It wasn’t the lure of fine bottles that first brought me to the Dordogne almost two decades ago.

This corner of southwest France promises medieval bastides, honey-coloured villages, culinary delicacies such as truffles and foie gras, and even vineyards, but as I mapped out my wine stops before my first trip to the region, it was Bordeaux – its famed neighbour to the west – that occupied most of my attention.

With the exception of Monbazillac, known for its noble sweet wines, Bergerac was hardly on my radar.

Little did I know I would end up falling for a region punching well above its weight. Bergerac offers remarkable value for money with excellent bottles for a fraction of what you’d pay for Bordeaux.

And things continue to improve as producers embrace fresher, more approachable styles while maintaining a commitment to quality and sustainability (roughly 35% of the vineyards are certified organic).

Bergerac: Rich in history

Spanning 10,500ha, Bergerac’s history dates back to Gallo-Roman times. Thanks to its prime position on the banks of the Dordogne river, wine trade flourished in the 13th century.

The region now counts seven sub-zones (Bergerac, Monbazillac, Côtes de Duras, Pécharmant, Montravel, Rosette and Saussignac) covering 10 APs, with everything from zesty whites to handsome reds.

Though predominantly planted with Bordeaux grape varieties, each appellation has its unique character and terroir.

Authentic and worth discovering

In and around the town of Bergerac, the pursuit of the French art de vivre is palpable, especially in summer when festivals and events spotlighting local producers are in full swing.

Whether you’re watching the sun set over Château de Monbazillac or revelling in enchanting landscapes as you cycle past vine-covered hillsides and pretty villages, there’s plenty to prove that this once-overlooked corner of France is an attractive wine destination in its own right.

Top experiences

Quai Cyrano

No better place to hit the ground running than at Quai Cyrano, which is equal parts wine shop, tourist office and wine bar, housed in an attractive building on the banks of the Dordogne in the centre of Bergerac town.

Come here to sample 140 wines (paired with cheese or charcuterie boards) from the different appellations, either on the panoramic riverfront terrace or in the peaceful 17th-century Récollets cloister.

Don’t miss the Rosé Party at the cloister on 10 July and the Rosette Night on the old port on 15 August.

Château de Monbazillac

Before sampling Monbazillac’s silky liquoreux (sweet) wines (perfect when served chilled as an aperitif or paired with a foie gras terrine), step back in time with a visit to the 16th-century castle where you can discover how the region’s golden nectar is made.

Just 15 minutes south of Bergerac, this remarkable historic monument also hosts art exhibitions and the much-anticipated Soirées Paradizillac.

Held every Thursday between 16 July and 13 August, these open-air concerts are a feast for the senses, with wine tastings, Monbazillac-based cocktails, charcuterie boards and spectacular sunsets.

Tickets should be booked in advance via the website.

Hop on a bike

The Monbazillac route is an easy loop through vineyards and small villages. Gentle hills make it a relaxed and scenic ride, ideal for casual cycling and sightseeing (approximately 24km, 2.5 hours).

A little more challenging, the six-hour (82km) Pays des Bastides route is well worth the effort.

You’ll pass by historic villages such as Beaumont, Cadouin, Belves and Monpazier.

Bikes can be rented through MBS Mobility Bike Solution, while Quai Cyrano can provide detailed information and assistance in mapping out the ultimate route.

Discover Duras

The welcoming village of Duras (about 40km southwest of Bergerac town) is well worth a visit.

Spend an afternoon strolling through the charming streets and exploring its 12th-century château before settling in for an aperitif at Chai et Rasade, known for excellent charcuterie and a cellar of more than 200 wines and spirits, including a small selection of Duras wines by the glass.

On Thursday evenings in summer, the village comes alive with its convivial night market, where you can enjoy regional food, wine, live music and dancing.

Must-visit wineries

Domaine du Haut-Pécharmant

If it’s age-worthy, structured reds you’re after, Pécharmant in the northeast has little to envy neighbouring Pomerol.

The south-facing slopes, with soils of gravel, sand and iron-rich clay, benefit from warmer, drier conditions, ideal for producing full-bodied wines with lots of elegance.

The Haut-Pécharmant Prestige cuvée (a blend of Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Cabernet Franc and Malbec) stands out for its complexity, concentrated fruit and supple, well-integrated tannins.

A natural partner for the region’s robust duck dishes, this wine can easily be kept for up to 15 years.

Château le Tap

In Saussignac, just west of Monbazillac and also known for excellent sweet wines, most winegrowers have rejected chemical farming.

Among them are Olivier and Mireille Roches of Château le Tap, a 15ha estate that has been fully organic since 2007.

Their Bergerac rosé, with aromas of succulent strawberries, delicate floral notes and a lingering minerality, is one to pour alongside duck charcuterie or a goat’s cheese tartine topped with macerated strawberries.

Château Puy-Servain

Montravel, in the far west of the region, on the right bank of the Dordogne, is home to some of the region’s finest whites, and Château Puy-Servain’s Marjolaine is a prime example of how expressive these wines can be.

Made from Sauvignon Blanc and Sémillon planted on clay-limestone soils, this elegant cuvée is the brainchild of the spirited Daniel Hecquet (named Winemaker of the Year 2026 by the French publication Guide Hachette des Vins).

It merges freshness and citrus notes with floral aromas and a subtly textured mouthfeel thanks to five months in French oak.

Eating and drinking

Les Fresques

Located in Monestier, about 25 minutes from Bergerac, the Michelin one-star Les Fresques is part of a hotel set within the 16th-century Château des Vigiers. Chef Didier Casaguana’s artful dishes are matched by an extensive wine list with roughly 20 regional selections.

Try the signature oyster and caviar with Château Haut Bernasse’s Arcane cuvée. Made with a touch of Chenin, it opens with notes of white flowers, citrus and green apple.

Its creamy texture and subtle barrel-derived richness beautifully complement the fromage blanc sorbet, while its vibrant edge enhances the oyster’s salinity.

La Tour des Vents

Book a table on the terrace at Michelin one-star La Tour des Vents and order the three-course ‘Gourmand’ menu (€75) – with wine pairings (€53) if you’re feeling indulgent – while taking in sweeping views over the lush countryside.

A standout dish is the roast pigeon supreme, served with crispy leg, truffled Jerusalem artichoke purée, Brussels sprout leaves and reduction jus.

Pair it with Domaine Albert de Conti’s Côtes de Bergerac Chez Paul, a structured Cabernet Sauvignon with notes of violets, black fruits and fine, dusty tannins.

Le Chamoine

For something a little more budget-friendly, Le Chamoine (a two-minute walk from Quai Cyrano) serves classic Périgord cuisine, including magret and other duck dishes, alongside African-inspired specials such as a hearty Senegalese poulet mafé and even excellent fish and chips.

There’s also a small but thoughtfully curated selection of Bergerac wines.

L’Anthonnoir

Owner, sommelier and Bergerac native Anthony Guire offers more than 130 wines by the glass (including a good selection of Bergerac wines) served with cheese and charcuterie platters.

Where to stay

Les Gabarres apartment

You’ll feel like a local when you rent this bright apartment right in the centre of town.

It’s a treat to cook with fresh local produce from the Wednesday or Saturday morning market in the spacious kitchen, complete with a large island where you can sip wine while taking in the gorgeous views of the Dordogne.

Château les Merles

Tucked between the vineyards and just a 15-minute drive from Bergerac’s centre, this four-star hotel also offers apartments, villas and even a golf course.

At the gastronomic restaurant, chef Bas Holten cooks dishes with organic produce from his vegetable garden.

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With increasingly unpredictable weather, organic farming in France isn’t getting any easier. To make matters worse, a French government agency has recently restricted the use of most copper fungicides – organic winemakers’ main defence against downy mildew, which can destroy entire crops if left unchecked.

But one winemaker in the southern Rhône believes he has an alternative. What’s more, the treatment is adaptable to vineyards around the world and he’s willing to share his findings for free.

Could this signal the end of winemakers’ reliance on this potentially toxic chemical?

Scroll down for five wine reviews for Château l’Ermite d’Auzan

Château l’Ermite d’Auzan

Located in the southern part of Costières de Nîmes, l’Ermite d’Auzan is a 100ha estate, 75ha of which is planted with 10 different grape varieties. Established in 1973, it’s currently in the hands of Jérôme Castillon and his son Tanguy, the fourth generation.

Tanguy has been developing a natural remedy to fight against downy mildew, with encouraging results: essential oils.

Just a stone’s throw from the Mediterranean Sea, the pebbly zone of Costières de Nîmes is the Rhône’s most southerly growing area. It’s also one of the region’s most dynamic appellations, and Château l’Ermite d’Auzan’s work on essential oils is just one example.

When I visited in January this year, we drove to their higher vineyards in a vintage Jeep.

Though not particularly elevated, you can see for miles across the fairly flat landscape surrounded by loftier landmarks in the distance: Pic St Loup to the west, the town of Uzès to the north, Les Baux de Provence to the east.

To the south, you can see vast saltwater ponds and the glittering Mediterranean beyond.

Herbal remedy

‘The idea was to find something to burn the fungus,’ says Tanguy.

‘At the very beginning, the idea of working with essential oils came from their well-known effects on the human body, since the active molecules involved are exactly the same ones we use. When a molecule such as thymol has antifungal and antibacterial properties for the human body, its effect on the vine is almost identical.’

Essential oils have been used in traditional medicines to treat people for hundreds of years. Thymol, for example, is extracted from thyme and is still used today in products such as Listerine mouthwash.

Tanguy is not the first person to come up with this idea; there have been successful experiments in treating downy mildew with essential oils in the past.

But a commercial estate using essential oils successfully at this scale, and the ability to remove copper use, is something quite extraordinary.

L’Ermite d’Auzan now sprays its whole vineyard with essential oils instead of copper.

Copper: A blessing and a curse

The estate was certified organic in 2020, then biodynamic in 2024. Like other producers working without synthetic chemicals, their armoury against diseases is severely limited.

Two of the most serious fungal threats that growers face are powdery mildew and downy mildew; if working organically, the first is typically treated with sulphur, the second with copper.

If used moderately, most winemakers agree that sulphur is relatively benign when sprayed in the vineyard. Copper, however, is more problematic. It’s a heavy metal that doesn’t break down, and accumulates in the topsoil.

It can be harmful to earthworms and soil microorganisms, and in large quantities can pose a threat to animals, birds and vineyard workers. And, according to Tanguy, ‘it burns the hairs of the roots of the plant and blocks [the uptake of] potassium and other trace elements’.

In July 2025, France’s National Agency for Food, Environment and Occupational Health & Safety (ANSES) decided to restrict the sale of most copper-based fungicides.

According to its website, ‘while copper is of great value in agriculture, its toxic effects are of increasing concern’. But with no obvious alternatives, some winemakers have been left wondering if they can continue to work organically.

Natural methods

He makes the oils himself. On the long driveway towards the winery are neat rows of 15 different types of aromatic plants, including thyme, rosemary, lavender, oregano, mint and curry plant (immortelle). He tried growing sage but it was eaten by rabbits.

Each contains a different active chemical compound, and Tanguy says he uses five different types of plant over the course of a growing season to prevent the mildew from building up a resistance.

After picking and drying a batch of herbs, he uses an alambic still to distil the oil. It’s a simple process: steam passes through the herbs, releasing volatile components, and when the steam cools the oils rise to the surface of the captured liquid.

‘It took time to find the right concentrations,’ he says, and a lot of trial and error. He uses 80ml-100ml of oregano essential oil per hectare of vines, whereas lavender essential oil requires 280ml-300ml per hectare.

To get the right strength before spraying, he had to mix the oils with water – not an easy task. The answer was to mix the oils into milk first, then to mix the milk with water. It’s a curative, rather than preventative, treatment, and it needs reapplying after it rains.

A testing vintage

The 2024 vintage featured regular rains during spring, and many estates throughout the Rhône Valley suffered from attacks of downy mildew.

Jérôme says that certain neighbouring estates were badly affected, with some vineyards completely destroyed. But L’Ermite d’Auzan suffered barely any mildew on its grapes, and saw no decrease in production. A result, the family says, of spraying with essential oils.

No longer spraying with copper has led to additional benefits in the vineyard. Since a first analysis in 2019, the soil pH has dropped from 8.3 to 7.7, which is beneficial to the microbiome. Over the same period, the percentage of organic matter in the soil has risen from 1.8% to 2.5%.

Tanguy has also noticed that there is now less of a gap between sugar and tannin ripeness in his grapes, which means lower alcohol levels in their wines.

Working with essential oils instead of copper does have one disadvantage however – it’s more labour intensive. He has to spray 15-17 times per year; the maximum before using the oils was 13.

I wondered if the aromatic oils might transfer their flavour to the resulting wine, but Tanguy reassured me that, ‘it doesn’t go into the plant, just on the leaves, then it’s burnt off by the sun’. In any case, the last treatment is in mid-July, long before harvest.

Spreading knowledge

Though sceptical to begin with, Jérôme is now convinced of the oils’ effectiveness. ‘I’m a student again,’ he says, ‘and my son is the teacher!’

They have since received visits from wineries as far afield as Lebanon and Greece, curious to replicate the Castillons’ success. Tanguy says that they don’t have to grow the same plants that he does; they can use other aromatic plants that are indigenous to their respective regions.

He has so many visitors, he says, because, ‘I’m not selling anything’ – he’s just happy to share his knowledge.

Next for Tanguy is a meeting with INRAE, the French agricultural research institute, to further develop this approach. He’s confident that if this method works for him, it can work for others.

If he’s right, this could be a turning point for organic viticulture – and not a moment too soon.

Château l’Ermite d’Auzan wines tasted:

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As I write this, Beaujolais is in a flurry. Its first wines of 2025 – the fragrantly juicy Beaujolais Nouveau – are being sent out across the globe ready for the impending (and inevitably raucous) festivities on the third Thursday of November.

And while the folk from Beaujolais are the undeniable overlords of the nouveau party, they aren’t the only players out there dabbling in this vinous fountain of youth.

When you pull back the curtain, you realise there are people all over Europe, and even in the UK, that make their own versions of these new harvest wines.

A long history

Beaujolais Nouveau is merely the best known (modern) example of a much wider tradition of drinking brand new wines soon after harvest.

Nouveau wine, in its simplest terms, is a young wine that is bottled and released almost immediately after harvest. At times they are little more than fermenting must – such as Federweisser in Germany (known as Sturm in Austria).

In Beaujolais it is made with Gamay, which is low in tannins, using carbonic maceration – where the grape begins to ferment within the berry itself, promoting fragrant, perfumed fruit aromas. It is meant to be light in alcohol, juicy and easy going.

As Beaujolais producer Christophe Pacalet says, nouveau is ultimately an unpretentious wine that you can drink while you play pétanque.

Around France

As an inhabitant of southern France, I was intrigued to see whether this area, more famed for its heady reds, was getting on board with the style.

Jean-Philippe Padié of Domaine Padié in Roussillon has been making a nouveau wine since 2019. It was a bit of an accident; he had a plot of Syrah that went through fermentation quickly and cleanly, offering him a delicious rendition of a nouveau style.

Padié now works predominantly with the indigenous variety Lledoner Pelut, which he says gives an even lighter, crunchier wine, with a hint of something maritime from the vineyard’s coastal location.

Similarly, in the cooler northern reaches of the Loire, Joseph Mosse of Domaine Mosse makes a fuschia-coloured wine called Bang Nouveau from a blend of the pink-skinned Grolleau Gris and Gamay.

And while there is an argument that nouveau wines are best made with lighter-skinned varieties, Romain Le Bars in the Rhône Valley proves that this isn’t always the case. His dangerously drinkable Nouveau Nez cuvée is made from Cinsault, Grenache and Carignan.

Traditions old and new

Nouveau wines are popping up across France. However, there are other countries that have a deep-rooted history with this style of wine – Spain, for example.

Specifically in Rioja, where the wines are called cosecheros. Last year saw the launch of the first cosecheros tasting in London, hosted by Ben Llewelyn of UK importer Carte Blanche and writer Tim Atkin MW.

Here producers work with Tempranillo, foot crushing the grapes and using carbonic maceration. Like in Beaujolais, it is a style that is embedded in the culture, despite also falling prey to the tools of mass production such as thermovinification and commercial yeasts.

And while the Spanish perhaps don’t partake in the annual country-wide festivities, the Italians certainly do. Also released in early November, Italy’s answer is vino novello, also made with carbonic maceration and with a host of different grape varieties depending on the region.

Perhaps the most iconic in this mix is the Bardolino Novello from Veneto, which brings much joyous celebration to the shores of Lake Garda.

Sandridge Barton in Devon, UK, has been making its own nouveau wine since 1995. Spurred on by a disruption in Beaujolais supply during the outbreak of mad cow disease, they decided to try their hand at making one themselves.

