villages en route in which you may wish to tarry.

For example, Orange, the city, has a chunky-looking Roman theater, a well-preserved (as they say when there is nothing better to be said) Arc de Triomphe, and, on a more transient level, a master cheese merchant, Monsieur Alan Parant, whose tidy, jam-packed shop is on the Place de la République, just a few steps from the tourist congestion around the theater. Parant has a fabulous assortment of the very finest cheeses available from all over France. Ask for a taste of what interests you, or take his advice. He knows more about cheese than any ten million Frenchmen, and he is eager to share his enthusiasm and his treasures. Orange was one of the important Roman cities; however, most traces have been destroyed or covered over by succeeding habitants. The last time I tried to park in Orange’s block-large central parking lot, it was fenced off because of new excavations. From what I could make out, an elaborate public bath has been unearthed a stone’s throw from the theater, about twenty feet below the asphalt surface of the parking lot, leading one to wonder what else lies underfoot. With each step you take in downtown Orange, you are only a few feet from another civilization.

Around here, each village has some wonderful distraction. Drive east to Sarrians, where Marius Dumas (great name, with its Pagnol and Monte Cristo connotations) still bakes bread in his wood-fired oven. It is worth a short detour to taste what French bread used to be, and you might require a loaf to go with your cheeses. As for mouth rinse, vines are everywhere!

The village of Beaumes-de-Venise was constructed in levels up a hillside on which you also see isolated groves of olive trees and vines, the former producing an olive oil touted by Elizabeth David, the latter producing a succulent sweet Muscat, one of France’s loveliest dessert wines. A local restaurant once served an interesting little refresher between my fish and lamb courses, an ice made with the local Muscat in which rosemary branches had been macerated. It was not sweet, simply a breathtakingly aromatic ice that smelled like Provence in blossom and left the palate lively and alert for the garlic-studded leg of lamb that followed.

Just around the bend to the north is the village of Vacqueyras. Truly a wine village, every house, it seems, has a cellar underneath. There must be interesting wine at Vacqueyras, but often the search for good wine involves simple luck, a question of whether or not one’s leads pan out. After several scouting trips to Vacqueyras, I still have not found one to import.

Artifacts reveal that the Romans, smart fellows, enjoyed a good quantity of wine at Gigondas. The name is supposedly from Jocanditus, which means “merry or joyous city.” While the village as it stands is not that ancient, it is old enough. With tile roofs and cavernlike dwellings—the doorways appear to lead right into the hillside—it is an altogether idyllic, surprisingly lazy, secluded spot. What a wonderful place for a wine merchant to retire, surrounded by vines, olive and fruit trees, wild herbs, ruins of the medieval fortified city on the hillside, and a population of only 750 with whom to share it all.

VILLAGE IN THE SOUTHERN RHÔNE

 

There is not a white Gigondas, but a rosé is produced, better to cope, perhaps, with the summer’s blazing heat. However, winter means cold weather ofttimes in concert with a howling mistral, and few of the homes are heated except by fireplace, which is where the cooking is done, too. In such a setting, the sturdy red wine of the village comes in handy. A glass or two for warmth while the pot simmers and we poke at the coals … a glass or two in the pot of course … Hand over that corkscrew, will you; we’ve drained the bottle and dinner’s just ready.

I have imported several Gigondas over the years, but I stick with old man Faraud, whose home is right at the entrance to the village. It took several visits and some outside interference before Faraud agreed to sell to me. The first time I broached the subject, he began trembling and quaking as if I had suggested some wildly deviate act. Export? Send his wine several thousand miles away? The idea scared him to death. I kept returning, each time buying a case or two, putting them in the trunk of my car like a retail client. He warmed up a bit, but my attempts to purchase a serious quantity were answered with a nervous smile and a shake of the head.

One year Aubert de Villaine, a grower in Burgundy, accompanied me to Gigondas. We tasted in several cellars, then stopped at Faraud’s.

“This is the one I want,” I told Aubert, “but he is afraid to export.”

“He probably thinks he won’t get paid,” Aubert said.

We stood in the cramped entry hall that serves as Faraud’s office, tasting the latest bottling out of water glasses with him and his wife. Madame Faraud has lean, birdlike, sharply etched features, no cosmetics, gray hair, and bright, vigilant eyes. Her clothes are faded and oft-repaired. There is a sort of rural, aged beauty to her. She spoke no more than a word or two and left from time to time to tend to lunch, which smelled like turnips and carrots. Once again, I made my pitch to Faraud, while Madame watched warily.

Faraud twisted at the cork on his corkscrew. “I don’t export,” he said.

“I ship my wine to Kermit,” Aubert said. “It is not at all complicated.”

In his creaky, fusty voice, Faraud said he didn’t have enough wine.

“I’m not looking for large quantities,” I said. “You tell me how much you want to sell.”

He shook his head no.

As we drove off with a case of Faraud Gigondas in the trunk, Aubert gave me some advice which has proven useful again and again in dealing with small growers like Faraud. “I know what the problem is. It is not the quantity. You’re talking to the wrong person. In the old French families—well, it is more or less true today, too—the wife handles the accounts. You didn’t say more than Bonjour to Madame Faraud, and she is the key. Ask about her garden. Bring up the names of others that you buy from around here.”

It worked. Nowadays, Faraud pesters me to buy larger quantities.

Faraud’s Gigondas is ultratraditional. A visit to his cellar, seeing his winery equipment, is like a visit to the nineteenth century. Once I found him seated on a wooden stool bottling by hand, bottle by bottle, from a brass spigot in the ancient oak foudre. A foudre holds several thousand bottles. Once you have begun bottling, you must finish it or risk oxidation, and it is monotonous work. That is why almost all winemakers hook up a bottling machine and an electric pump and press the START button. However, as wine simply doesn’t like to be shoved around, it is exhausted after passing through the bottling line. Faraud’s method is an anachronism, but it is kinder to the wine.

His production averages thirty hectoliters to the hectare, which is about half the production of a Meursault vineyard in a normal year. Thus, the power, the sap, the concentration of flavor in his wine. Thus, his Spartan lifestyle. Small production is not the most profitable policy. Faraud drives a tractor, not a Mercedes.

Some are put off by the rusticity of his Gigondas. It can be a shock once one is habituated to the taste of the overproduced, overelaborated wines that dominate the marketplace. Others revel in its punch and genuineness. Some neighbors say his vinification is outdated, but his wine is like a remembrance of things past. Were Faraud the type to verbalize a philosophy he might say, “It has worked for centuries. Why change?”

The contrast between Faraud and André Roux at the nearby Château du Trignon could not be greater. If Roux were not constantly searching to improve, “mieux faire,” as he says, he would find a different line of work. Faraud has barely noticed the twentieth century’s arrival; Roux will try anything in order to progress. His cellar is lined with cement vats, and there is not a foudre in sight. He drives a BMW, not a Mercedes.

Short, stocky, closing in on his sixtieth year, André Roux has a thick brush of hair in which the pepper is giving way to salt. Thick jowls, thick lips, a thick waist. Either there is something Saint Bernard–like about his appearance, or one is too influenced by the giant, furry dog blocking his doorway.

André is a thinker, and of the many pleasures he derives from wine, the intellectual aspect is what motivates him. He makes consistently intriguing wines.

He makes Gigondas, Rasteau, Sablet, Côtes du Rhône Villages, and both red and white Côtes du Rhône, all of which he vinifies by carbonic maceration, a method that evokes images of fresh, inconsequential quaffing wines like Beaujolais nouveau. Critics bad-mouth the method, in which the alcoholic fermentation occurs within the skin of each uncrushed grape in airtight vats under a preservative layer of carbon dioxide, calling carbonic maceration wines insipid, spineless, short-lived … In a word, carbonic maceration wines are not considered macho. However, when Roux’s wine is poured, the glass is stained with deep, vivid color. The aroma is lively and complex. It fills the mouth with flavor and it is tannic enough. Destroying once and for all the notion that carbonic maceration wines do not age well, Roux will pull out a Côtes du Rhône Villages that he vinified in 1966. It is not a fluke. He can also uncork a 1967 or 1969 to prove his point. Tasted in 1983, even an unsung vintage like 1974 was at a rather glorious peak. Roux explains that for Beaujolais nouveau there is a very short period of maceration before the wine is drawn off the skins and seeds, while his maceration continues for almost a month, plenty of time for the maximum extraction of color, tannin, and flavor components.

Each visit finds André seized by a new idea. He is planting a large parcel of his Sablet vines over to Mourvèdre in search of structure and flavor interest. He is studying with the faculty at Montpellier the question of optimal maturity in order to harvest his different grape varieties at the moment they give their finest perfumes. Contrary to almost universal opinion, ripest is not always the finest. He has planted a vineyard of Viognier and one of Marsanne to see what these noble whites from the northern Rhône will give in his terroir and climate.

Like artists and cooks, most winemakers want to hear only compliments. André wants serious feedback. Simply saying you like one of his wines leaves him unsatisfied.

Tasting the 1983 Rasteau out of the glass-lined vat, I told him that I would like to see it spend a few months in foudre because it needed to breathe through the wood a bit. It seemed closed in upon itself. He led the way to another corner of the cellar which held three spanking new Burgundy barrels. Holding a glass thief in one hand, he tried to knock the barrel’s wooden stopper loose with the other hand, then went off to find a hammer. He banged tentatively at the stopper because he did not yet have the knack that comes with familiarity.