Intriguingly, their nouveau was – and still is – a white made from the grape Madeleine Angevine (affectionately known as Mad Ange), chosen because it’s their earliest-ripening variety, going from vine to glass in just six weeks. This year spells their first release of a red nouveau made with Pinot Noir and carbonic maceration.

Balfour Winery has also adopted this new wave British tradition with its Essex-grown Pinot Noir Nouveau. Following the stellar conditions of the 2025 vintage, the estate’s head of wine Fergus Elias was keen to show that ‘English Pinot Noir has the ripeness, the fruit and the finesse to stand on its own’.

This is only the second vintage of nouveau, but with such excellent fruit to hand, they’ve made a wine that is ‘playful and purposeful’.

Down with the kill-joys

There are pessimists who want to put down nouveau wines simply as a marketing stunt or something to bolster cash flow. If that is indeed the case, then good on them. Hopefully everyone getting involved is making some much needed cash and shining a light on their region.

But I think it is so much more than that. As Llewelyn says, nouveau wines have historical relevance and value. In Rioja, they show the diversity of their grapes and region, they regulate supply – especially important in a place like Rioja where ageing requirements can extend up to five years – and they give affordable access to quality wines.

Isabel Fernández of Rioja’s Bodega Abeica says that these wines have been part of Rioja’s culture ‘since time immemorial’. Traditionally, they were made to be consumed within 18 months of harvest.

Her family has been making a cosechero wine for four generations, and she believes they can have good longevity and weight, so she uses a parcel of 100-year-old Tempranillo for her cuvée.

Echoing the sentiments of others I spoke to, she says that the crux of making a quality nouveau wine comes down to the quality of the fruit and the stems, especially when working with carbonic maceration and with low intervention cellar methods.

The biggest challenge facing nouveau producers? Poor quality fruit. Because in the end, the joy of nouveau – wherever it’s made – lies in its immediacy. It is a snapshot of a harvest that ultimately takes no prisoners.

Playful frivolity

From conversations with winemakers, it’s clear that these wines are moving into a realm of quality and artisanship. Climate change has brought riper grapes and earlier harvests, and as a result we’re seeing more of these wines made without manipulation – a gradual phasing out of what Jon Bonné, in The New French Wine, calls ‘industrial pop wine’.

For years, the market had grown used to nouveau wines tasting of candied banana and bubblegum – flavours I once assumed were a natural byproduct of carbonic maceration, but which in fact come from a specific yeast strain, 71B, which is no longer used to the same extent as it was in the 1980s and 1990s.

While I am a lover of Beaujolais Nouveau – especially in its newer, more natural iteration – there is even more scope for playful frivolity and experimentation in other regions and countries.

In an industry that can err on the side of stuffy and get bogged down in rules and labels, nouveau is a perfectly imperfect antidote for us to share abundantly and joyously.

Like my friends Greg Lane and Sarah Adamson of Scout Wines in New Zealand said of their Pinot x Pinot (a blend of Noir and Gris) take on a nouveau, they made it for no other reason than enjoyment, ‘to keep the house happy’.

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A quick glance at Vincent Dauvissat, and one might be forgiven for suspecting that he is a wizard.

This impression is reinforced by his tall, thin frame, crown of white hair, and twinkling eyes.

But behind this elfin impression is one of the most thoughtful winemakers you may ever meet.

With notes and scores for 12 vintages of Domaine Vincent Dauvissat below

He does, in fact, work magic with his wines, coaxing each year a sublime range from his admirable holdings in Chablis.

His skill is remarkably consistent, through good years and less good, and the wines are at the top of the pyramid in Chablis and among the best white wines made anywhere.

His skill alone would merit admiration, but he is also among the most generous winemakers that I know, often pulling an old bottle from a bin in the corner to illustrate a point in our discussion.

In this way I have been offered over the years precious bottles that date as far back as 1989 that demonstrate the longevity of his lovely wines.

Estate history

The domaine was founded Vincent’s grandfather Robert in the 1920s. Robert was among the first to bottle his Chablis at the domaine in 1931.

His father René (brother-in-law to François Raveneau) began to work at the domaine in 1950, during the difficult years after the war when Chablis was at its nadir.

In the 19th century the greater region around Auxerre was roughly 40,000 hectares, shipping mostly ordinary wine to Paris for daily consumption.

This wide swathe of plantings collapsed after phylloxera, the Great Depression, and two World Wars. By 1955 the entire region was just 500 hectares.

It was a challenging time for Chablis, yet René Dauvissat was successful in building a powerhouse domaine that would endure for future generations.

Sales of Chablis worldwide started to take off after the 1960s, and plantings began to increase.

This was driven in part by more sophisticated frost control, disease prevention through modern pesticides, and fertilizers, which enabled the region to produce at high levels.

But it took a toll on the quality of the wines.

Vincent started to work with his father in 1976 and took over responsibility completely in 1979.

He eschewed the prevailing trends of his generation and has run his domaine using organic and biodynamic principals since 2002.

He is enough of an iconoclast, however, to eschew official certification as well.

He was joined full time in 2013 by his son Ghislain and his daughter Etiennette, although they had worked at the domaine for years already.

Organic instincts

‘Organic is a personal choice,’ he has told me more than once, ‘I don’t do it for anyone else,’ going on to add: ‘The [biodynamic] practices are followed with the utmost care.’

In the vineyard he uses his instincts: ‘The most important thing is not to listen to anyone.’

He sorts meticulously, so that even in a relatively healthy year such as 2023 he reported 15% losses due to mildew and sour rot.

In a seriously difficult year such as 2024, however, yields can be catastrophically small.

Because of his devotion to organic practices, he lost 90% of his production and did not harvest anything in his 1.4 hectares of Les Clos.

He said: ‘The heavier marl and clay soils soaked up the water and the mildew exploded.’

The year was also a complete loss in Petit Chablis and Montée de Tonnerre.

Gut instincts

Once the grapes are in the winery, he continues to take his own counsel.

‘I never look at the level of malic. That’s for oenologues,’ he declares.

Yet the balance of the resulting wines is exquisite.

Like many winemakers in Chablis, he was obliged to chaptalise in 2024.

But, he notes: ‘Once I brought it up 0.5 degrees, and then the balance was just like 2014.’

The grapes are pressed as whole bunches in a pneumatic press and vinified in enameled steel tanks (and a small percentage in new casks) before ageing in casks, both old and new.

No sulfur is added until after malolactic conversion when the wines are racked to tank before bottling.

The lie of the land

Domaine Vincent Dauvissat farms just over 12ha of vines. This includes a hectare of Petit Chablis, located on the Portlandian capstone of the grand cru slope.

There are just over 3ha of village-level Chablis spread across four parcels, including several that face premier cru Forêts facing north-west.

He blends this with a small amount of the premier cru Troëmes (part of the larger Beauroy cru). Both are located on the left bank of the Serein, in the heart of the Chablis appellation.

The most important holding among the premier crus is Forêts, which he spells ‘La Forest’ on the label.

He owns 3.7ha of vines here, spread over seven principal areas. Forêts is part of the larger umbrella appellation of Montmains, but at Dauvissat it is always singled out.

Forêts is a moderately steep part of the hill at its centre. Meanwhile, lieu-dit Montmains itself lies southwest of Forêts at a higher elevation.

It is much larger and is located at the northern edge of the hill as it slopes down toward the Serein and Butteaux (also a subdivision of Montmains).

North of Montmains is Vaillons, closer to the village of Chablis itself. As with the latter, Vaillons is composed of several different lieux-dits, and is the largest of the umbrella appellations on the left bank.

Dauvissat has 1.4ha of vines devoted to his Vaillons bottling, although only 1.1ha are currently in production.

These parcels are located in the lieux-dits of Chatains and Beugnons. The grapes are from 60-year-old vines in deeper marl soils.

Another subdivision of Vaillons is the lieu-dit Sécher, where Dauvissat has another 0.4ha of vines that were planted in 1972 (he spells the name ‘Séchet’).

He explains that the soils are thinner here and give a wine of great finesse and delicacy which is why he bottles these grapes separately.

Across the river

On the other side of the river Serein Dauvissat farms 0.30ha of Montée de Tonnerre in a single parcel planted in 1960 and partly replanted in 1972.

Although the Right Bank of the Serein is thought to produce more powerful, structured wines, Dauvissat explains: ‘We’re in the [lieu-dit] Côte de Brechain and not on the marl soils – we have more limestone pebbles, and a south-west exposition. We are not really in the heart of the appellation.’

The grand cru holdings of the domaine are the pride of the estate. There is a single 0.8ha block of Les Preuses planted in 1970.

It lies up the slope from the holdings of William Fèvre just below La Moutonne and the Vaudésir valley.

It boasts a south-facing exposition and marl soils that have more pebbles and less clay than the slopes of Les Clos.

The result is a wine that is perhaps less powerful but more elegant than Les Clos, and is consistently among my favourites from this domaine.

It is without question, however, Dauvissat’s 1.4ha of Les Clos that produce his most sought-after wine.

Most of the vines are at the top of the slope, interspersed with those owned by William Fèvre, but he also owns a parcel at mid-slope nearer the border with Blanchot.

The blend of these four parcels produces one of the greatest wines of Chablis.

The wines

The Dauvissat style is elegant and discreet. These are wines of great finesse, yet they do not lack in concentration.

The Petit Chablis is a fine introduction to the region, and the village bottling is a delicious representation of the classic racy left bank terroir.

Each of the four premier crus continue this style, but with a distinct expression of place, while the grand crus are the fullest expression of the house style.

The wines a contrast to the powerful wines produced by the other leader of the region, Domaine Raveneau.

The two styles are both delicious and both age well. Both rank at the highest level of white Burgundy.

Domaine Vincent Dauvissat, however, will always remain a touchstone for those who appreciate wines of finesse, elegance, and precision.

Domaine Vincent Dauvissat:

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Picturesque views of the French Riviera feature in the video as Brad Pitt offers a ‘poetic love letter’ to this famous stretch of coastline close to the Italian border.

Drawing on the area’s long-standing status as a source of inspiration for artists and film stars, this new tribute is the focal point of a campaign for French organic gin The Gardener.

‘The French Riviera is a beautiful and capricious muse,’ begins Pitt, star of the recently-released F1 film, as the video shows a speed boat gliding through crystal-clear waters along the scenic Côte d’Azur.

Pitched as a ‘French Riviera gin’, The Gardener includes fresh citrus from Provence alongside other botanicals, such as the classic juniper, plus angelica and coriander. 

It is produced by Pitt alongside the Perrin winemaking family and master distiller Tom Nichol.

It was first launched at the Cannes Film Festival in 2023. 

Distiller Tom Nichol forged his reputation at Tanqueray and received a lifetime achievement award from The Gin Guild in 2015. 

While it marked a foray into spirits for Pitt, he previously entered the wine world with the launch of Château Miraval rosé wine alongside then-wife Angelina Jolie in 2013.

The first Miraval release sold out within hours, and the wine was well-received by critics, having been produced with the Perrin family of Château de Beaucastel fame.

Pitt reportedly remains locked in a long-running legal dispute over Château Miraval ownership with ex-wife Jolie, but winemaking at the estate has continued throughout.

The Hollywood star has refurbished a music recording studio on the Provence property, and also launched Fleur de Miraval Champagne in 2021, working with the Perrins plus legendary grower-producer Pierre Péters.

Celebrity-backed wines and spirits are hardly a new phenomenon, but the trend has taken off in a big way in the past decade or so.

Drinks industry research specialist IWSR analysed data on celebrity-backed spirits last year and found that they ‘do tend to outperform the overall market’. 

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It’s a question on many minds today: should you buy organic? From food to household products and cosmetics, a growing number of us – myself included – are choosing organic to limit exposure to harmful chemicals.

But does this extend to wine? And should it?

Organic wines are gaining popularity worldwide, driven by consumer demand for healthier, more sustainable options, with compelling stats to match.

According to a sustainability report by research specialist IWSR, organic wine volumes grew by 5% globally, 6% in the UK and 7% in the US, from 2017-2022.

Statista’s 2024 UK wine report highlights a rising consumer preference for organic wines, fuelled by concerns for health and the environment.

In Bordeaux, this trend is clear: in 2024, 24% of the region’s vineyards were certified organic or in conversion, according to the CIVB Bordeaux wine council.

The region aims for 100% of its vineyards to hold sustainable certifications – organic, biodynamic, or others such as High Environmental Value (HVE) – by 2030, and this reflects a bold commitment to greener practices.

Recommendations for 20 organic Bordeaux wines below

Bordeaux organic: Why it isn’t easy

Such an accomplishment would be no mean feat. Bordeaux’s maritime climate, with warm temperatures and relatively high rainfall, makes organic viticulture tricky. Diseases like mildew and botrytis thrive here, often requiring robust intervention to suppress them.

Conventional farming has long been the go-to, using a range of sprays: contact products such as sulphur and copper, which wash off after 20mm of rain; penetration products that cling to leaves; and systemic sprays absorbed directly into the vine for reliable protection, especially during vulnerable phases like flowering.

These systemic options dominate, offering predictability and higher yields, but they come at a cost – chemical residues that linger in wines and soils, as well as posing health risks to workers – and there are suggested links between pesticide use and a range of health impacts, including cancers, Parkinson’s disease and other chronic conditions.

Organic viticulture, by contrast, limits growers to natural contact sprays free of chemicals – sulphur-based for powdery mildew (oidium) and copper-based for downy mildew. This means no synthetic fertilisers, herbicides or insecticides.

Organic practices prioritise soil health through composting and cover cropping, while promoting biodiversity with tree plantings, hedgerows and bird boxes.

Conversion to organic takes three years, after which vineyards earn the EU organic label and France’s green ‘AB’ (Agriculture Biologique) certification.

In the winery, organic rules restrict additives, require organic yeasts for fermentation and lower total sulphurdioxide levels (100mg/L for dry red wines, compared to 150mg/L in conventional wines). Certification bodies such as Ecocert audit both vineyard and winery practices annually.

To support Bordeaux estates tackling this complex transition, Derenoncourt Environnement was launched in 2016 by renowned consultant Stéphane Derenoncourt and his team.

They offer tailored guidance, assessing estates’ needs, manpower and investment to optimise soil health and navigate disease challenges, helping producers achieve organic certification.

Biodynamie – going beyond

Biodynamics takes organic principles further, bringing rigorous organic practices, precision and resources together with a holistic, spiritual philosophy.

Certified by bodies such as Demeter or Biodyvin, biodynamic vineyards use phytotherapy (plant-based treatments) like infusions or essential oils derived from plants (nettle, horsetail, willow, comfrey and so on).

They also use natural preparations like horn manure (made using cow horns filled with manure and buried over winter) and horn silica, ‘dynamised’ (diluted by vigorous stirring in water) and sprayed to strengthen vine health and improve resistance to diseases such as mildew or oidium.

It follows a lunar and cosmic calendar for vineyard activities, aiming to harmonise agricultural practices with natural rhythms for greater vitality and expression in the wine.

While there’s no conclusive data to prove it, often organic and biodynamic wines tend to have a feeling of greater ‘energy’ to them, with tasting notes reflecting characters such as ‘bright’, ‘lively’, ‘alive’ or ‘shining’.

Almost a purity to the flavours, or a feeling of being energised as you drink them.

Trade-off: Soil, sprays and sustainability

Going organic isn’t a stroll through the vines, however – it’s a high-stakes endeavour.

Studies suggest that while organic viticulture does boost soil organic matter, the reliance on contact sprays requires frequent applications, given Bordeaux’s wet climate, and this can lead to more tractor passes that compact soils, potentially causing damage to root systems and harming long-term vineyard health.

In challenging vintages like 2021, 2023 and 2024, producers faced devastating mildew pressure, forcing some organic estates to spray more than 30 times, while others opted to temporarily halt their organic status in order to protect yields.

This raises a critical question: is organic always the greenest choice, if it puts pressure on the soil as well as demanding more vehicle fuel and labour?

Copper, a cornerstone of organic sprays, also poses risks, accumulating in soils over decades and potentially becoming toxic for plants, fauna, mammals, soil life and human users in cases of chronic exposure.

However, total usage is limited in the EU to a maximum of 28kg per hectare over seven years, or an average of 4kg per hectare per year.

Conventional systemic sprays, while reducing tractor use, leave chemical residues that harm soil and human health. You could say producers are caught between a rock and a hard place.

There are, however, innovative workarounds that are emerging.

While Petrus in Pomerol is not an organic estate, its focus on sustainability has led to the installation of a cutting-edge ‘umbrella’ system powered by solar panels (similar to the Viti-Tunnel system at Château Quinault l’Enclos).

This automatically shields vines during rain, channelling water to the centre of each row and keeping leaves dry, in order to prevent mildew from forming.