“We’ll see,” he said, easing the thief through the bung. “The same wine, but it breathes in a barrel.”

“Yes, it breathes, but it is not the same as a big old foudre,” I said.

We sniffed. It was a good wine, but it lacked what I call “typicity.” The new oak had rendered it an anonymous red wine, masking its characteristic aromas.

André agreed. “The wood dominates. Too much vanilla. Well, it is an experiment. We have to top off the barrels almost daily because it is too dry here. The wine evaporates through the wood. It breathes too much!” he joked.

For centuries, the foudre was the traditional aging vessel for wine in the south of France. Before that, wine vats were carved out of the rock. The walls of the stone cuves that have been unearthed show hand-struck chisel markings. The result obtained by aging a wine in a glass-lined tank is probably little different from aging in rock. André’s experiment with new barrels demonstrated that the ancients had a rationale. After all, they could have stored their wine in small oak barrels instead of large foudres just as easily as did the Burgundians or Bordelais. Small barrels were not employed, because the arid climate of the Midi sucks out too much wine, the loss in liquid volume would simply be insupportable on financial grounds, and the taste of wood obliterates rather than marries with the southern grape varieties. Grenache, Mourvèdre, Syrah: in a new oak barrel, they have a muted expression. At Vieux Télégraphe, when Brunier must replace a worn-out foudre, he puts his vin ordinaire into the new one for two or three vintages to leech out the wood flavors before he will use it for his Châteauneuf-du-Pape.

“Personally, I don’t like the taste of oak,” Roux said, echoing the sentiment of most winemakers in the Midi, “but I don’t want to have a closed mind about anything that might improve my wine.”

*   *   *

One night, owing André Roux and his wife Colette a favor, I invited them to dinner. It had to be somewhere special because during one of my trips they lent me a four-hundred-year-old town house in downtown Sablet, a rustic little village near Gigondas. It was paradise, a house instead of yet another hotel, a kitchen in which to dabble rather than the hit-or-miss risk of yet another restaurant. During the daylight hours I worked the wine villages of the southern Rhône, tasting in dark moldy cellars and bright stainless-steel-furnished installations, tasting hundreds of wines—mostly powerful, tannic wines—until my mouth felt like the inside of a barrel. Returning home evenings, I would search across the flat, vine-covered plain for Sablet’s Romanesque bell tower in order to gauge the distance I still had to cover before I could kick off my shoes, pour myself a glass of André’s refreshing white wine, and begin concocting some simple dinner based on olive oil, garlic, and usually one of the small-leafed basil plants that are available in the markets during the spring and summer months. I would read myself to sleep to the sound of the gurgling stone fountain outside my window.

I invited André and Colette to a nearby restaurant of some repute. The cuisine was fine enough; I ate it, then forgot it because of everything else that occurred. The wine list was dazzling. One page listed domaine-bottled reds and whites from nearby Châteauneuf-du-Pape. The right-hand page listed rare old Bordeaux and Burgundies. The great growths. The great vintages. At irresistible prices! I fell for the 1929 Château d’Yquem. I had never tasted the 1929; I knew I would never see it again at such a low price, and I thought it would make a rather memorable thank-you gift to André and Colette, whose eyes widened in disbelief when I ordered it.

Even though I had invited André, we had to fight over who would pick up the bill. It is an unceasing battle to “outgenerous” André. With one hand I held him back by the throat, with my other I tossed out my American Express card.

“We don’t accept credit cards,” the waiter announced. My high good humor turned to shock and silence. I felt as defenseless as when I first noticed my thick head of hair turning thin. No credit card? The ’29 Yquem was cheap, but not so cheap that I had enough cash on me. Of course André reached for his checkbook, but I stopped him firmly with a glance that let him know that I was not playing. He was my guest; he would never have ordered that ’29 for himself.

There had to be a way out (apart from the back door). This is a serious restaurant, I told myself, and upon arrival I had introduced myself to the chef/proprietor and transmitted to him the best regards of some mutual friends. I would simply explain my dilemma to him and he would offer a solution.

I left my guests and asked at the cashier’s desk for the owner. He came out of the kitchen in his white chef’s suit, toqueless, unsmiling, and I explained that I had expected to pay with a credit card … The man exploded into a tirade against credit cards. He had never accepted them and never would! He made me feel like a credit-card salesman.

“I understand,” I said carefully, even if I did not, “but I am in a delicate situation. Normally, I carry enough…”

“Your friend can pay,” he said.

“He is my guest. Believe me, that is not the solution.”

I was coldly informed that none of the great restaurants take credit cards.

What was his problem? I told him to check his Guide Michelin and show me a three-star restaurant that refuses credit cards. A three-star meal is so horridly expensive, only drug dealers would carry enough cash to pay cash. The French have checkbooks, of course, but the gastronomic palaces rely on foreigners for survival these days, so they accept cards as a matter of course.

I was imagining walking out without paying. Instead, I proposed that I go to a bank the next day and send him a cashier’s check. He accepted this solution, this obvious solution, which any gracious restaurateur would have proposed at the outset.

The taste of that fabulous 1929 Yquem stayed with me. One of my favorite wine-drinking companions is Jean-Marie Peyraud, the winemaker at Domaine Tempier. We both love wine, we are longtime friends, and we never agree about anything we taste. If a wine seems tannic to me, Jean-Marie is just as likely to say it lacks tannin. If it is tart for me, it is flat for him. We discuss, dispute, define. One night I was rhapsodizing the qualities of the 1929 Yquem. We decided to return to the scene of the crime together to celebrate something and try another bottle of the ’29.

When I arrived alone, the chef was at the door, but neither of us acted as if we had ever met. I gave the name Peyraud because the reservation was in Jean-Marie’s name.

At table, Jean-Marie and I spent half an hour going over the wine list. There was an old La Tâche, Latours and Lafites from the thirties and forties … not exactly cheap, but, relative to the going price, irresistible. One red could not be ignored, the legendary 1947 Cheval Blanc. Some have called it the finest Bordeaux of the century. From our waiter, who seemed to be strangely breathless throughout the meal, we ordered a 1947 Cheval Blanc and a 1929 Yquem. The chef arrived a few moments later and apologized; there were no more ’29s. “An American took the last bottle last spring,” he said. “However, there are some older Sauternes in the cellar which do not figure on the wine list. Climens 1928, Yquem 1921 and 1947, Coutet 1947…”

“Why don’t you remove the ’29 from your list if it is no longer available?” I asked.

Jean-Marie spoke up quickly. “Fine, we shall discuss it and let the waiter know our decision.”

A platter of amuse-gueule was placed on the table, then the waiter arrived with our 1947 Cheval Blanc. It lay in one of those straw baskets for decanting. He carefully cut the lead foil, removed it, and then his mouth dropped open. I followed his eyes to the top of the bottle and my mouth fell open, too. There was no cork there.

“Ça, c’est curieux,” said Jean-Marie.

I thought to myself, now this is going to be interesting. The waiter could take the bottle away and start all over with another. However, it must be difficult to pour a rare hundred-dollar bottle into the stockpot just like that. He was torn for a moment, then he lifted the basket and poured a taste into my glass. The wine was brown. I sniffed it. It was oxidized. I shook my head no, that it would not do. He left with the bottle. Jean-Marie and I raised our eyebrows at each other, awaiting the next scene.

“How could it happen?” I asked. “Was there ever a cork? Did it fall into the wine, carrying it up from the cellar? Or has the capsule been the wine’s only protection all these years?”

Our waiter reappeared with the news that the chef had tasted the wine in the kitchen and pronounced it drinkable.

“We did not order it to have something merely drinkable,” I said, thinking to myself that it was about as drinkable as warm prune juice.

The chef sped from behind the curtain across the dining room to our table, causing other diners to perk up and pay attention. He moved rapidly, without much upper-body movement, as if he were riding a unicycle. He plopped the enormous wine list into my lap and asked, “Maybe you would prefer something else?”

That surprised me. I expected him either to refuse to take back the bad bottle or to offer us another. Was he going to resort to his “last bottle” routine? Given our history, it would have been more politic had I left it to Jean-Marie, but I said, “We ordered the ’47 Cheval Blanc. It was a bad bottle. We would like to stay with 1947 Cheval Blanc.”

His jaw turned to steel; he grabbed his wine list out of my hands, spun away, and pedaled off. I began to think that dining out is not all it is cracked up to be. Then the waiter appeared with the second bottle, pulled its cork, and poured a healthy splash of purplish/black liquid into my glass. I swirled and sniffed, thinking any wine that looked so good must smell good, and it did. There was an impressive aroma, thick and dusty like the door to Ali Baba’s cave opened. Jean-Marie started laughing out loud when he sniffed his. It was that good. I looked up at the waiter, who was waiting for a sign of approval, and I nodded yes, good, this is it, all that we hoped for …

Throughout our meal, we argued about which Sauternes to take. The 1921 Yquem seemed a likely substitute for the ’29, but once before I had fallen upon a ’21 Yquem that had not aged gracefully. After the corkless Cheval Blanc, I was in no mood to take chances. As we nibbled our cheese, we agreed, “Let’s stick to the year 1947 and follow our Cheval Blanc with Yquem.” I signaled to our waiter and ordered the wine.

“Très bien, monsieur,” he said and walked back to the curtain. After enough time to pronounce the words “1947 Yquem,” the chef came bursting out and accelerated triple time to our table.