While effective, this technology is costly, meaning the producer – even Petrus – has deployed it only on eight rows of vines thus far, and it’s an impractical option for large estates or estates without the financial means.

It also alters the vineyard’s aesthetic somewhat. More accessible solutions include enhanced drainage systems, strategic cover cropping to improve soil structure, and encouraging ample sun and wind exposure (vines at the top of hills or on plateaus inevitably get more wind than those in valleys).

Hybrid solutions: Blending organic and pragmatic practices

Recognising the challenges of organics, many Bordeaux producers are exploring hybrid approaches. Although not a rating of wine quality, the HVE certification combines organic principles with targeted chemical use to reduce vineyard soil compaction and emissions while maintaining yields.

Agroforestry and fungus-resistant (‘Piwi’) grape varieties are also gaining traction (albeit less in Bordeaux than elsewhere), minimising environmental strain.

These flexible strategies reflect a region-wide push for sustainability without rigid dogma, ensuring soil health, ecological harmony and economic viability – something the region is already confronting, given the market, let alone the weather.

The future of organic Bordeaux

Taking everything into account, it’s clear that the Bordeaux region is committed to ‘greener’ wines, and for consumers seeking organic or biodynamic options, Bordeaux’s evolving wine scene offers plenty to raise a glass to.

For readers keen to explore, the 20 mainly Right Bank wines in the pages that follow offer a glimpse into some of the smaller, lesser-known properties putting their passion and effort into making organic and biodynamic wines.

There are, of course, also a number of classified estates with long-term commitments to organic viticulture, as listed in the box below…

Finding the balance: 32 Bordeaux estates producing organic and/or biodynamic wines

✿ Château Beau-Séjour Bécot, St-Emilion 1GCC (in conversion) ✿ Château Beauregard, Pomerol ✿ Château Berliquet, St-Emilion GCC ✿ Château Cadet-Bon, St-Emilion GCC ✿ Château Canon, St-Emilion 1GCC ✿ Château Canon La Gaffelière, St-Emilion 1GCC ✿ Château Climens*, Barsac 1CC ✿ Château Clos de Sarpe, St-Emilion GCC ✿ Château Clos du Clocher, Pomerol ✿ Château d’Yquem, Sauternes 1CS ✿ Château Durfort-Vivens*, Margaux 2CC ✿ Château Fonroque, St-Emilion GCC ✿ Château Franc Mayne, St-Emilion GCC ✿ Château Gruaud Larose, St-Julien 2CC ✿ Château Guiraud, Sauternes 1CC ✿ Château Haut-Bages Libéral*, Pauillac 5CC ✿ Château Jean Faure, St-Emilion GCC ✿ Château L’Enclos, Pomerol ✿ Château L’Evangile, Pomerol ✿ Château La Lagune*, Haut-Médoc 3CC ✿ Château La Rose Figeac, Pomerol ✿ Château La Tour Figeac, St-Emilion GCC ✿ Château Lafite Rothschild, Pauillac 1CC ✿ Château Lafon-Rochet, St-Estèphe 4CC ✿ Château Latour, Pauillac 1CC ✿ Château Lilian Ladouys, St-Estèphe CBE ✿ Château Mazeyres*, Pomerol ✿ Château Palmer*, Margaux 3CC ✿ Château Pédesclaux, Pauillac 5CC ✿ Château Pontet-Canet*, Pauillac 5CC ✿ Château Smith Haut Lafitte, Pessac-Léognan CCG ✿ Château Tour St Christophe, St-Emilion GCC

20 organic Bordeaux wines

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Elizabeth Gabay MW, Natasha Hughes MW and Joanna Simon tasted 115 wines, with 12 Outstanding and 44 Highly recommended

Provence whites: Panel tasting scores

115 wines tasted

Exceptional 0

Outstanding 12

Highly recommended 44

Recommended 36

Commended 23

Entry criteria: producers and UK agents were invited to submit their latest-release white wines from any part of the Provence region and at any price

Scroll down to see the top-scoring wines from the Provence whites panel tasting

Stepping out of Provence’s rose-tinted shadow

Provence white wines aren’t (yet) well known outside the region, notes Natasha Hughes MW, but they’re growing in popularity. This tasting showed enough potential to make it a category of interest.

With the rosés of Provence becoming increasingly pale, white wine could be seen as a natural progression; there was even one blanc de noir in the tasting.

Some producers claim that technological knowledge gained from making rosé (such as temperature control and more reductive winemaking) has improved the region’s white wines. However, it wasn’t evident from the tasting that white wines inspired by rosé were the best way to go.

Joanna Simon felt that producers needed ‘to stand back and look at their white wines in the context of other white wines’, noting that ‘many of them are applying rosé winemaking to the wines as if they’re going to sell them to the same consumers as their rosés’.

A hotbed of cellar experimentation

The best wines in the tasting showed richness, intensity, greater ripeness and ageing potential, while just over half were white versions of their rosé siblings, with young, reductive, crisp, crunchy white fruit.

The least successful provoked comments that they tasted as if picked underripe, resulting in green acidity, and were driven by a yeasty character. Simon felt that in ‘a region of this size, there is room for two styles’.

We would have liked to see more evidence of terroir or regional character in the wines that were based on the Rolle grape (known in Italy as Vermentino).

In terms of regions, Bandol stood out as the most exciting, and by default marked Clairette as an interesting variety. Cassis, the white wine appellation of Provence, was something of a disappointment.

The use of oak, amphorae and cement containers created complexity and texture, noted Hughes, who felt that ‘it was not individual regions or varieties that stood out, but the producers who had enough confidence in their terroir and their winemaking to create wines with a real sense of identity’.

See all recommendations from the Provence whites tasting

What to eat with Provence whites, by Fiona Beckett

Why drink Provence whites when you could drink Provence rosé? Maybe food is the key. Despite being in many instances pale and crisp enough to do duty for a white, rosés don’t have quite the same synergy with seafood.

If you’re cooking a bouillabaisse or a bourride, working your way through a plate of langoustines and mayonnaise, or assembling a grand aioli – especially with salt cod – Provence whites would have the edge.

Thinking of the kind of dishes, too, that would go with Vermentino over the border in Italy, they’d work with pasta dishes such as spaghetti vongole (spaghetti or linguine with clams) or a spring vegetable risotto. And the creaminess and slight almond bitterness of a Provence white is a better match than rosé for pistou, the French version of pesto.

Older vintages and wines that are dominated by Grenache, Roussanne or Marsanne behave more like a Rhône white, so think more in terms of roast or grilled veal, or a whole roast fish, such as a turbot. Both styles would be perfect with the local goat cheeses.

Provence whites panel tasting results

Wines were tasted blind

The judges

Elizabeth Gabay MW is a wine writer, educator, speaker and consultant, with a focus on the wines of southern France. Her second book Rosés of Southern France (£22 Amazon, 2022) was co-authored with her son Ben Bernheim

Natasha Hughes MW is a freelance wine consultant, educator, judge and writer, with a focus on wine with food. Her writing has appeared in titles including The Observer, jancisrobinson. com and timatkin.com, and she’s currently working on her first book, about Beaujolais

Joanna Simon is an awarded wine writer, editor, presenter and judge based in London. She spent 22 years as the wine critic for The Sunday Times and has authored several wine books

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°As if wine weren’t complicated enough, sustainable wine certification comes with various meanings. For wine-growing regions seeking to demonstrate a commitment to responsible land stewardship, one major challenge is defining what, exactly, ‘sustainability’ means in viticulture.

In the United States and Canada, no uniform charter or official or federally recognised standard for sustainable viticulture exists.

As with most regulations and designations in North American wine, there is a network of state or region-specific guidelines developed for local conditions, each with its own varying set of acceptable standards and practices. Most are formed out of interest from local wine-growers, supported by agricultural research and science, and are certified by third-party auditing.

What winemakers and growers passionate about sustainable viticulture uniformly share is a similar ethos. Most say sustainable wine certifications build on existing programmes already certifying organic, biodynamic, regenerative, salmon-safe, natural and other ‘eco-friendly’ wines with a more holistic approach to wine-growing and the wine business itself.

They also offer examples of other benefits, such as increased transparency of grape and wine quality and the opportunity to connect with others in the wine community to share information in the face of climate change and an increasingly hard-to-predict growing season.

Prioritising people

Marissa Dineen, owner and vintner of Dineen Vineyards in the Rattlesnake Hills American Viticultural Area (AVA) of Washington State, offers her definition.

‘I always start with: sustainability is broader,’ Dineen says. Her family estate vineyards were some of the first to be certified sustainable under the state’s new viticulture programme, Sustainable WA, launched in 2022.

‘Not only does [sustainability] consider your farming practices, which is really what organic and biodynamic do, but it also considers the people, HR and social justice aspect. And the proper business management, which we refer to as “prosperity” in the sustainability framework.’

Dineen’s 40ha (100 acres), planted chiefly to Bordeaux and Rhône varietals, are all harvested by hand. Grape and wine quality would suffer without a skilled crew offered benefits and healthcare, job training and professional development, and other resources – all defined as part of the Sustainable WA Winegrape Standard.

‘We have long-term employees whom we look after because winemakers want to know that when their grapes get harvested, they’re being handled nicely and cared for. If you’re not looking after your employees, they come and go really fast.’

A New York state of mind

In the maritime climate of Long Island’s North Fork, surrounded by salt water with a sizeable subterranean water table, Rich Olsen-Harbich, director of winemaking at Bedell Cellars, sees sustainability with a similarly 360° view.

‘It’s not just about “save the fish, save the plants, save the planet”. We want to do that, but with these other programmes, that’s all they do,’ Olsen-Harbich says.

Olsen-Harbich is a long-tenured vintner who authored the petition for The North Fork of Long Island AVA in 1986 and also helped develop the first sustainability certification for his appellation, Long Island Sustainable Winegrowing (LISW), in 2012.

Olsen-Harbich says it’s essential to understand the science of viticulture, soil health, the local ecosystem and the long-term viability of the wine business to incorporate wine-growing practices that are sustainable in the long term.

Copper, for example, which is certified organic, isn’t necessarily the safest material to use when it comes to managing certain aspects in the vineyard.

‘Copper sulphate and copper hydroxide are materials that can be used to control mildew. They are organically certified. However, they have a very long half-life of a few hundred years or more, so they can build up in the soil over time and become toxic to soil microflora and fauna, marine life and birds,’ Olsen-Harbich says.

In these types of cases, certain pesticides are permitted in sustainable viticulture.

Justin Jackson, programme manager for New York Sustainable Winegrowing, the statewide certification that started in 2023 and works in partnership with LISW, says pesticides are typical across all sectors of viticulture – even the most ‘natural’ sounding methods.

‘Pesticides are a fundamental aspect of agriculture. Organic uses pesticides, biodynamic uses pesticides, and sustainable uses pesticides. No one wants to spray, but everyone kind of has to if you want to be economically sustainable. Frankly, sometimes, depending on the pesticides you use, it’s better for the environment.’

‘Organic really only encompasses what you’re putting into the vineyard. It doesn’t cover any sort of agricultural practices beyond that when it comes to the soil, or disease prevention by canopy management, it doesn’t encroach on anything economic. It doesn’t even delve into social equity.’

The prevailing understanding of ‘organic’ viticulture, for better or worse, is another of sustainable wine growing’s big hurdles.

Developing buy-in

‘I think there was hesitation that sustainable meant organic, and while a lot of growers are environmentally conscious, they don’t want to take the risk that they could lose their crop in any season just to become sustainable,’ says Shiraz Mottiar, general manager of Malivoire on the Niagara Peninsula in Ontario, Canada.

‘Farmers in general kind of don’t like to be told what to do,’ says Mottiar, a committee member of Sustainable Winegrowing Ontario and a wine grower himself.

‘Once they understood that [the certification] is a lot of best management practices and abiding by all the environmental and government rules [such as using locally grown grapes, a stipulation of the regional wine governing authority, the Vintners Quality Alliance (VQA)], but not about “being organic” then I think that’s when a lot of buy-in happened for the growers,’ Mottiar says.

Nearby, Andrea Kaiser – daughter of Inniskillin co-founder Karl J Kaiser – carries on her father’s winemaking legacy with her small production winery, Drea’s Wine Co. She’s benefitted from her father’s relationships with growers and other pillars of the wine community, and as chair of the Sustainable Winegrowing Ontario committee, she emphasises the community aspect of sustainable wine-growing.

Beyond the environment, ‘which everybody thinks of,’ she says, ‘it’s also about the economics, which I define as buying local, and buying products in your own backyard. And then the community part, that you’re integrated with a community and being a good neighbour with your farm next door.’

Future proofing our viticulture

Meaghan Frank, DIP WSET, vice-president, and fourth generation of her family’s winery, Dr Konstantin Frank in New York’s Finger Lakes, has found the community aspect of New York’s sustainability certification valuable, too.

‘Two years ago, we had a spring frost, which in our 65 years of being here, we’ve never seen, ever. Nobody was prepared. Then four years ago, a hailstorm came through and decimated [the vineyards].’

‘I think this certification is helping us to be agile and nimble, anticipate future challenges, and set everybody up for the future. It also gives us all a space to be together. These certification meetings and these community-building events give us a space to connect, which is becoming harder. It’s giving us a reason to all get in the same room and talk about things.’

‘LIVE from Oregon’

Low Input Viticulture and Enology, aka the LIVE programme, is based in Oregon’s Willamette Valley and has been around for over 25 years. The organisation certifies wine-growing regions in Oregon, Washington and Idaho.

Erik Kramer, winemaker at WillaKenzie in Yamhill, the LIVE programme’s #001 certified winery, brings a unique perspective to the sustainability conversation. Before joining WillaKenzie, he helped spearhead Adelsheim Vineyards’s LIVE certification. And before this, in his early career as a hydrogeologist, he worked for Big Oil, ‘helping companies manage their problems’.

‘I saw lots of things, if you will, that were litigious and not particularly clean. I was an in-house expert on how to help clean things up, and I knew I didn’t want to do that for 30 years, dealing with groundwater or municipal water supplies that are impacted by compounds.’

His work in sustainable wine-growing is ‘personal,’ he says, not only because he’s seen the negative effects of chemicals on the environment, but because of the extractive, profit-motivated view of natural resources that enables the use of petrochemicals in the first place.

The ‘multi-pronged’ approach to sustainable viticulture, from reduced chemical inputs in the vineyard to a focus on worker welfare, works to mitigate the most harmful and exploitative impacts of conventional farming by simply incorporating more points of view – those of the soil, plants, animals and people intimately involved in the process.

‘We’re in the business of farming, first and foremost,’ Kramer explains. ‘Farming, in my opinion, can and should be a multigenerational thing. Every year, you’re removing, taking things out, whether that’s how you’re working with the soil or plant material.

‘And if we want to be able to farm for a longer period of time, then we need to put back what we take away. It’s a long-range play, but it’s the right thing to do.’

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Ever more mainstream, the long-held stereotype of natural wine as flawed and funky is full of more holes than Swiss cheese these days. As wine consumers have continued to embrace these wines for a combination of their farming and winemaking ethos, their punk rock bonafides remain intact.

‘I believe our awareness of climate change, the need to act more sustainably overall to alter our lifestyles and reduce our footprint has led to the popularity of organic, biodynamic and natural wine,’ says Marko Kovac of Karakterre, the natural wine salon highlighting Eastern and Central European wines.

‘If we’re choosing EVs over gasoline-powered cars, why not do the same when we consider what to consume? Beyond just environmental issues, we want to be healthier. Organic, biodynamic and natural wines, being free of many chemicals used in conventional farming, are indeed healthier – though we can’t escape the reality that they are alcohol in the end and should probably be consumed in moderation.’

A natural evolution

‘Yes, the movement has seen a significant shift from what in previous years has been perceived as a bunch of underground weirdos drinking the funky stuff – and that’s a great achievement,’ Kovac admits.

‘In the early days, there was a need to fight for the place at the table, being laughed at by the conventional wine industry and professionals, hence the notions of wine needing to be cloudy, without any sulphites added, and even welcoming of certain wine faults. It was maybe the only way natural wine could have made a name for itself.

‘However, we must admit that, in many cases, those same wines were in some cases truly undrinkable. In a way, everyone needed to grow up: the winegrowers, the industry, the market and the consumer. It was just such a radical message.

‘The formula obviously worked. Today, you find organic, biodynamic and natural wines on many tables across the globe. It is not an isolated movement anymore. It’s not just a trend. Everyone has “evolved”: the winegrower trading the faults for a more sensible product, the professionals adopting the category, and the market asking for these types of wines.

‘Of course, on both sides, one still sees extremes – wine professionals who refuse to enter the category and winegrowers who refuse to use sulphur. But the two worlds have come closer than ever. That’s evident through global wine lists and how even conventional wineries are shifting to more sustainable production.’

A place at the table

As the movement has taken up space on shelves in well-pointed bottle shops and fine dining wine lists, it has found champions in the kitchen who are true believers.

These chefs see a direct connection between the embrace of care and stewardship in the farming that goes into their ingredients in the kitchen and the like-minded practices in vineyards and cellars of natural winemakers.

Ana Roš of Hiša Franko

‘Personally, I’m drawn to natural wines because they align with my philosophy of staying close to nature,’ says Ana Roš of the three Michelin star Hiša Franko in Slovenia.

‘Just as I prefer minimal intervention in my food, I appreciate wines made with as little interference as possible. It’s important to me to know what I’m putting into my body, and natural wines provide that sense of integrity.

‘For the past 25 years, I’ve been drinking natural wines. It’s a legacy from my ex-husband’s (Valter Kramar) father, Franko, who opened Hiša Franko in the early 1970s. At that time, when natural wines were often called “wines with mistakes”, Franko was already collecting wines from pioneers like Valter Mlečnik and the Batič family. This passion for natural wines was carried forward by Valter, an ardent advocate and drinker of natural wines who has always believed in their importance.

‘At Hiša Franko, this legacy thrives. Our wine list is now almost entirely natural, and we offer two distinct wine pairings. The first, “Classy”, features refined, elegant wines with a more polished character. The second, “Funky”, celebrates the wilder side of natural wines – those that Valter loves most. It’s fascinating to see how guests divide themselves into these two distinct groups of preferences.’

Daniela Soto-Innes of Rubra

After famously leaving the iconic New York restaurants that she founded with chef Enrique Olvera, Cosme and Atla, Mexican chef Daniela Soto-Innes unveiled her long-awaited Rubra in Nayarit, Mexico last autumn. Located on the coast in Punta de Mita, the restaurant hosted its first wine dinner with pairings from Austria’s natural wine rockstars, Gut Oggau.

‘Wine has been one of my growing passions through the years,’ Soto-Innes explains. ‘The level of spiciness in my cooking, for example, has gone down a lot because I want the food to pair well with wine. I want the two to sing together.’

As a chef in New York City, she learned and discovered new wines in the city’s eclectic wine bar scene. Just before opening Rubra, she’d been on a whirlwind tour of the natural producers of Alsace and counts among her favourites Pierre Frick and Domaine Lissner.

‘All of our guests on the first evening were intrigued by the Gut Oggau wines. We selected them for our opening because their wines, like our food, are fresh and alive,’ says Soto-Innes, who works with her beverage director, Andrea Hernández, former sommelier at Quintonil, a two Michelin star restaurant in Mexico City.

Hernández curates a list focused on organic, biodynamic and low-intervention wines.

‘While not completely natural, 90% of our list are producers who work organically or biodynamically and our largest producer farms 60 hectares, so we’re supporting small, family farms. It’s a niche for our Mexican guests, and that’s exciting to show them something new,’ Hernández explains.

‘Natural wine goes so well with Mexican cuisine. Like our food, it expresses place, and the acidity frames our flavours and spices, much better than big Riojas or California wines traditionally served in Mexican fine dining.

‘Chef Dani and I are both spiritual people, and we both believe we have a responsibility to the environment and how we source food reflects that. So it makes sense that we’re drawn to natural producers connected to the land like Gut Oggau. We want to partner with people like that, who feel that greater sense of the world around them.’

What goes with Gaggan?

An experience dining at Gaggan in Bangkok‘s southeastern Watthana District is much more like a performance than a meal. Set up as a theatre in the round, guests sit in pitch black as Gaggan Anand and his culinary team perform under black lights, and a booming, curated playlist is picked to accompany the menu.

A neon sign in red cursive script on the restaurant’s far left wall captures Gaggan’s ethos. ‘Be a rebel,’ it reads.

How did one of the world’s most iconic chefs, who needs only go by one name, come to have a 100% natural wine list at his eponymous restaurant and nearly as famous Indian-Mexican fusion joint, Ms Maria & Mr Singh, just upstairs?

‘We needed a wine programme that would respond to my “madness” in the kitchen, to be honest,’ Gaggan tells me. ‘We thought, hey, we are doing all these crazy, highly personalised, progressive dishes, so our wine programme should follow this madness! It’s worked.’

Alongside his well-known and controversial dishes, like ‘Lick it up’ and ‘Rat’s Brains’ an array of the world’s top natural wines are paired.

‘Like the food, the wines we feature are equally personal and made by small family farmers just like those we get our ingredients from. And both our food and the wines are natural! Today, Gaggan is a rare upscale restaurant with a fully natural wine list, well it’s not a list per se, as much as a curated part of the dining experience.’

Sommelier Vladimir Kojic runs the entirely natural programme at both restaurants.

‘Vladimir will take you along on the wine journey as our chefs and I take you through each dish, aiming for the perfect accompaniment. In our minds, the wine is on equal footing with food.

‘We hope to help people understand that wine, like food, is deeply personal! It’s an expression of a person, a place, something integrated into our lives, not separate from our experience.’

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Whisky legend the late Dr Jim Swan once described organic barley as an expensive waste of time. That was almost a decade ago and he was talking mainly about distillery economics. But did he have a point?

We know organic farming increases biodiversity and improves soil health. ‘If you’ve ever visited an organic farm and a non-organic farm, you can see the difference in those fields,’ says Liam Hirt, co-founder of the Circumstance Distillery in Bristol. ‘One is very much more alive.’

So it’s good for farmers. What about us drinkers?

What makes a whisky organic?

To make an organic whisky, distillers must follow organic principles all the way from raw material to finished product. At Circumstance the whiskies are organic but the rums and gins are not. Hirt says strong systems are vital to prevent cross-contamination. This means storing organic products separately, purging equipment between organic and non-organic batches and documenting absolutely everything.

Hirt uses yeasts more often found in Bavarian weissbiers, saisons and mead. Yeast falls under the organic rules too, meaning genetically modified organisms are strictly forbidden. ‘We needed to go to our suppliers and be certain that none of them were GMO and have them certified as such,’ he explains.

Certification and traceability?

A handful of certification bodies police organic distillers and their suppliers, including the Soil Association and Biodynamic Association. The main concern is traceability. Distillers must be able to show there’s no contamination of the organic chain.

Inspectors will spot-check records and balance amounts of organic malt purchased against alcohol sold. Any discrepancy could mean someone has snuck illicit sacks of non-organic malt through the distillery gates.

Whisky is an unusual product in the organic world, so finding a certifier who understands it is key. ‘It’s not like vegetables; get them in, package them, send them out,’ says Annabel Thomas, founder and CEO of Nc’nean Distillery in the western Highlands of Scotland. ‘We get barley and put it into a cask, then sell it three years, maybe five years later.’

What about organic casks?

Talking of casks, must they also be organic? Until recently, no-one could agree. ‘It’s not defined in the regulations because it’s quite niche,’ Thomas explains. Lately, a consensus has emerged that barrels are exempt.

Given their strong influence on the flavour of a whisky, this came as a relief. ‘If we had to source only new oak barrels, that would have had such an enormous impact on our spirit that it might have swayed me away from the whole endeavour,’ Thomas says.

What are the challenges?

Graham Manson, commercial sales manager of malting company Bairds Malt, says organic harvests are more at risk from bad weather, as farmers can’t rely on chemicals to ensure their crop ripens before a rainy autumn kicks in. ‘They either wait for it or they sacrifice a bit of quality and harvest it when the conditions are right,’ he notes.

The headaches don’t stop there. Organic barley yields up to 25% less grain per hectare, Manson estimates. It also costs more to grow. Farmers may save on chemicals but typically spend more on weed control. As a result organic malt can cost up to twice as much.

On top of that, organic malt makes less alcohol. This is because it typically has a higher nitrogen content, which means less carbohydrates and thus less alcohol. According to Manson, distillers should expect at most 400 litres from every tonne, compared to 410 litres for non-organic malt. At Nc’nean, which uses only organic Scottish barley, that figure has settled out at around 390 litres.

Why go organic?

Thomas estimates the overheads of going organic add up to an extra 6% on the cost of a bottle. For a whisky sold at £55 that translates to £3.50.

‘I think we proved Jim Swan partially right and partially wrong,’ says Thomas. ‘He’s right that it’s expensive, but I don’t believe it’s a waste of time.’

Organic whisky doesn’t just benefit farmers and the environment, according to Thomas. She believes drinkers will find an upside too. ‘What you notice across many organic whiskies is that they have this lovely buttery texture,’ she says. ‘That comes from the organic barley.’

8 organic whiskies to try

Circumstance Single Grain Estate Whisky

Four grains, three yeasts and three types of cask; no wonder it’s so complex. Sips like warming silk. Each taste is a new dimension: date and plum, vanilla and clove, peach and orange, toffee and caramel biscuits, finishing on nutty oak and baking spice. Alcohol 45%

Deanston 2002 Organic American Oak 20 Year Old

Matured in re-charred American oak casks and bottled at cask strength. It opens with orange, pineapple and pear drop. The palate is rich and waxy, showing shortbread, sweet caramel popcorn and toasted coconut. Cinnamon and cloves linger on the finish. Alc 49.7%

Domaines des Hautes Glaces Indigène

A French single malt matured in a suitably Gallic combo of casks: wine, Cognac and Armagnac. It’s less vanilla, more nut and toasted cereal. Aromas of white peach and jasmine, with hints of soft, fresh baguette plus that buttery texture again. Alc 44%

Highland Harvest Organic Single Malt

An independent bottling from an undisclosed distillery. It starts out light, gentle and fresh, all popcorn and clean summer florals. Over time it reveals more depths of deliciousness: hay, flaky blonde pastry glazed with apricot jam, vanilla, raisins and cherries. Alc 46%

Koval Single Barrel Bourbon

Its mash bill marries the expected (51% corn) to the unexpected (49% millet). Its texture is smooth and a touch oily. A sweet, rich whack of vanilla weaves through jammy stone fruit, date and caramel, then a long spiced finish with a hint of tonka bean. Alc 47%

Nc’nean Organic Single Malt

Smooth, buttery texture, with complex layers of honeyed malt, vanilla and oak. The palate bursts with clove-studded peaches, cherries and ripe pineapple. Stem ginger mixes with peppery spice on the finish. Aged in bourbon, Sherry and STR (shaved, toasted and re-charred) red wine casks. Alc 46%

Thy Bøg Danish Single Malt

Matured in oloroso and PX casks. Beechwood-smoked malt brings an extra dimension of depth and warmth. Smooth as you like. Rich with dried fruit, candied citrus peel, banoffee, boozy sultanas and Maltesers. Confident. Delicious. One you’ll want to share. Alc 50%

Waterford Organic Gaia 2.1

Made from 2016’s barley. It’s like you’re nose down in the earth, sniffing the field itself. Grassy with an almost maritime freshness. Then come apples, bread crusts, porridge and hay building over soft, smooth buttery grain to grapefruit and cocoa on the finish. Alc 50%

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Delegates from the Paso Robles CAB Collective (PRCC) recently visited Bordeaux. They met with sustainability leaders to address challenges posed by climate change in cultivating Bordeaux varieties and to learn best practices from the historic French region.

‘With the changing climate in the world, it’s essential to share skills,’ said Marielle Cazaux, general manager and winemaker for La Conseillante, a historic, family-owned estate in Pomerol.

Different climates yet shared challenges

Despite the apparent differences between the regions – Bordeaux is wetter and prone to mildew, while Paso Robles often struggles with drought – both face the pressures of climate change. Even though the regions are quite different, ‘you can help each other find solutions because you’re coming at it from a completely different angle,’ said Caine Thompson, head of sustainability for O’Neil Vintners & Distillers and managing director of Robert Hall Winery. In Paso Robles, 39% of the approximately 16,000ha planted is Cabernet Sauvignon.

The PRCC was created to educate on the quality of Cabernet Sauvignon and red Bordeaux varieties grown in Paso Robles. The 29-member organisation is committed to sustainability, with all members either California Sustainable Winegrowing Alliance certified or Sustainability in Practice (SIP) certified. From this visit, PRCC will report critical learnings and share actionable recommendations to members for implementing similar techniques and strategies in Paso Robles. ‘The idea is to put some of these learnings into action and create living case studies,’ said Thompson.

An opportunity for collaboration

This collaborative learning tour to Bordeaux, with visits to 15 châteaux, was an exploration of sustainability and a discussion on utilising regenerative farming to help combat mutual challenges in the light of climate change. PRCC members explored Bordeaux’s efforts in polyculture agroforestry systems within viticulture (viti-forestry), plus regenerative agricultural practices, including cover crops, dry farming, plot placement, pruning techniques and irrigation methods.

The impetus for the trip began with Thompson. In 2020, Robert Hall started a three-year trial of 17ha of regenerative viticulture compared to conventional control of 2ha as part of a regenerative organic conversion study. In that process, they conducted global regenerative research for like-minded growers and wineries with similar philosophies, including agroforestry, which was particularly interesting to Thompson. The research led him to Bordeaux, where over 75% of the vineyards are certified organic, biodynamic, or sustainable.

Agroforestry (viti-forestry as it is known in a vineyard) integrates trees and native plants into a farming system. Agroforestry involves planting around the boundaries of a vineyard, in corridors between vineyard rows, or planting within vineyards in a more randomised way. Thompson says that this intentional use of trees adds diversity and shade, allowing their roots to access water and nutrition deeper down into the soil profile. They help open cracks and crevices for the grapevine roots and create corridors for beneficial insects. They saw this in Bordeaux at Château Haut-Bages Libéral and Château Cheval Blanc.

Starting from this autumn, Robert Hall will establish the first inter-planted vitiforestry system in the US. ‘This is a revert to traditional farming methods to add diversity to help mitigate climate change through this poly system approach,’ said Thompson. The goal is for this to become a key study for vitiforestry in Paso Robles broadly and then expand that into their newly acquired Ram’s Gate property in Sonoma.

Facing the future

The very thread that connects the two regions, the shared Bordeaux varieties, may be the thing that separates them. With the Conseil Interprofessionnel du Vin de Bordeaux (CIVB) approving the use of six new varieties in 2021, Paso Robles could also diversify its plantings as a response to climate change and seek grapes that are more drought-tolerant and heat-resistant. Those six varieties in Bordeaux were explicitly chosen for their naturally high acidity, intense aromatics, and good resistance to mildew and grey rot. Without regional planting restrictions in the US, this process will be more subtle and slow-moving than in Bordeaux. Still, it is on growers’ minds in Paso Robles and throughout California.

Further collaboration opportunities were identified. In 2017, the International Viticulture and Enology Society (IVES) was created to promote the dissemination of free research results in Open access to scientists and wine producers. IVES partners and members include UC Davis, Fresno State University, Institut des Sciences de la Vigne et du Vin (ISVV), Napa Valley Vintners, and 40+ wineries worldwide.

‘That would be an excellent opportunity to meet the Paso Robles CAB collective during the IVES science meeting and a great way to inform Paso Robles growers about the latest research results,’ said Cornelis van Leeuwen, professor of viticulture at Bordeaux Sciences Agro and Bordeaux University’s Institut des Sciences de la Vigne et du Vin.

This group of Bordeaux producers may visit Paso Robles to reciprocate the information sharing. ‘Paso looks to be very collaborative and dynamic. I would love to go to Paso Robles with a group of French producers and reciprocate their learnings,’ said Cazaux.

Doug Filipponi, co-owner and chief operating officer for Ancient Peaks Winery and the current president of PRCC, affirmed: ‘We would love to host them here in Paso Robles to allow us the same opportunity for hospitality.’

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Like I did in the fruit and veg aisle, it’s easy to feel hopeless in the face of climate change. But as conservationist Jake Fiennes says in his book Land Healer (BBC Books, June 2022): ‘We don’t need to throw up our hands in horror and resign ourselves to disaster.’

With a little effort and small changes, we can steer ourselves towards being more sustainably minded.

In recent years, the wine industry has seen tangible growth in knowledge sharing and collective action around the topic of sustainability. Demonstrated through organisations such as International Wineries for Climate Action (IWCA), The Porto Protocol and Sustainable Wine Roundtable, this includes the sharing of resources, experiences, problems, solutions, research and practical tools through talks, workshops and online platforms.

Wineries can benefit hugely from being members of these groups, as the pooling of resources and expertise accelerates progress. Wineries can be guided through certifications and sustainability strategies by fellow members, or by consultancies such as The Vine Strategy Group (TSVG).

A small change we can make as wine drinkers is to seek out wines made by producers that engage in these collective efforts. Many IWCA wineries will be familiar already: look out for Felton Road from New Zealand, Okanagan Crush Pad from Canada, Rioja’s CVNE, Greece’s Kir-Yianni and Lanson in Champagne.