He glared at me and spoke through clenched teeth. “C’est la deuxième fois que je ne suis pas content avec vous, Monsieur Lynch, c’est la deuxième fois que je ne suis pas content avec vous!” Perhaps he repeated himself for emphasis, or did he think my French lacking? And now, all of a sudden, I was Monsieur Lynch! And what did he mean by “la deuxième fois”? Which had been the first time that I displeased him, the credit-card dispute or the corkless Cheval Blanc? I sat waiting. It was all rather delicious.

“For a great bottle like the 1947 Château d’Yquem,” he proceeded, “one must order at the beginning of the meal so it can be properly prepared.”

Prepared? What is there to do? You pull the cork and pour. “Is it in your cellar here?” I asked.

“Of course, but it must be at the proper temperature.”

Proper temperature? What an odd thing to say.

“Why? Is your cellar too hot?” I asked.

At that he turned purple, and of course my question was insulting, but what else might the problem be? For an old Sauternes, especially Yquem, cellar temperature is likely to be the perfect serving temperature. Too cold and its qualities will be deadened; too warm and it is unpleasant. If cellar temperature is not quite right, you simply slip the bottle into an ice bucket for a few moments or minutes as necessary. I told him to serve it at cellar temperature, “and we shall see if it needs further chilling.”

The bottle required five minutes in an ice bucket. It was an impressive wine but still young, a bit tight, a bit closed. We enjoyed the perfection it promised, fifteen or twenty more years down the road.

When the bill was presented, Jean-Marie reached for his checkbook, because we had agreed to split it. I stopped him, pulled out my wallet, and laid my American Express card on the dish. When our waiter arrived, I spotted the chef peeking out at us from behind the curtain. I thought the waiter was going to faint away when he saw the credit card. “We don’t accept credit cards,” he said warily. I winked at Jean-Marie, who knew the whole story, and we pulled out our checkbooks. Between the two meals, I had opened a French checking account.

*   *   *

Dining offers travelers the most important diversion of a day on the road. At the end of the meal, the pocketbook is pulled out to pay for the food, service, and ambience. One walks out of the restaurant altered by what transpired at table. Generally, I try to avoid certain starred restaurants where empty pomp and circumstance reign, especially in the Rhône, where the best food is found raw in the village markets. Once Provençal cooking takes on airs, it is no longer Provençal. You would be better off with a simple roadside picnic. In the starred establishments today, good taste is usually ignored or insulted at a high tariff. At one three-star restaurant, the butter on my table sported a little flagpole advertising the dairy. In return, presumably, the restaurant received a discount? Meanwhile, the meal totaled over a hundred dollars per person. With commercial announcements! Do not be surprised if the cigarette girls of yesteryear make a comeback. Just as you are sniffing a cognac at the end of your meal, a young woman will appear with her tray of goodies suspended beneath her breasts. “Troisgros mustard, sir? Alain Chapel corkscrew? Bocuse wristwatch?”

One restaurant that I return to is l’Oustalet, the only restaurant in centre ville Gigondas. The cuisine is not spectacular but they do know how to make a vinaigrette, how to fry a potato, I do not think they have a freezer, and it is a comfortable setting even if the locals receive prompter service than the tourists. Here you can enjoy simple family cooking, Provençal-style. There is a careless selection of local wines and a sorry assortment of packaged cheeses. Still I go back—day after day when I am working nearby—and help myself to the generous cart of salads and charcuterie. There is grated carrot, cucumber, celery root, cold boiled potatoes with black olives and little morsels of anchovy, rice salad with peppers and mussels, sausages, and more. Then comes a main course such as grilled lamb cutlets or chicken in a spicy tomato sauce. How unlikely it must seem that such a place deserves mention, but it does because the food is hearty and genuine and will not devastate one’s digestive system. In France in the 1980s, that makes it worth a detour, and even though it is well off the beaten path, it fills up with truck drivers and traveling salesmen … if it is open. There’s the rub. How many times have I crossed the Rhône Valley to enjoy a decent lunch at l’Oustalet only to find the door locked. I swear there is no rhyme or reason to their business hours. As if France did not already have its fair share of holidays (three three-day weekends in May alone), but they are not of a sufficient number to satisfy the proprietors of l’Oustalet, who throw up the closed sign whenever the mood strikes. Their attitude is as Provençal as their cooking. Expect to be underwhelmed, but you will have had something authentic and you will walk out satisfied.

Of course, my point of view is different from that of a tourist who is in France for a once-in-a-lifetime vacation. Going to a gastronomic shrine is a shared experience for visitors to France; when they return home, they can talk to friends and compare notes about what happened at Taillevent or Bocuse. No one is going to ask how they found the cuisine at l’Oustalet. French tourists in the States have their own “don’t miss” list of places to go: Las Vegas, Disneyland, and the Grand Canyon.

I am on the road in France four to five months of the year, and I crave home cooking.