The path to a sustainable wine industry is not solitary but communal. ‘This is not an area where wineries need to be competing with each other,’ says Rob Symington, director at Symington Family Estates, a founding member of both IWCA and The Porto Protocol. ‘It’s in our mutual interest to share.’

‘Organic always means sustainable’

Unfortunately not always the case. Although organic farming bans the use of most chemicals, it also means tractors might be used more frequently – especially in regions with high humidity – which means more carbon emissions. That being said, organic is still a solid certification to look out for, and as Anne Jones of sustainability consultancy Limestone & Jones says: ‘We have a lot to thank the organic movement for. It has created a consistent global agricultural standard across multiple categories, based on the principles of health, ecology, fairness and care.’ So I continue to use it as a frame of reference when buying wine.

Sip to make a difference

Domaine Lafage, Centenaire, Côtes Catalanes, Roussillon, France 2022

Score: 91

£13.30-£13.99 The Fine Wine Co, Vinvm

A densely packed bundle of ripe stone fruit, pineapple and honeysuckle, this old-vine white cuvée is deep and comforting, with a dusting of spice and a fresh mineral finish. It’s like that bubbly friend that greets you with open arms and wraps you in an enveloping hug, giving your hair a cheeky tousle. Domaine Lafage became a silver member of IWCA in 2022. Drink 2024-2028 Alcohol 13.5%

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Your wine choices, as your wardrobe’s, are subject to seasonal review. It’s a matter of weather and it’s a matter of mood. So what does the arrival of autumn (and the faint hope of an Indian summer) call for? Versatile wines with character and food-pairing appeal.

Pale rosés give way to their fuller-bodied counterparts, chillable reds make space in the fridge for rich whites and bolder reds sneak in. Cocktail recipes get zesty and spicy, perfect for longer autumn evenings.

Fittingly-coloured orange wines are also perfect autumnal wines. At once refreshing and generous, for these moody days when sun and rain might be out within the same hour. And as the season’s produce starts to fill market stalls these amber-hued wines will give you perfect and versatile food pairing options.

Scroll down for tasting notes and scores of 12 orange wines to try this autumn

How is orange wine made?

An orange wine is made from white grapes fermented in contact with the skins – hence why they are also called skin-contact wines.

The light hue of most commercially available white wine is a result of the separation of the juice from the skins immediately or shortly after the grapes arrive at the cellar, by pressing the bunches. Fermentation happens without the skins thus preventing the extraction of colour, tannins and other polyphenolic compounds.

The length of maceration (the period when skins are left in contact with the juice before, during and after fermentation) determines the colour intensity of an orange wine. Fermentation temperature as well as the vessel used for fermentation and/or ageing also have a role to play.

As mentioned above, maceration extracts tannins and flavours compounds in addition to colour, which is why orange wines tend to have a distinct textural character (often described as grippy), some weight on the palate and, therefore, great food pairing appeal.

It’s sometimes said that orange wines are ‘white wines produced like a red’. However, historically, fermentation on the skins was the rule for all grapes, red and white, namely because these were often grown and fermented together. The concept of single-varietal wine and mono-varietal planting is very recent in the history of wine.

Even when varieties started being planted and vinified separately, wines were rarely light and clear in the glass. Light-hued white wines are a modern invention, only made possible by modern winemaking techniques such as cold settling, sterile filtration, temperature control and routine use of sulphites. Wines used to have a slight hue due to a degree of oxidation if not skin contact.

Millennial revival

As the industrialisation of wine production took hold, orange wines – perceived as less sophisticated, symbols of a less technologically advanced era – lost territory to modern ‘cleaner’ styles. They survived in regions where the wine sector struggled to establish itself as an industry, such as the Balkans, and at the hands of mavericks such as Josko Gravner and Stanko Radikon.

Orange wines were rediscovered at the beginning of the 21st century as part of a backlash against the standardisation of industrially-produced wine and the resulting loss of diversity of grape varieties, styles and traditions.

Orange wine was adopted by the ‘natural wine movement’ as its flagship style and propelled to the international stage as a beacon of resistance to commercially-made wines. Skin-contact became shorthand for low intervention as both producers and consumers increased their awareness of the sustainability implications of mass production.

Countries, like Georgia and Slovenia, where the style had remained firmly in production throughout the 20th century, found a new, enthusiastic audience and encouraged new producers. The vibrant natural wine community in Austria and Italy passionately embraced orange wines, with producers like Gut Oggau, COS, Claus Preisinger and Elisabetta Foradori releasing some of the defining wines of the dawn of the new millennium.

Winemakers in Portugal, Spain and Chile started researching their own regions’ historical iterations of orange wine – especially those produced in clay vessels – while adventurous ‘new world’ winemakers also embraced the style. Even producers in England and Wales are exploring the expressive potential of fermenting white grapes on their skins.

The result was a fresh understanding of the history of many wine regions, of the expressive potential of white varieties, and of how wine styles need to be seen in a spectrum rather than classified as ‘black (or red) or white’.

It’s important not to confuse orange wine and natural wine: the latter is a style while the former is a technique. It follows that not all orange wine is necessarily natural, and vice versa – i.e. skin-contact wine is not necessarily ‘funky’ or low intervention.

While texture and complexity are attributes of all (good) amber-hued wines, they can also be extremely refined. You will find a range of expressions, and both adventurous and classical wine lovers will surely find an orange wine they love. This style is not as divisive as one might think.

Tannins, flavour, texture – perfect food wines

Aromatic complexity, structure and textural character are what make orange wines special. At the crossroads of a red and white wine, they playfully stimulate and challenge the senses. Imagine the freshness and taught acidity of a white wine entwined with the tannic grip and suppleness of a red. What could possibly be better to pair with food?

Many orange wines are perfect companions for cheese platters, smoked fish, root vegetable-based dishes and roasted meat. They usually have a herbal, savoury edge that brings a meal’s flavours to life, supported by gentle tannins and firm acidity.

Best enjoyed only slightly chilled, skin-contact wines have a fresh vibrancy but also a sense of textural warmth, perfect to ease yourself into autumn’s mood. Nothing better than a picnic with a amber-hued bottle alongside the season’s harvest bounty – grapes, pear and Mediterranean citrus – before the winter’s loom sets in.

Great orange wines for autumn – 12 to try:

The wines below have been tasted and rated by Decanter’s editorial team and contributors.

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Griveau remains upbeat about the organic conversion despite the seldom-seen pressure from downy mildew during the growing season of 2024. She notes that the organic methods are not a new initiative but the culmination of many years of work. Her predecessor, Roland Masse, held the first organic trials in 2010-2011, and the approach has been fully in place since 2017, the year in which Griveau stopped using all synthetic preparations in the vineyard.

To carry out this type of work, it was necessary to replace the tractors and spraying equipment and to retrain the staff, although it was relatively easy to convince the Hospices. ‘It is a hospital where they are healing people, so they easily understood a measure to heal the earth,’ said Griveau.

Griveau has maintained the agreement of the Hospices and her staff: ‘We’ve taken the bet; this is now a personal conviction.’ The Hospices has 23 staff to work the vines, roughly one person for every 2.5ha. Everyone tends and picks the same parcel each year, and Griveau counts the expertise acquired with this method as crucial to its success.

There have been other changes at the Hospices in addition to the work on the vines. The impressive holdings from the hill of Corton are now treated parcel by parcel rather than being blended together.

The Docteur Peste cuvée comes completely from Corton Chaumes, and the cuvée Charlotte Dumay is now made exclusively with grapes from Corton Bressandes. The parcel of Bressandes that was blended into Docteur Peste has now been added to Charlotte Dumay, and Griveau is vinifying the Corton Renardes that used to go into Charlotte Dumay separately to make a new, widely lauded Corton Renardes cuvée.

This separation allows greater precision in making the wines, with better maturity of tannins in the vineyard and a more thoughtful extraction during winemaking: ‘There is no “recipe” for punching down or pumping over,’ said Griveau. ‘It is adapted to each cuvée’.

Perhaps even more importantly, Griveau has modified the approach to the barrels used for winemaking. The Hospices long suffered a reputation for a touch too much oak. Today, the staves are all dried for 36 months, and the toasting of the barrels can be changed for each cuvée to give a finer, more elegant result. ‘With Beaune Teurons, one must be gentle, but with Pommard, one needs a firmer hand,’ Griveau said.

After earning a double diploma as both an agronomist and oenologist from the University of Dijon, Griveau worked in Burgundy and Australia before settling into the role of technical director at Corton André. In 2015 she took over from Roland Masse as régisseur of the Hospices, the first woman to fill this role.

Griveau is at the head of a domaine managing 60ha spread over 117 parcels stretching from Vézélay (new this year) to Pouilly-Fuissé, and the quality of the wines and the success of the sale both testify to her growing expertise with these wines. Last year marked the 163rd auction organised by the Hospices, which earned more than €23m from 753 barrels.

The hospital was founded in 1443 by Nicolas Rolin and his wife. Rolin was the chancellor of Philippe le Bon, Duke of Burgundy. Over the centuries it have amassed impressive vineyard holdings, and in 1859 began the tradition of auctioning barrels of the finished wine.

For many years the auction was open only to registered Burgundian négociants, and clients who wished to purchase a barrel had to find someone to bid on their behalf. The sale was long seen as a bellwether of the industry in Burgundy, and the trade watched the prices achieved in an effort to gauge the direction of the market. This system changed in 2005, when Christie’s auction house took over the management of the sale and opened the bidding to private clients.

Sotheby’s took over the role of hosting the auction in 2021, presiding over a steep jump in the price per barrel in a vintage where frost damage slashed yields. 2022 also saw record prices, but the average price per barrel dropped by nearly 15% in 2023, and there were fewer barrels despite a particularly abundant crop in 2023. This is due to the fact that Griveau and her team sorted carefully to ensure top quality. Her commitment to the finest standards will undoubtedly stand buyers in good stead in the years to come.

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It’s ironic that when I go to interview actor and wine producer Sam Neill at his Central Otago farm, HQ for his Two Paddocks wines, he isn’t there.

Because as well as being famous for his roles in, among others, The Piano and the Jurassic Park franchise, and TV’s Peaky Blinders, Neill has a reputation as the most hands-on of celebrity winemakers; when he’s not travelling for work, he lives at the farm, where he’s known affectionately as ‘The Proprietor’ or simply ‘The Prop’.

He built a house there, in among the vines, and it’s very much his base, to the extent that when he received a devastating blood cancer diagnosis two years ago, he told the specialist (in Australia) ‘that I wouldn’t come back for a few days, that I hadn’t been to my farm for months and I needed to sleep in my own bed… plant something, be a farmer and a wine producer, even if it was only for a few days. I really needed to do that.’

Scroll down to see notes and scores for eight wines from Sam Neill’s Two Paddocks estate

Finding time

He wrote this in his engaging memoir Did I Ever Tell You This? (paperback, £10.99 Penguin, March 2024), penned during treatment that has proved largely successful – he’s now in full metabolic remission, though still taking preventative drugs.

The book devotes two full chapters to his life in wine and the pages might as well have red wine sploshes all over them, so clear is Neill’s love for the subject, and for Pinot Noir in particular.

I didn’t meet Neill that day; he had been called abroad hurriedly due to a changed film schedule. But I spent an afternoon with his close teammates, winemaker Dean Shaw (who has worked with Two Paddocks since 1999) and viticulturist Mike Wing (joined in 2004).

And a full tasting of Two Paddocks’ releases later, I got to scratch the bristly head of Neill’s beloved kunekune, pig Angelica, which is actually a boar, so that was some compensation.

We schedule a Zoom interview, me back in the UK with a bottle of Two Paddocks Riesling open on my desk as it’s 8pm, and Neill apologising for his jet lag at 9am NZ time back on the farm.

He has just flown in from the US, where he has been publicising his new TV drama Apples Never Fall, co-starring Annette Bening. He perks up the moment we start to talk about wine and we move quickly to his favourite subject, ‘Lord Pinot’.

Falling in love

In another life, Neill might have joined the drinks trade, as he had family connections. Wines and spirits were a core part of New Zealand company Neill & Co, where his father (post-army career) and grandfather both worked.

But Neill showed little interest in drinks until he visited the great actor James Mason at his home on the shores of lake Geneva in 1980, where he was introduced to red Burgundy during a meal at Charlie Chaplin’s favourite restaurant.

Neill was immediately smitten and is still cross that he can’t remember precisely where that first wine originated. He ‘continued his love affair with Burgundy for the next 12 years or so’, discovering Pinot from Oregon along the way.

It was the late Rolfe Mills of Rippon Vineyard at lake Wanaka in Central Otago who first put in Neill’s head the idea of growing Pinot there; Neill describes tasting Rippon’s 1991 Pinot as a ‘lightbulb moment’.

His first vineyard was planted in 1993 in the middle of the Gibbston valley. Neill’s film director mate Roger Donaldson bought the next plot along, hence Two Paddocks. ‘It really was a gamble,’ Neill admits.

‘No one knew how those initial two hectares of Pinot would fare in what is quite an extreme climate. Gibbston is the highest region in Central, surrounded by the southern Alps – very cold in winter, heat never guaranteed, and frost can come at almost any time.

‘We had snow up the valley while I was away this year in February. Rational people shouldn’t make wine here,’ Neill half-jokes, ‘but I’ve learned that to produce great Pinot, you have to teeter on the edge of viability.’

He now owns three more vineyards: the Red Bank Farm and home base at Earnscleugh, Alexandra, bought in 2000; the Last Chance vineyard close to Alexandra, which Neill ventures ‘might be the most southerly vineyard in the world’, through which runs a small water race, hand-dug by gold miners in the 1860s; and finally the Fusilier vineyard in Bannockburn, named after his army officer father.

The Fusilier, purchased in 2013, is on Felton Road, very close to Felton Road Wines, and it’s clear the famous location meant a lot to Neill, thanks to the healthy rivalry between the two producers.

Two Paddocks at a glance

Founded: 1993

First vintage: 1997

Owner: Sam Neill

Vineyards: Red Bank Farm (Earnscleugh, Alexandra); The First Paddock (Gibbston); The Last Chance (Earnscleugh, Alexandra); The Fusilier (Bannockburn)

Varieties: Pinot Noir and Riesling

Organic: Certified BioGro since 2017

Free-range Otago boy

What makes Central Otago Pinot so special? Neill thinks for a while before replying that the wines are particularly ‘vivid’. Some claim that the gold that may still be in the soil accounts for such vivacity, but he doesn’t have a firm opinion on this himself.

Rather he looks for a source of the ‘toasted herbs’ in his wines and finds it in the wild thyme bushes that grow in large thickets across the region’s dry hills. ‘Thyme was planted by 19th-century Chinese gold diggers to ward off insects – now it’s everywhere and it can influence the wine, just as eucalyptus can do in Australia.’

Back at Red Bank Farm, 5.5ha of Pinot and Riesling are joined by many other crops, including lavender (to produce lavender oil), saffron, olives and cherries, as well as oak trees. The oak has been planted by Neill as recompense for his use of barrels in the winery. ‘It’s on my conscience,’ he says. ‘Someone using oak should be planting oak.’

Nigel Greening, the British owner of Felton Road Wines, says that Neill ‘grew up a free-range Otago boy and is always happiest when on the farm… He’s the antithesis of the famous film star with a vineyard – far more concerned with honesty in his wines than in impressing people.’

Notable Pinot wizard Larry McKenna, who has worked as consultant to Two Paddocks over many years, adds: ‘I think he feels the “celebrity winemaker” tag, but he does not sign up to it or think of himself in that way.’

Going his own way

Conversion to organic viticulture was Neill’s decision – his teammates roll their eyes when remembering his insistence. He ‘hates the scorched earth policy’ and ‘can’t bear to drive past vineyards which are conventional after seeing what herbicides do’.

After a short interruption in organic viticulture when weed control had to be used for newly acquired vineyards, Two Paddocks wines were re-certified organic by BioGro in 2017. Neill is the first to suggest that thanks to Central Otago’s low humidity and persistent winds it’s easier to farm organically here than in some areas.

Affable, relaxed but not remotely ‘luvvie’, Neill nonetheless holds some entrenched views. Most are positive – interestingly, he admires the Shiraz of former Penfolds winemaker John Duval, now of the eponymous Barossa winery.

But he has his strong dislikes; he loathes ‘horrible corks’ and was ‘absolutely infuriated’ when he lost a third of his 1999 bottles to cork taint. Since 2001, Two Paddocks has only used Stelvin screw caps. And, he declares, ‘Pinot Gris does nothing for me’, in a region where the grape is often extolled.

He does have plenty of time for Riesling, however, having been ‘converted to it in Alsace’ while he was filming there during the 1980s. ‘Riesling planted in Central Otago just sits up and says, “I love it here.” You can’t grow Riesling everywhere, like you can with Chardonnay, but it works here particularly well.’

He points to the kerosene complexity of mature Central Otago Rieslings; certainly his younger wines are promisingly delicious.

Where to next? For now, Neill seems satisfied with his four vineyards in Central Otago. ‘They are all distinctly different and there’s something Burgundian about that. The sub-regions are becoming increasingly recognised and really, I welcome it.’

As for the Two Paddocks style of Pinot: ‘We were making subtle, restrained wines 20 years ago, when Central Otago was getting a name for rather obvious fruit bombs. We continue to go our own way.’

Central Otago star power: Susy Atkins’ eight wines to try from Two Paddocks

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For as much buzzy jargon as there is in the world of wine – small production, sustainable, organic, New World, natural, among them – the terms are quite definitive. In the last decade, however, the increasingly popular discussion around a new phrase has caused some confusion among consumers and even winemakers: minimal intervention.

Many winemakers believe that for a wine to be considered low or minimal intervention, it all starts with vineyard practices to optimise the terroir and purity of the fruit, which is emphasised by implementing organic and sustainable practices.

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Seeking specificity

In Virginia, Maya Hood White, winemaker at Early Mountain Vineyards, views the term ‘minimal intervention’ as encompassing the whole process from farming through to the cellar; for the former, she stresses the minimisation of aggressive chemicals, mindfulness of fuel usage and tractor passes.

‘Irrigation is also an intervention that alters the essence of the fruit and then the wines,’ says Paul Sloan, winemaker at Small Vines. Their high-density planting allows Small Vines to dry farm, which translates to a ‘more pure sense of place’, according to Sloan.

While these farming practices aren’t new, the attention surrounding their influence on low or minimal-intervention wine is what’s bringing them to the forefront.

Sam Bilbro from Idlewild Wines explains: ‘If we make really good vineyard decisions, we can make very few touches in the winery because we have beautiful and healthy fruit to work with in the cellar.’

There’s no wine without some intervention

This is probably where we should acknowledge that winemaking, by definition, is intervention.

‘The grapes neither jump from the vine into a vat nor from vat to barrel to bottle,’ says Maggie Harrison, winemaker at Antica Terra, about the necessary go-between of human action that’s been part of winemaking since the beginning of time.

Perhaps this is why it’s so challenging to define – with no precedent or global regulation surrounding the term, low or minimal intervention means different things to different people. ‘It’s a spectrum,’ says Hood White, much like many things in life, which makes it. ‘A delicate balance explaining what we do or don’t do in our production processes while not looking to project judgement on other producers.’

As technology and science have advanced, winemakers have realised that a subpar harvest can still be salvaged; imbalances can be solved through manipulations such as fining, filtration, chaptalisation, stabilisers and additives.

‘It is easier, cheaper and less laborious to intervene afterwards in the cellar with chemistry than to farm well in the first place,’ says Sloan. Since many wineries don’t control their vineyards: ‘The only way they can compensate for flaws is with chemistry.’

For this reason, Sloan reverts to why low-intervention practices should start in the vineyards. ‘We choose to prevent problems in advance by farming well, using proper site selection, trellis design, tight spacing and prompt harvest date decisions.’

Recognising that every wine has its challenges, Bilbro echoes Sloan. As winemakers, he says, it is their job to locate the potential problem points of each variety and mitigate those issues.

He adds that in conventional winemaking, if a wine is prone to stalling at the end of fermentation, they could add synthetic products to aid the yeast. However, in minimal intervention winemaking: ‘We could stir the wine to suspend the remaining active yeast and keep it warm (bring it out to the sun a bit each day) to help keep the yeast active through the finish.’

A fuzzy definition

Though Bilbro is aiding the process, it still fits into Sloan’s definition of minimal intervention. ‘Having the lowest amount of human-made or artificial inputs or enhancements in both the farming and the winemaking process.’

While this definition broadly summarises minimal intervention, the term can still be confusing for most consumers who don’t understand what is regulated or legal to use in farming and wine production.

This is why the term is often misused and misrepresented by consumers. ‘It is so disappointing to listen to a producer talk about their low intervention winemaking when you know the high input, commercially farmed vineyards they are purchasing their fruit from,’ says Hood White.

This is why she encourages consumers to ask questions and emphasises the message of how a lower intervention approach ‘always begins with farming’.

Purity remains elusive

Even still, large-production wineries aren’t the only ones that ultimately might adjust their wines post harvest.

Harrison explains that if a winemaker is adding acid it’s ‘because they truly believe it will make the wine in our glass more balanced, longer-lived, more complete’. It’s part of the winemaking process, and if a winery isn’t fortunate to have estate vineyards they can meticulously watch over, decisions must be made.

As winemakers are craftspeople, adds Harrison, they shouldn’t be chastised for doing their best work, even if that includes making adjustments in the cellar.

Until minimal intervention is globally defined or regulated, each winemaker will have their personal perception and ability to label their wines based on what this term means to them and how they produce wine according to it.

For the time being, it’s up to the consumer to engage with producers they prefer to help inform their own understanding of terms like minimal intervention and what they expect in wines that use that sort of marketing or labelling.

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Azienda Agricola Montefiorito is a restored 17th century monastery that has been converted into a luxury villa.

The historic estate is located in Asti, which is in the renowned Piedmont wine region.

The 13-hectare property also includes a wine cellar, a tasting area, two apartments, a church, landscaped gardens, and a swimming pool.

Montefiorito includes 4.6 ha under vine, planted with Nebbiolo, Grignolino, Arneis and Sauvignon Blanc.

According to the listing, it is capable of producing up to 40,000 bottles of organic wine per year.

Bidding is expected to open between €1m and €2m but the estate has been assigned a guide price of €3.95m (£3.4m). Details of how to bid are available at the Concierge Auctions site.

Lodovico Pignatti Morano, owner and managing partner for Italy at Sotheby’s International Realty, said: ‘This Piedmont gem will offer its next owner a variety of potential uses, including an excellent investment for a family home or event venue.

‘Azienda Agricola Montefiorito carefully blends old-world Italian heritage with modernised living, offering a fusion of experiences that culminate in a memorable destination for calling home, visiting and entertaining.

‘Although it is a country house, you’re only an hour away from Milan and Turin, allowing you to experience the peace of rural life without being far from the excitement of the big city.’

Montefiorito is Italian for ‘flower mountain’. The name pays homage to the estate’s abundant flora and fauna. Herons, eagles, wild boars, otters, deer, foxes, wild rabbits and hares all contribute to the property’s rich biodiversity.

Current owner Ole Mikael Jensen, a Danish businessman, has overseen an extensive renovation of the estate over the past decade. He brought in the best consultants the region has to offer in order to preserve the estate’s historic charm.

Ben Podesta, director of business development for Sotheby’s Concierge Auctions, added: ‘Complete with various elements of a truly elevated lifestyle, the next owner of this wonderful Italian destination will acquire not only a wonderful slice of Italian real estate, but also a history spanning more than 340 years.’

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It is September 2023 in the vineyards of Champagne Christophe Mignon in the village of Leuvrigny. As an early autumn heatwave takes hold, a harvester stops to pick an enormous bunch of grapes, dark purple and pristine.

Snipping the bunch in two, he looks up at me and shrugs his shoulders; beneath the purple exterior is a layer of green, unripe berries. ‘This is 2023!’ he says, with more than a dash of exasperation.

Scroll down to see tasting notes and scores for Tom Hewson’s top picks of Marne Valley Champagnes

The small picking team works its way up the rows, hunting for ripeness among a fast-moving explosion of rot and shrivelling berries. Only two harvests previously, many growers lost everything to downy mildew and incessant rainfall. Meunier yields were significantly reduced for Jérôme Bourgeois of Champagne Bourgeois-Diaz in Crouttes-sur-Marne, at the western extremity of the Champagne appellation, where the majority of Meunier was lost. ‘I was glad to have a little Pinot Noir and Chardonnay,’ he says.

In Cuisles, further east towards Champagne’s centre, things were little better: Famille Moussé lost 90% of production. ‘It was a hard vintage, psychologically,’ says the estate’s export manager Julie Daviaux, ‘There was a lot of depression in the community.’

The Marne Valley is not the easiest place to grow grapes in Champagne. It is, however, home to Champagne’s true local speciality, without which it would be impossible to imagine either the approachable blends of the Grandes Marques, or the modern, terroir-specific grower Champagne movement: the Meunier grape.

The Marne Valley: The facts

The Marne Valley (including the Grande Vallée and Coteaux Sud d’Epernay) is Champagne’s largest sub-region, with over 12,000ha of vines across 121 villages.

There are 5,500 growers (most of which sell their grapes).

Champagne has by far the largest plantation of Meunier in the world with just over 30% of its 34,000ha planted to the variety (70% of which is in the Marne Valley). Only England, with its focus on cool-climate sparkling, embraces the grape in a similar way, where is totals 9% of all plantings.

The Marne Valley is known more for its clays, sands and limestone soils than the chalk found in Champagne’s centre.

Source – Union des Maisons de Champagne

Meunier

Meunier is a chimeric mutation of the Pinot family, meaning that it is almost genetically identical save for mutations that lead, among a handful of subtle differences, to its distinctive silvery leaves. Its buds also emerge later than Pinot Noir, a key advantage in this cooler part of Champagne where the risk of frost damage is heightened.

Notions of Meunier’s modest quality are set into the story of Champagne; André Simon’s 1962 book The History Of Champagne dedicates one sentence alone to the ‘poor relation’ Meunier, calling it ‘a more generous but commoner species, giving more gallons per acre of a less distinguished wine.’

Today this attitude is widely disregarded. Meunier’s heritage may be that of a blending variety, used for its fruity, fleshy character to wrap around the more structured, tense Pinot Noir and Chardonnay from Champagne’s chalky heart, yet ever since the idea of showcasing it alone emerged in the 1990s – when François Egly (and later Jérôme Prévost) began producing single-vineyard Meunier not from the Marne Valley but vineyards near Reims – Meunier’s reputation has undergone a revival.

See also: A guide to Pinot Meunier Champagne

The Marne Valley as a whole can be separated into three distinct areas: the Grande Vallée, the Marne Valley and Coteaux Sud d’Epernay:

The Grande Vallée – a Pinot Noir enclave

With its source in the Langres plain to the southeast of the Côte des Bar, the Marne river splits Champagne’s winegrowing area in two: to the north, the city of Reims and the Montagne de Reims, and Epernay and the Côte des Blancs to the south.

As the river runs west towards Paris, a shallow valley forms. At its eastern end, before the sand and clay lands of Meunier begin, a small string of villages cling to the chalky hillsides looking south towards Epernay; this is the Grande Vallée of the Marne river, home to some of Champagne’s most revered Pinot Noir vineyards.

The grandiose villas of Aÿ and the imposing, south-facing slopes between Mareuil-sur-Aÿ and Hautvillers tell their own story: wines from this area have been famed for centuries, even before Champagne had its bubbles. Patrick Forbes, in his 1967 book Champagne, reports that ‘Henry VIII of England kept a special commissioner at Aÿ to provide him with wine,’ and that the famous Léon vineyard site is believed to be ‘the one from which Pope Leo the Magnificent – the patron of Michelangelo, Raphael and Leonardo da Vinci – drew his wine.’

The Union des Maisons de Champagne reports that 67% of the main body of the Marne Valley is planted with Meunier, versus 16% for Pinot Noir. These percentages are almost exactly reversed in the warm, chalky slopes of the Grande Vallée. The villages by the river between Mareuil-sur-Aÿ and Damery arguably have more in common, then, with the villages in the southern Montagne de Reims such as Ambonnay and Bouzy to the east, than to the valley heading out westwards.

As the Marne river flows west though, past the town of Damery, the chalk subsoil so famous in Champagne descends beneath clays and sands of the later Tertiary period, and the landscape morphs from the imposing, hard, white hillsides into something a little more bucolic, which sees pretty villages, mixed farmland and woodland dotted between patches of vineyard.

The Marne Valley

‘There is a huge difference between the Grande Vallée and the Marne Valley in terms of climate, soil and exposition,’ says Jean-Paul Hébrart of Champagne Marc Hébrart in Mareuil-sur-Aÿ. Indeed, if the Pinot Noir enclave of the Grande Vallée feels compact and strait-laced, the Marne Valley itself is a more drawn-out, leisurely affair.

There’s little of the glitz and glamour of Epernay’s grand Avenue de Champagne here. As Jérôme Bourgeois and I watch the slow train from Epernay to Paris chug by, he says: ‘We don’t have as many party invitations out here, or as many visitors.’

Climate

In and around the town of Château-Thierry, the climate is more humid than in Champagne’s heart. ‘Elsewhere they have fewer problems with mildew – the premier and grand cru vineyards (in central Champagne) are rated that way because they resist disease better,’ Bourgeois explains, ‘our clay and limestone soil gives us a good combination of fruitiness, suppleness and freshness; good for drinking young.’

Despite the climatic challenges, Bourgeois is one of an increasing number of vignerons here working organically and biodynamically, and we find – perhaps a little surprisingly – what might be, according to Jean-Marc Charpentier, Champagne’s single largest certified biodynamic vineyard holding at Champagne Charpentier in Charly-sur-Marne.

Charpentier points out that the north bank of the Marne river varies hugely from village to village: as the river bends, the expositions change and the soils dip in and out of complex deposits. He has planted a surprisingly large amount of Chardonnay on the calcareous soils of the south-facing sun bowl of Charly-sur-Marne. ‘A lot of Chardonnay in the Marne Valley is picked too early, and doesn’t taste mature – here we are able to wait,’ he explains.

But the cooler sites with heavier soils far out in the Marne Valley are facing more challenges. ‘Meunier from cooler sites on clay does not always suit our fermentation,’ explains Billecart-Salmon’s cellar master Florent Nys. He has been shifting the house’s focus to the villages of Leuvrigny, Damery and Venteuil, closer to Épernay, rather than the cooler, more humid terroirs further west, in search of ‘more concentration, and more pristine, mineral sensations,’ he says.

At Champagne Telmont in Damery, a similar thought process is underway: ‘We are very proud of our Meunier,’ explains cellar master Bertrand Lhopital. ‘We are not changing the percentage in our blends, but we are changing the source – we’re looking for more minerality, and less power.’

Rive gauche and rive droite

As the Marne continues westwards, vineyards are planted on both sides of the river. The vineyards on the south side, or the rive gauche, tend to face north so the wines show cooler, brighter characters, while the vineyards on the north bank often face south, catching more intense sunlight and producing a riper, sunnier style of wine.

Alexis Leconte of Champagne Alexis in Troissy farms vineyards on both sides. He says: ‘We need five more days to reach the same sugar levels here [in Troissy, on the south bank of the river], than we do in Vandières [on the north bank].’ Tasting Leconte’s cuvée Arietis from Vandières reveals an obvious power and maturity next to the crisper fruit in La Terre Mère from Troissy.

There’s more to it though: on both sides of the river, side valleys emerge from the north and south, offering a variety of aspects, soils and even shelter from some of the vagaries of the Marne’s weather patterns.

The village of Festigny boasts one of the Marne’s more dramatic vineyards on the imposing hill of Châtaigniers, rising out of the otherwise gently rolling landscape, producing a series of rare south-facing vineyards on the left bank.

On the right bank, the area near Cuisles is home to well-regarded, sheltered sites that Famille Moussé farms organically, making use of the area’s argile vert – a unique, water-retentive green clay – that, according to Daviaux, ‘acts like a sponge, soaking up water during the rain yet allowing the vines to access it during hot, dry summers.’

Many of the Marne’s soils are not especially drought-proof compared to chalk, with its capacity to store huge volumes of water, so small advantages such as these can protect the crop in years such as 2020 and 2022 where drought stress meant highly unpredictable ripening.

An in-betweener: Coteaux Sud d’Epernay

Sandwiched in between the south bank of the Marne Valley, Epernay and the Côte des Blancs, the Coteaux Sud d’Epernay – meaning the hills south of Epernay – is a string of villages that have an intriguing mix of soils.

Here we find Meunier on sands and clays (like in the rest of the Marne Valley), Chardonnay on chalk (like in the Côte des Blancs), and even some Pinot Noir. This yields a great variety of wine styles, characterising one of the more dynamic sub-regions for independent Champagne. The split between Chardonnay and Meunier is more even here, at 43% each.

The future

There’s some irony, perhaps, that what was once regarded as Champagne’s engine room for fruity, reliable, accessible blending material has become one of its more unpredictable vine growing areas in the age of climate change.

Vignerons in the Marne Valley deserve every ounce of credit for turning out fine Champagne. For all those times when chalky, mineral strictness and intensity isn’t quite what’s called for, these wines, with their open charm and ready-to-please nature, step into the limelight.

The Marne Valley: 10 key names to know

Grande Vallée

Geoffroy (Aÿ, Cumières) Exemplary intensity and elegance from one of the underrated masters of sunny Cumières.