*   *   *

Not far from Gigondas, medieval Seguret clings to a solid-rock, half-dome-shaped hill. On a clear day the village is a dazzling sight when the sun shines on its silvery limestone cliff and stone buildings. There is a ruined castle atop the hill, narrow winding streets that discourage motorists, and though you are only about twenty-five miles from Châteauneuf-du-Pape, with another twenty-five to go before reaching the Domaine de la Gautière, you might, after all the distractions, require a hotel for the night. The view from the rooms of the hotel La Table du Comtat is unforgettable. It overlooks a vast plain, La Plan de Dieu, with its colorful sea of vines, and looking back toward Gigondas, one has a view of the Dentelles de Montmirail, those skyward-pointing rocks that stick up like teeth from the broom-and-oak-covered hills. Dents means “teeth.” I tell everyone that they were named the Dentelles because they are so clearly toothlike, but not one Frenchman has agreed with me or even listened patiently to my etymological fancies. Dentelle means “lace,” and can’t you see, the Dentelles are a lacelike fringe on top of the hills.

Vaison-la-Romaine is only a few miles farther along, and the guidebooks devote several pages to its diverse pleasures, most notably its Roman ruins.

Then one heads east on D-5 toward Buis-les-Baronnies, where 85 percent of France’s herb harvest is traded. The air smells good. The scenery changes. More and more mountains thrust up boldly from the fertile valley floor. To the south is the Mont Ventoux, which at 6,200 feet has a dominating presence. To the east the summits heighten and crowd together; these are the foothills of the Alps, yet it is still Provence, which makes a wildly beautiful combination.

Shortly before Buis-les-Baronnies, there is a sign directing visitors up the hill to the Domaine de la Gautière. The dirt road winds up through olive trees to the old stone farmhouse, where you will be greeted with a smile, a handshake, and a cool glass of Paul and Georgette Tardieu’s red wine. The warmth of the sun cooks up a wonderfully spicy fragrance from the vegetation. Then a bowl of herb-flavored black olives appears, with a platter of sliced sausage. “The sausage is nitrate-free,” Georgette says matter-of-factly.

Their dark, purplish wine does not have an appellation contrôlée. It has the right to call itself simply vin de pays, or “country wine.” While it is a characterful, delicious wine, which can outluster a good many of its titled neighbors, nothing in your wine dictionary or encyclopedia or atlas of wine will guide you to it. And most American merchants do not want to fiddle with it, because their customers demand Napa, Bordeaux, Burgundy, the big guns, as if everything grand had already been discovered and categorized, as if price and label always deliver what they promise.

In 1982 Gautière’s vin de pays sold in California, with difficulty, at $2.50 per bottle!

At that time I sent along a case of Gautière’s wine as a gift to Madame Gruère, who ran my office in Beaune. She is Burgundian, related to the Louis Latour family, and she worked for years as private secretary to Robert Drouhin. She owns a vineyard at Savigny-les-Beaune. In other words, she is heart and soul Burgundian right down to the terroir on her shoes. No one can accuse her of prejudice.

She wrote back saying that she appreciated my little gift of twelve bottles. “We had a large group over last weekend, including a few people from the Burgundy wine trade, and several different wines were uncorked. There was a Chambertin on the table, but me, I drank the vin de pays.”

Is the Gautière vin de pays better than Chambertin? It depends on which Chambertin, does it not? The Gautière is delicious and it has soul, while many bottles labeled Chambertin have no deliciousness, no soul, and precious little Chambertin. But what a question: Is it better than Chambertin? “Better for what?” is the only proper reply.

Better when dining at Taillevent, the Parisian gastronomic palace? No, at Taillevent the noblest bottles are appropriate.

Is it better than Chambertin if you have Richard Nixon over for dinner? No. There is the story that Nixon, aboard the presidential yacht Sequoia, served his guests plonk, but his glass was filled with Château Margaux from a bottle masked by a white towel wrapping. Better to serve Nixon Chambertin, making sure to turn the bottle so he can see the label.

Is Gautière’s vin de pays better than Chambertin served alongside black olives and sliced sausage? Yes.

With ratatouille? Yes.

Hot onion omelet with vinegar sauce? Yes.

Soupe au pistou? Yes.

At home, alone, for a quick lunch? Yes, then it is preferable even to a great Chambertin. One cannot do justice to a great bottle alone. Someone with whom to ooh and aah is indispensable, someone with whom to share the intellectual and aesthetic stimulation that a great bottle inspires.