Philipponnat (Mareuil-sur-Aÿ) This fine small house specialises in Grande Vallée Pinot Noir in everything from its entry-level wines to the stunning Clos des Goisses single-vineyard cuvée.

Marc Hébrart (Mareuil-sur-Aÿ) Restrained power and class mark the wines of the Grande Vallée from the experienced Jean-Paul Hébrart.

Marne Valley

Cazé-Thibaut (Châtillon-sur-Marne) Fabien Cazé’s estate is on the rise, with beautifully refined and supple Meunier from the rive droite.

Champagne Alexis (Troissy). Alexis Leconte makes intense, spicy and food-friendly Meunier in a modern, ripe style.

Tarlant (Oeuilly) One of the most famous names in the Marne valley, Tarlant specialises in complex, long lees-aged Meunier-led cuvées with plenty of character.

Moussé Fils (Cuisles) Rapidly establishing itself as a leading independent estate in Champagne, Cedric Moussé’s wines are full of natural vibrancy and precision.

Benoît Déhu (Fossoy) Fast becoming a cult name, Dehu produces intense, dramatic and aromatic oak-aged Meunier from a small estate towards the western edge of Champagne.

Famille Delouvin (Vandières) Geoffroy Delouvin’s wines have a sense of outgoing, fun and immediate Meunier pleasure, but increasing refinement too – an estate going from strength to strength.

Coteaux Sud d’Épernay

Laherte Frères (Chavot-Courcourt) The most prominent estate in the Coteaux Sud remains one of the leading exponents of natural and low-intervention Champagne, with vivid, open-stanced and imaginative wines.

Tom Hewson’s picks of the best Champagnes from the Marne Valley

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Klara organic wines represent an expansion beyond Bordeaux for the Dillon family and Prince Robert of Luxembourg, who is CEO and chairman of the Domaine Clarence Dillon group.

Described by the company as ‘a one-way ticket to the south of France’, the Klara range is making its debut with red, white and rosé wines from the 2023 vintage.

The wines, created to be fruit-forward and for immediate drinking, have a suggested retail price of €15 per bottle, a Clarence Dillon spokesperson said.

All will be labelled as ‘Vin de France’, and the group said wines have been sourced from specific producers across a Mediterranean arc spanning Provence, the Rhône and Languedoc-Roussillon – the latter now forming part of the wider Occitanie region.

Use of the Vin de France designation gives the team more flexibility to slightly alter the wines’ make-up vintage by vintage, a spokesperson for Domaine Clarence Dillon said.

‘With Klara, our goal is to always select the finest organic wines from throughout southern France and produce elegant cuvées that reflect their roots using our blending expertise,’ the spokesperson added.

The first Klara organic wines, from the 2023 vintage, are:

• Klara red – 70% Syrah, 30% Grenache, at (15% abv)
• Klara white – 50% Sauvignon, 50% Viognier (12.5% abv)
• Klara rosé – 70% Grenache, 30% Syrah (13% abv)

Winemaker Nathalie Bassot-Dworkin is director of operations and head oenologist for Klara, and has spent time developing relationships with producers across southern France, said the company.

Bassot-Dworkin joined the Clarence Dillon Wines merchant business in 2006 as head of production for its Clarendelle range in Bordeaux.

For the Dillon family, the move represents an extension of its long-standing affinity with southern France.

‘Since the early 1950s, members of the Dillon family have enjoyed regular visits to the beautiful southern French region of Provence,’ said Prince Robert of Luxembourg, who is the great grandson of company founder Clarence Dillon.

‘These cuvées will delight with every sip while honouring the great southern terroirs and celebrating the passionate wine producers that inhabit these splendid sun-drenched Mediterranean regions.’

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The California coastline may be synonymous with sunshine, but equally pervasive is the blanket of fog that unfurls from the sea most days. A consequence of cold wind sweeping over warm ocean currents, it’s a hauntingly beautiful phenomenon known as ‘sea smoke’.

Just a few hours’ drive from Los Angeles, the Sta Rita Hills in Santa Barbara County are a semi-desert region at the 34th latitude. An arid, southerly locale, ‘it’s a seemingly unlikely place to grow great Pinot Noir,’ says Victor Gallegos, general manager of Sea Smoke Estate Vineyards.

Yet, buoyed by sea smoke and the unique geography of Santa Barbara County, Sea Smoke Vineyards has helped establish the Sta Rita Hills AVA as one of America’s foremost Pinot Noir regions.

Scroll down to tasting notes and scores for Sea Smoke’s latest releases

A unique geographic anomaly

Along most of the California coastline, mountain ranges run parallel to the ocean, forming vast shields that shelter inland regions from cold coastal wind and fog. Santa Barbara, however, falls in a rare stretch of traverse mountains that run perpendicular to the ocean.

The narrow corridors of its hills and canyons serve as funnels, directing maritime winds and fog deep into the interior.

Despite its southerly latitude and sun-drenched California terroir, this coastal influence renders the Sta. Rita Hills AVA is a ‘Region 1’ viticultural area akin to Chablis, Tasmania or Champagne, according to the Winkler Index.

Intense sun exposure combined with moderate temperatures allows grapes to ripen over extended growing seasons. The wines they produce are intensely flavourful while maintaining acidity and freshness.

The Sta Rita Hills’ unique climate, topography and rich clay soils have transformed the AVA into a nexus of California’s wine illuminati. Alongside Sea Smoke, producers like Brewer Clifton, Sanford & Benedict, Piedrasassi, and Sine Qua Non have cemented the region as sacred ground for America’s most celebrated expressions of Pinot Noir, Chardonnay and Syrah.

But the Sea Smoke Vineyard is a particular sweet spot within the AVA, with vines planted exclusively on south-facing slopes overlooking the Santa Ynez River at elevations ranging from 66 to 219 metres.

Directly exposed to the sun, the estate’s vines harness the full spectrum of the valley’s offerings – the intensity of southern California sunshine moderated by high elevations and the chilling effects of coastal fog and wind. Its flagship Pinot Noirs are luxuriantly ripe yet brim with vitality and grace.

Rise to Fame

Sea Smoke was founded by Bob Davids, an entrepreneur who made headlines when his toy company, Radica Games, was acquired by Mattel for US$230 million in 2006.

In 1999, Davids acquired a former horse farm in what was then the Santa Ynez Valley AVA (the Sta. Rita Hills AVA wasn’t carved out until 2001) and planted the first 40ha of vines.

Many attribute the winery’s rise to its appearance in the 2004 wine-country dramedy Sideways. But they had a waiting list virtually from inception, owing to enthusiastic press reviews as early as the first vintage in 2001.

Even today, 80% of their wines are sold direct to consumers through a mailing list. ‘The waiting list is about 4,700 people today, which is kind of low,’ says Gallegos. ‘At its peak, it was more like 9,000.’

The remaining 20% is sold by allocation through traditional distribution channels. Without fail, the wines have sold out every vintage.

Unapologetic yumminess

Put simply, Sea Smoke is defined by its ‘yumminess’, Gallegos explains, an unapologetically voluptuous, fruity style he likens to ‘lushness, texture and mouthfeel’.

Vinifications are separated by vineyard blocks and clones. But the two flagship Pinot Noirs, the Southing and Ten, aren’t linked to any specific plots. Instead, they’re meticulously crafted barrel selections aimed at capturing two distinct facets of the house style.

Each December following élevage (ageing), Gallegos and winemaker Don Schroeder begin a three-month process of blind tasting and grading barrels based on overall character, structure, mouthfeel and oak expression. The graded lots are assembled into a complex flavour palette from which final blending decisions are made.

‘The first thing we ask is, “is this a Southing-type barrel, or is it a Ten-type barrel?”,’ explains Gallegos.

Southing is Sea Point’s more elegant, bright-eyed and pure-fruited expression of Pinot Noir. Ten, named for the estate’s 10 Pinot Noir clones, is muscular and grippy. ‘It’s meant to be robust, something that appeals to a Cabernet lover with more of an oak component,’ Gallegos says.

Longtime fans may remember Botella, their entry-level bottling of Pinot Noir. ‘Essentially, it was Sea Smoke’s declassified wine,’ Gallegos says. ‘Anything that didn’t fit Southing or Ten ended up in Botella.’

But as the vineyard matured, Botella was discontinued as Gallegos and Schroeder ‘found it more and more difficult to find barrels for it,’ he says.

Sea Smoke at a glance

Founded: in 1999 by Bob Davids. First vintage in 2001.

Winemaker: Don Schroeder

Director of Vineyard Operations: Julian Malone

Location: Sta Rita Hills AVA in Santa Barbara, CA

Production: 20,000 cases [240,000 bottles]

Key wines: Southing Pinot Noir (8,000 cases), Ten Pinot Noir (8,000 cases), Chardonnay (3,000 cases), Sea Spray Blanc de Noir (1,000 cases).

Area under vine: 172 acres (69.61 hectares)

Elevations: 218 feet to 720 feet (66 to 219m) above sea level

Soil: A base of semi-siliceous shale with calcareous strata and diatomite. Top soils of rich Botella, Gazos and Lopez clays.

Embracing change

Despite the winery’s enduring cult success, its forward, powerfully fruity wines have been divisive too. In a 2007 article for GQ, Alice Feiring declared their Pinot Noir as one of the most overrated wines in the world – ‘an overly fruity, mushy, and slightly gelatinous wine,’ she wrote.

And in recent years, as cool-climate regions like the Sta Rita Hills AVA have become hotspots for a distinctly spry, racier style of winemaking, Sea Smoke’s lush, even bombastic, style has fallen out of favour with many.

But their modus operandi has never shied from hedonism. ‘If you think about the continuum of Pinot Noir from the Old World to the New World,’ says Gallegos, Sea Smoke pushes the needle ‘to something like 75% towards the New World’.

Simultaneously, the brand has not been immune to change. Longtime observers refer to a shift in house style with the departure of Kris Curran, the initial winemaker in 2007.

At the time, Gallegos explains, ‘we were looking for little more complexity and balance in the wines. Earlier harvests dialled back alcohol levels from 15.5% abv to 14.5%.

In the cellar, more wine is fermented with native yeasts isolated from the Sea Smoke Vineyard. And the proportions of new French barrique have been scaled down in favour of larger-format, neutral 600 litre demi-muid and 1,000 litre foudre.

While its characteristic voluptuousness is intact, the contemporary style is brighter, fresher and more nuanced than one might remember from two decades ago.

Despite the changes, ‘we never lost sight of that lushness and yumminess that makes Sea Smoke distinct,’ says Gallegos, ‘but I would say our winemaking became a little more precise’.

A quiet conversion to biodynamics

Most impactful in its evolution has been the estate’s quiet conversion to biodynamic farming.

‘We started with a test plot in 2005 and after three years, the light bulb went off,’ says Gallegos. ‘There’s just this energetic quality – this palate focus, like a through line in the wine.’

The entire estate has been farmed biodynamically since 2013 but the transition wasn’t overtly stated until 2017, says Gallegos.

And while the estate is Oregon Tilth Certified Organic, they opted not to pursue a Demeter Biodynamic certification due to complications in producing enough manure on-site.

‘We farm biodynamically because we like what it does for the wines, and it’s the right thing to do as stewards of the land,’ he explains.

Beyond Pinot

Sea Smoke is first and foremost a Pinot Noir producer, but its Chardonnay and sparkling wine have gained notable acclaim too, sometimes unintentionally.

‘We never wanted to be a Chardonnay producer,’ Gallegos admits. ‘Chardonnay was our poor, blonde-headed stepchild,’ he says. ‘So much that we called it “Gratis” and gave it away to list members as a thank you.’

Gratis, Gallegos admits, was made, without much attention, a prototypical ‘in-your-face California Chard’. But as demand for Chardonnay increased, Gallegos and his team reevaluated their approach towards greater complexity, balance and finesse.

Sea Smoke’s labour-intensive foray into sparkling production was considerably more deliberate. Sea Spray, its traditional method blanc de noirs made from 100% Pinot Noir grapes, takes nearly five years to produce.

Its southerly latitude and solar intensity produce a style of sparkling wine that’s wholly unique, explains Gallegos.

‘Even at very low brix, we get a lot of flavour accumulation and really interesting berry and fruit characters that give an impression of sweetness,’ he says. This flavour intensity ‘gives us a lot more space to do a no-dosage sparkling and pull it off well,’ he adds.

Keeping things small

Despite an oversized reputation and expansive 400ha estate, the company’s operations have remained intentionally modest. A quarter of a century since its founding, only 69ha are planted with vines, and production remains steady at 20,000 cases. Quality over quantity has remained the mantra.

The entire team consists of only 10 people, says Gallegos, and among their core leadership, the average tenure of employment exceeds 20 years.

The winery has no tasting room and declines requests for vineyard tours. Its social media presence is sporadic at best. And ‘in 22 years, we’ve never spent a dime on advertising,’ Gallegos says.

The wines, after all, speak so boldly for themselves.

Tasting notes for Sea Smoke:

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After a very wet winter and spring in 2023, California is seeing another series of winter storms in the form of both significant rain and high mountain snow in early 2024. The state was beset with difficult conditions, particularly in Southern California, where Los Angeles saw nearly half a year’s worth of rainfall in only a few short days.

Fatalities, flooding and more than 400 mudslides were just some of the results of the intense storms in California.

The already saturated ground and stressed infrastructure will make the pending storms even more challenging for parts of the state.

In California’s wine country, the rains were largely seen as a positive, particularly after the 2023 vintage, which is being heralded as one of the best ever for regions like Napa and Sonoma. The banner year was kicked off with a particularly wet winter and spring.

Napa Valley

Bruce Phillips, owner and grape grower at Napa’s Vine Hill Ranch, saw the rains as a net positive both now and for the vintage to come. ‘We received approximately 53% of our average annual rainfall through the month of January 2024,’ Phillips said. ‘In light of the El Niño pattern existent off the Pacific Coast, the Napa Valley had anticipated heavy rainfall this season and was well prepared for its arrival despite the accompanying high winds that resulted in widespread power outages and fallen trees across the region.’

‘That said, because of our well-draining soils and the fact that cover crops were well established prior to the downpours, there was no significant damage to vineyards across Napa County. All of this portends well for the delivery of much-needed water to Napa County and for an increased snowpack in the Sierra Nevada mountains, which is so critical for the balance of the state’s water supply.’

Sonoma Coast

‘We follow a no-till path with regenerative-organic-biodynamic principles at RAEN,’ said the winery’s proprietor Carlo Mondavi. ‘This means that we have a great deal of organic matter in our soils, which helps retain the rainwater, leaving us minimal to no runoff. This helps nourish our soils and vines while also preventing erosion.’

Mondavi continued: ‘With wet soils and severe winds we saw many beautiful old trees fall across Napa and Sonoma, including at our vineyards on the Sonoma Coast. One mature fir fell along the edge of our Royal St. Robert block, crossing a few rows. It’s hard to say what the total damage is, as some of the vines might pull through. It could be a loss of no vines or a maximum of five.’

‘Throughout the AVAs that we work with, the main issue was wind,’ said Kosta Browne winemaker Julien Howsepian. ‘With 50-to-60-mile-per-hour gusts knocking down trees and causing power outages.’

‘While it was a wild few days, the rain was very much welcome. As we head into the 2024 growing season, we have abundant groundwater at our vineyard sites in some regions, including the Sta. Rita Hills, which has received eight to nine inches of rain, we’ve already hit our annual rainfall averages. After more than a few drought vintages in recent years, having enough water to work with will be very beneficial for our vineyards and wines.’

San Luis Obispo Coast

Further south, the rains more than sufficiently quenched some of the state’s typically parched areas while also creating some unease for vineyard teams.

‘On the San Luis Obispo Coast, we received around five inches of rain this past week, which is a nice amount for our typically rain-starved region,’ said Eric Johnson, director of viticulture and winemaking at Talley Vineyards. ‘There was no real damage felt except for a few fallen oak branches. Luckily, we have a couple of weeks until bud break, so the vines and this year’s crop didn’t experience any damage.’

‘We do see two downsides to the rain,’ Johnson explained. ‘First, the storm was fairly warm, so it did nothing to help the hibernation of the vines. Ideally, we would want a colder storm to delay bud break as long as we can to avoid frost damage. Secondly, when it rains, we can’t work in the vineyard. We desperately need to be out there pruning before the vines wake up. Hopefully, we can get some dry cold weather so we can delay bud break and finish up pruning.’

Paso Robles

In nearby Paso Robles, Jason Haas of Tablas Creek is thrilled with the recent precipitation. ‘The rains here were nothing but good news,’ Haas said. ‘We got about 15cm spread over a week, and that pushes us up to about 45cm for the year. That’s about 125% of normal for this date. It’s late enough in the winter season that the cover crops are very well established, and there was no erosion or any negative impacts whatsoever.’