The boundary that determines the limits of the appellation Côtes du Rhône stops two miles west of the Domaine de la Gautière. If wines from the slopes around Gautière could wear a Côte du Rhône label, there would be more vineyards planted because they would fetch a worthwhile price, higher than they can manage now with their vague vin de pays label, and Gautière’s wine demonstrates that these slopes can outperform many areas that possess an official appellation. The French system of controlled appellations can sometimes legislate against quality wine, which is of course just the opposite of the intended result. Nothing new here: legislation has often sown the seeds of injustice, no matter how well-meaning our intentions. The appellation contrôlée system is an ingenious expression of the French mentality, a mentality that has deep roots in France’s aristocratic past. Under the aristocracy, a person of value could fail to rise in society because of the lack of birthright. So it is that valuable vineyard land can go for naught for the lack of an appellation. The Tardieus keep a sense of humor about it all: C’est la vie.

Never mind, the quality of the wine is not the only thing that makes La Gautière interesting anyway. What is fascinating is the history of Paul and Georgette Tardieu, the proprietors. Georgette says she is tired of recounting their story. “People envy us because we gave up everything to move here to La Gautière. They would all like to change their lives as we did, but they don’t dare because they’re afraid that if they did they wouldn’t have anything on their plate to eat. But they question us as if we could provide the key to solving their problems.”

The Tardieus live a life many of us only dream about. They turned their backs on city life and created a self-sufficient country paradise. Above all, an aversion to the pollution and congestion of the big city inspired them to risk everything and head for the hills. Paul says he wanted to “grow old in good health,” so he took measures to ensure that he would. “We isolated ourselves from the pollution; we consume fresh, natural products. Consequently, we know we’ll make a healthy old couple. Often we receive visits from merchants who try to sell us chemical products. We give them a little glass of our organic wine and explain our philosophy before saying Au revoir. They’re wasting their time with us.”

“Organic” is a word that does not work in a wineshop. Vin de pays, strike one. Organic wine, strike two. The word seems to have a negative impact on most wine connoisseurs. And it is true that many organically produced wines are liable to fizz, gurgle, and stink to high heaven because no chemicals have been used to kill possible yeasts and bacteria.

However, there is another side to the question. Would that I were a health nut, but I am not. Still, I look very closely at organically produced wines when I hear of them because what you have is the unadulterated product of earth, vine, and man. Man’s part of the equation, the vinification, can be well or poorly executed, but if we find a winemaker of talent who knows how to bottle a clean wine, then an organic wine has a good chance to be interesting. Once you start throwing chemical fertilizers into the soil to increase production, chemical treatments onto the vines to kill pests, and yet others into the wine itself to stabilize it, you change the quality and personality of what comes out through the vine into the grape and ultimately into your wineglass. That fundamental expression of soil and fruit is distorted. Chemicals increase production, they protect the wine from nature’s quirks, but they also muck up the elemental statement that wine is capable of making.

Georgette is Provençale by birth. Paul is from the Massif Central, a province he describes as cold and harsh. Wisely enough, he headed south, where he met Georgette. “Once you know Provence, you don’t ever want to leave it,” he says. “No one ever heads back north. No one!”

He worked in Avignon selling fruit and vegetables. He developed a passion for wine and beekeeping, and at the same time grew to hate city life. “Avignon was already a big city,” says Paul, who has never seen New York or Los Angeles. “We decided to move to the country, to recycle ourselves, to work in direct contact with nature.”

Georgette says she got her passion for nature from her father. “He built a house five miles outside Avignon in a garrigue. Do you know what a garrigue is? In a garrigue there are cicadas, green oaks, poor soil, and wild herbs. We had no plumbing or electricity. I was raised barefoot, naked to the sun, swimming and boating in the Rhône, gas lamps—that’s how I grew up. Then I was obliged to move to Avignon to earn a living. As the years went by, I watched the countryside, places where we used to go camping, eaten up by civilization. It used to be so different. There was nobody there. And now? Imagine how I feel when I see the Ardèche River, which was such a wilderness when I was young. It has turned into a thoroughfare. It’s like the Champs-Elysées, the Ardèche, with thousands of canoes descending one after another.

“Paul came and I showed him my Provence. We watched it nibbled away by man, by civilization, and we said, ‘All right, it’s all over now. We’ll have to go farther away to find any peace.’ It just wasn’t in our nature to buy a house in the city and hide behind a high fence. We discussed leaving for two or three years. We went for a walk through a field of lavender and Paul saw the bees gathering honey. And that day it was stronger than we were! We had to have someplace where we could work with the bees and make honey. One beautiful day I brought Paul here to the land of my ancestors. My cousin told me that this property, La Gautière, was for sale, and we closed the deal very quickly. And it was a good deal, too!”

Paul sold his little produce business. Georgette sold a piece of property that she had inherited from her father. Off they went.

They speak rapidly, and often one will complete a sentence begun by the other. “When we bought the property, bought a tractor, tools, cleared the land and planted, we ran out of money. A year and a half after starting! We survived with chickens, bought some goats, planted a garden, and Paul had his beehives so there was a little income from the honey they gave us. We lived on very little, but we were economically self-sufficient.

“I like to cook,” Georgette says, “and I made very cheap meals with what we had. We had olive oil from our trees, wine, cheese, eggs, potatoes. I bought very little. We managed, barely. Then the crops started coming in. You, Kermit, you arrive now, ten years since we started, and you probably have the impression that it’s an easy life. But this is the first year that we’re beginning to breathe freely. We’ve had several years of difficult struggle. When we arrived, we found an overgrown, virgin soil. We started from zero. We’ve been exhausted, there have been serious accidents, a lot of worries … We had to horsewhip ourselves to keep at it. We worked like crazy, but with faith and enthusiasm. We knew what we wanted—our products produced under our conditions and sold by us. We knew that this was a touristic region with potential, and we figured correctly, because it took off quickly. One day we put up a little sign down on the highway, and that very day three or four people came. When we saw the first car coming up our dirt road, we cried, ‘It works, it works! A customer!’ We were crazy with joy. There was only a little lavender honey and a few bottles of olive oil to sell, but we were thrilled. We treated the customers like friends. We had them sit down with us, poured a little wine, et voilà! Each year new clients show up and they come back again and again.”

Their vineyard is just behind their modest tile-covered house on an amphitheater-shaped hillside facing south. When his crop yields 40 hectoliters to the hectare (4,000 liters per hectare, or 2,200 bottles per acre), Paul says he is satisfied. For a cheap vin de pays it is a drastically minuscule production. In an abundant year such as 1979, the Meursault vineyards in Burgundy yield twice as much juice per acre and the wine sells for five to six times the price of La Gautière’s.

But Paul says, “Forty hectoliters per hectare is enough for me. Our vines aren’t pushed or forced to produce. They give just what they have to give and no more.”

I asked how others manage to produce two to three times more from an equal area of vineyard.

“Oh, it’s easy. When you prune, you leave longer shoots. You use fertilizer. That’s all there is to it. It’s what we call fait pisser la vigne, making the vine piss. Listen to this. I took a course at the wine school at Vaison-la-Romaine to learn more about bottling. Next to me there was a guy who makes wine down near Montpellier. Go ahead, guess, what do you think his production is per hectare?”

I guessed 120 hectoliters per hectare, three times Paul’s production.

Although we were alone, Paul leaned over and whispered in my ear. “The guy swore he gets 230! It’s easy. Fertilize, irrigate. What a crop, eh? Two hundred thirty hectoliters! By making shit wine, he makes six times more money than I do. And those guys down there, then they block the roads and demonstrate to get the government to give them even more. It’s not right.”

Paul planted the typical Rhône grape varieties such as Grenache and Cinsault, but he also put in a higher than normal proportion of Syrah. Grown on his well-drained hillside soil, the noble Syrah gives its special perfume and helps explain why his red has a finer aroma than most Côtes du Rhône.

“For the vinification,” he says, “it’s quite simple. We arrive there at the cellar with the grapes. As they fall into the fermentation vat, that’s how we leave them. They are not stemmed or pumped. We don’t add anything. They ferment gently, because we control the temperature. We keep it low because if it gets too high you lose all the bouquet, the flavor, the perfume. That’s what everyone remarks upon when they first taste our wine. There is so much perfume. But it doesn’t surprise us because we’re used to it. We drink our wine every day. When they ask how we do it, how we obtain such a perfume, I just tell them it comes from our grapes.”

I pointed at the vegetation growing wild around the vineyard and asked Paul if he found traces of their various aromas in his wine.

“Yes, I think so. I don’t know if you noticed, but the 1979 has a little black pepper, a little resin. That’s typical here. I think it comes from this wild environment.”

“How do you think it is transmitted?” I asked.

“By the atmosphere, the air, which is impregnated. The vines breathe through the leaves, you know. Everyone who visits says it smells good here. We’re surrounded by wild hyssop, sage, lavender, pine, thyme, rosemary, broom in blossom … all that counts enormously. I think there is an osmosis of perfumes, of aromatic qualities.

“For me, wine is a passion. When I drink water, I’m sick. Even in my youth I loved wine. If you love wine and you plant vines, you take a great deal of care with it, you treat it with love and respect, you do everything you can to make it be good.”

Winemakers tend to be single-minded. They make wine and live wine from dawn to dusk, and then there is likely to be a dinner with clients. It is fascinating that Paul and Georgette, with their commitment to organic culture, their apricot and cherry trees (they sell jam, too), their beehives and olive groves, still have succeeded in making something special, a wine that intrigues even such a jaded palate as my own, a wine that has been favorably reviewed now by The New York Times, the International Herald Tribune, and The Wine Advocate. And I am pleased that in today’s world of so-called agricultural “progress,” Paul and Georgette can tell the chemical peddlers to get lost and still manage to show a profit.