‘Overall, the winter has been delightfully boring,’ Haas continued. ‘Gentle rains, spaced out well, with sun and cold in between, but not too much of anything. Last night frosted, and we’re supposed to see cold nights all through the weekend, which is great; the combination of all the water in the ground and the cold temperatures should do a good job of keeping soil temperatures low and delaying bud break.’

‘This is exactly what we’d have hoped for. We didn’t need another 50-inch rainfall winter, but average to slightly above average water on top of last year’s reserves and cool temps to reduce our risk of damage from spring frosts is perfect.’

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Founded by Montreal-based Michelle Bouffard, DipWSET, Tasting Climate Change is international in scope. Held 22-23 January 2024, the 4th edition of this trade-oriented, biennial symposium brought in 30 experts from around the world to lead seminars and panel discussions for an audience of almost 400.

Bouffard led with a reminder that 2023 was the world’s warmest year ever recorded. She referenced the record forest fires across Canada, widespread loss to fungal disease in Europe and dire drought in Catalonia. ‘Even though we need to acknowledge the challenges, these aren’t the reasons I am here,’ she said.

Turning swiftly to the conference’s objective to explore solutions, she shared a report by France’s National Research Institute for Agriculture, Food and Environment (INRAE), suggesting that agriculture, which includes viticulture, has the potential to sequester 41% of its carbon emissions through proper soil management.

The role of soil

Taking the relay, keynote speaker Marc-André Selosse, professor at Paris’ Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle, gave a dense presentation of the composition and choreography of dirt. ‘Low water isn’t necessarily the problem,’ he stated, pointing instead to the ability of soil to retain water. Modern practices like ploughing, tilling and using pesticides and mineral fertilisers have diminished this and crucially reduced soil’s capacity to store carbon.

Carbon sequestration is one of the main goals of regenerative agriculture, a trending topic in the world of wine. Michel Gassier from Famille Gassier described the approach as pragmatic rather than dogmatic. It takes all the good ideas from ancestral to modern practices such as organic and permaculture to improve soil, increase biodiversity and restore ecosystems. ‘It is the only system we found that isn’t necessarily more expensive than conventional farming,’ he said.

Joining Gassier was Joseph Brinkley from Bonterra Organic Estates. With 344ha, Bonterra is the largest Regenerative Organic Certified (ROC) winery in the US and fewer than 20 worldwide. ‘The strength of ROC is the social aspect,’ Brinkley explained. Besides farming practices, it includes a strict audit of how employees are treated, including receiving an essential living wage.

The importance of certifications

Beyond ROC, the numerous certifications were evaluated, with Bouffard noting that organic alone isn’t a guarantee of sustainability. Anne Bousquet from the multi-certified Domaine Bousquet in Argentina shared that B Corp, which assesses environmental, social and economic sustainability, was the most difficult to attain. ‘Certification is like a marriage rather than an engagement,’ she said. ‘It assures clients and retailers that what we say we do, we do.’

Regional certifications were recognised as having the most significant potential to accelerate change. Admired by industry peers as the ‘gold standard’, Sustainable Winegrowing New Zealand (SWNZ) – established in 1995 – was one of the first sustainability initiatives launched in the global wine industry.

The country has achieved SWNZ certification for over 96% of its vineyard land through a collective effort. Speaking on behalf of SWNZ, Meagan Littlejohn considered the entire lifecycle of a winery’s carbon footprint, asserting that ‘25% of emissions come from exporting and 75% from production’. She argued that New Zealand wines still represent an environmentally sound choice despite the distance they typically must travel, as low production emissions more than compensate for those from transportation.

The weight of the bottle

Bottle weight alone is the most significant contributor to a winery’s carbon footprint – 30%, according to Tom Owtram of Sustainable Wine Roundtable. ‘We have to bust the myth of heavyweight bottles being directly connected to quality,’ he said. To this end, Stratus in Ontario has moved all premium wine from 750 to 370g bottles. From the Comité Champagne, Pierre Naviaux reported that the new standard Champagne bottle has been reduced from 900 to 835g. ‘This sounds tiny, but multiplied by 300 million bottles, that’s about 17,000 tons of CO2 we are saving annually,’ he said.

A first-time partner in Tasting Climate Change, the government-owned Société des Alcools du Québec (SAQ) is one of the world’s biggest importers of wines and spirits. ‘Our buying power confers on us a responsibility and the ability to influence our suppliers and partners,’ said President Jacques Farcy. He reported that in 2022, nearly 85% of wine under CA$25 (representing 40% of total sales) came in lightweight bottles, lowering the carbon footprint by 6,000 metric tons.

Clonal diversity and a place for hybrids

Further sessions included focuses on varietal innovation and fighting fungal disease. ‘Aiming for zero disease is not sustainable,’ said Matthieu Beauchemin of Domaine du Nival in Québec. Olivier Sebe, who owns Domaine La Clausade in southern France, agreed: ‘We have to change our production to tolerate 20% loss.’ Here, Bouffard suggested drinking less but better to help producers be sustainable.

Both Beauchemin and Sebe farm organically and grow hybrids. For Beauchemin, hybrids are a necessity in Quebec’s humid climate. Conversely, Sebe planted fungal-resistant pilzwiderstandsfähig (PIWI) varieties to avoid spraying copper. While acceptance and interest in hybrids are growing, Europe’s appellations have long banned them – though even this is changing. In 2022, the French Institute for Origin and Quality (INAO) allowed mildew-resistant hybrid Voltis in the Champagne AOP for experimental purposes.

Nevertheless, lecturer and researcher at the Ecole Supérieure des Agricultures in Angers, Etienne Neethling, questioned if focusing on new varieties is jumping the gun, particularly when addressing heat and drought. ‘Can diversity of clones be a climate solution, especially in maintaining local wine identity?’ he asked. Most vineyards in France are planted with a low diversity of clones. He cited Chenin Blanc as an example – 4 clones represent 94% of plantings since 2005, yet 400 exist.

‘A polyclonal population gives a greater chance that one of those clones will be able to adapt to climate change,’ Neethling said. He compared plantings of multiple clones to a team of great players, each possessing different strengths and increasing protection against whatever direction the climate takes.

The issues with climate change are complex, and dealing with them is even more so. Conferences like Tasting Climate Change are crucial to furthering solutions. Yet staging a summit of this scale comes at an environmental cost. To offset the 53.38 tons of travel-related CO2 emissions, Bouffard contributed CA$1601.40 through NatureLab World to be invested in global projects such as tree plantations. ‘Compensation is not the answer,’ she recognised. But it is the best option for now.

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Specialist financial police in Brindisi, south-east Italy, seized assets worth more than €520,000 (£440,000) as part of the organic wine fraud probe, at the request of the European Public Prosecutor’s Office (EPPO) in Naples. 

It’s a case that involves suspected misuse of European Union (EU) agriculture funds made available to support a wine producer’s conversion to organic farming, said the EPPO in late January.

‘At issue is a company operating in the wine sector, whose legal representatives attested that it had carried out the conversion to organic methods of cultivation, in order to receive funds co-financed by the EU,’ said the EPPO.

‘However, during checks carried out by Italy’s Institute for Ethical and Environmental Certification (ICEA), chemicals that are not allowed in organic farming were detected in the soil,’ it said. 

Police seized real estate assets of the suspects in the case, although no companies or individuals have been named at this stage. 

A judge ordered the assets to be frozen, pending a preliminary investigation of the case by the Court of Lecce, said the EPPO.

It emphasised that the suspects are considered innocent until proven guilty.

EPPO is an independent public prosecution office that is responsible for investigating and prosecuting crimes against the financial interests of the EU.

Nearly one fifth of Italy’s total vineyard area is organic, according to minutes from a meeting of the European Commission’s Wine Market Observatory expert panel in December 2023. 

It added that the number of organic vineyards in the country has jumped by 138% since 2012.

More than €1bn of EU funding is set aside annually to support the bloc’s wine sector in different member states, ranging from restructuring vineyards to promoting wines on the market, said the European Commission in June 2023.

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When David Lett came to the Willamette Valley in the 1960s, he found cool, forested hills along the Willamette River. It was here in 1965, that he would plant some of the valley’s first vines. He would soon be joined by the Sokol Blossers and Dick Erath, who also planted vines on these foothills of Oregon’s Coast Range.

Just over 10 years later, a blind tasting in Paris, the 1979 Gault-Millau French Wine Olympiad, would change Oregon and American wine forever. Lett’s Eyrie Vineyards Pinot Noir from 1975 would be among the top wines tasted (of 330) from around the world.

These results, and the consistent quality of wines produced by Lett and his contemporaries, inspired Domaine Joseph Drouhin to eventually plant vineyards in the Dundee Hills in the late 1980s. Thus validating the ‘New World’ upstarts and their commitment to Oregon’s viticultural potential in the eyes of Burgundy.

These days Chardonnay is on the rise, with the Willamette Valley producing some of the best examples of the variety in the United States and beyond.

Special Soils

The Red Hills of Dundee is the official name of the hills as a geological entity, according to the US Geological Survey.

However, the Red Hills moniker can’t be used by the AVA or wineries because of the term being used in a Southern Oregon AVA: Red Hill Douglas County.

The rust-coloured hue of the soils in Dundee comes from the iron-rich basalt bedrock and its degradation, forming the soils of the Dundee Hills over aeons.

The origin of the Jory soils series, which can be found throughout western Oregon, came from ancient lava flows from the eastern part of the state 15-17 million years ago.

The origin of these red soils predates the Missoula Floods, which shaped so much of the Pacific Northwest’s geology.

The impact on winegrowing is owed to Jory soil being more acidic than alkaline and its ‘Goldilocks’ qualities when it comes to water drainage and temperature regulation.

Well-draining but with enough water retention that dry-farming is viable. The soil’s insulating properties keep the vines’ roots warm enough through the winter and cool them down in the hot summers in the Willamette Valley.

Dundee Hills at a glance

AVA Established: 2005

Original Vines: David Lett pioneered the Willamette Valley from the Dundee Hills planting vines on 22 February, 1965

Vineyards in the AVA:98

Wineries in the AVA: 28

Total hectares planted to vines: 900ha

Soils: The Dundee Hills is uniformly comprised of the Jory soil series. A red soil of degraded basalt

Key wine varieties: Pinot noir (69.5%), Chardonnay (5.75%), Pinot gris (2.23%)

Climatic conditions

The Dundee Hills range from 60-325m (200-1,067ft), a series of foothills of the Oregon Coast Range, which are buffeted by Pacific Ocean winds coming from the west.

The Columbia Gorge acts as a wind tunnel to the north of the Willamette Valley, funnelling hot air from eastern Oregon and Washington in the summer and cold air in the winter.

These winds are largely blocked by the Chehalem Mountains to the northeast of the Dundee Hills.

Keeping things steadier than many surrounding parts of the Willamette Valley.

These moderating factors include the Willamette River just to the east, which creates a cooling effect during the hot summer. As a result, vineyards in the Dundee Hills tend to have a more moderate, steady growing season.

Six Dundee Hills Chardonnay producers

Anderson Family Vineyards

Cliff and Allison Anderson own an 8ha (20 acre) parcel atop a steep, ancient basalt slide on the northeastern edges of the Dundee Hills.

Sitting at around 92 metres with some of the slopes in excess of 40% gradient. The 30-year-old vines of two Dijon clones, (76 and 96) on these steep slopes create wines of serious complexity. Most of their fruit is contracted to some of the Willamette Valley’s top growers (but they don’t let go of any of the 96 clone Chardonnay).

Chardonnay from their ‘South Block’ has gone to Bergstrom’s Sigrid and the Antica Terra Chardonnays.

They select specific parcels for their proprietary label and use strictly gravity, seriously old barrels (many over 15 years) and patience.

The ultra-small production Anderson Family wines fly under the radar except with those really in the know in the Willamette Valley.

‘An important part of our fermentation regime relates to the life cycle of yeasts,’ Cliff Anderson tells me. ‘With our slow ferments, the yeast goes through many iterations. The old cells autolysize, and new cells are born.

'As the old cell membranes break down, they release complexing elements into the wine, similar to a late-disgorged Champagne: toasty, brioche and hazelnut. The long exposure to yeast cells is a major component of a wine’s texture. Where it gains density and viscosity. We want our Chardonnays to have weight.’

Bergström

Swedish immigrant John Bergström came to the Portland area as a 17-year-old hailing from agricultural roots in a northern Sweden logging outpost.

He and his wife Karen Bergström both had successful medical careers and sought a family legacy that was a return to John’s farming roots. The Bergströms bought just over 5ha in the Dundee Hills in 1996.

Their son Josh, along with his parents, would go on to establish Bergström Wines upon his return from Beaune, where he completed his studies in viticulture and oenology.

The Bergström approach is based on biodynamic and regenerative farming in the vineyards and crafting vineyard and single-block bottlings that give their wines a real sense of place. ‘Singular fine wines should speak volumes in their regional expression,’ says winemaker Josh Bergström. ‘This is achieved, for us, through natural, healthy, and non-industrial practices.’

Cameron

Cameron Winery’s renowned vineyard is known as Clos Electrique, a nearly 1ha site of mostly own-rooted Pinot Noir, which was planted in 1984 and Chardonnay, which owner John Paul planted in 1987.

Paul developed a relationship with Chardonnay after meeting Dominique Lafon in Napa Valley in 1980 (where Paul was the assistant winemaker at Carneros Creek). ‘When I went to visit the cellars of Lafon the next year, Dominique pretty much blew my mind with the wines that I tried. Several years later, I was able to visit the cellar of François Jobard, and my deal with Chardonnay was sealed.’

‘I had, with the help of Mary Edwards (then at Matanzas Creek), collected a large number of old white Burgundy clones around California,’ Paul continues. ‘Ones that UC Davis had not destroyed, as well as some “suitcase clones” bestowed on me by notable growers in California. One of the defining attributes of these old clones, besides miserable cluster sizes and yields, is their high acidities at ripeness.’

‘This gears them to the methodology of Jobard and Lafon,’ Paul continued. ‘Which is allowing the ambient yeast from the vineyard to do the fermentations and then leaving the wines on the yeast for almost two full years. In the case of Jobard, leaving them completely untouched. Which is the method that I follow. At bottling, we select the most outstanding barrels from the lot for inclusion into the Clos Electrique designation.’

Domaine Drouhin

Robert Drouhin’s daughter Véronique arrived in Oregon in 1986, perhaps chasing her father’s obsession with that 1975 Eyrie South Block Reserve Pinot Noir. Which had placed in the top 10 in the 1979 Gault-Millau French Wine Olympiad. Robert recreated the tasting the following year at his home using several of his own wines. The pesky Oregon Pinot placed second, beaten only by one of Drouhin’s own 1959 bottlings.

Véronique would work the harvest in 1986 with three of the most important families in the Willamette Valley today. The Letts of Eyrie of course, the Casteels of the Eola-Amity Hills Bethel Heights estate and the Adelsheims.

Just prior to arriving at the first International Pinot Noir Celebration in 1987, Robert purchased a plot of land atop the Dundee Hills. Among the 53ha of vines, there are only five or so of Chardonnay. Véronique remains the winemaker, and her brother Phillipe Drouhin manages the Oregon estate vineyards.

Domaine Serene

The Evenstad family came to the Willamette Valley in the late 1980s, purchasing a 17ha piece of high-elevation property in the Dundee Hills. They would plant Pinot Noir vines in 1993 at the estate Mark Bradford vineyard, at an elevation of 200m. In 1997, the Côte Sud Vineyard was purchased; the site, planted in 1990, gave Domaine Serene its oldest vines and first Chardonnay. This would also be the first vintage of Chardonnay made by Domaine Serene.

Eyrie Vineyards

Eyrie Vineyards is the legacy brand for the Dundee Hills, the Willamette Valley and really all of the Pacific Northwest. David Lett’s pursuit of cool-climate varieties like Pinot Noir and Chardonnay that stand toe-to-toe with Old World expressions launched an entire region. The legacy has since been passed onto his son Jason. Their old-vine Chardonnay comes from the oldest vines in the Willamette Valley a Draper selection field blend on their own roots. A collection of vines that no longer really exist anywhere else.

In many ways, the wines of Eyrie Vineyards are historic in their own right; these bottles represent the beginning of it all.

Jason makes two Chardonnays – both are barrel selections. The ‘top wine’, The Eyrie, is chosen from barrels which show the greatest potential for ageability. At the same time, the Estate Chardonnay is a selection of barrels that may show a more immediate drinkability. The Chardonnay ferments one year in the cellar on its own yeasts. Since each barrel moves at its own pace, on its own lees, they can show up very distinct from one another after fermentation.

Oregon Chardonnay from the Dundee Hills:

Wines are listed alphabetically by producer in score order

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At the forefront of this campaign is the elimination of glyphosate, the active ingredient in Roundup. It has been the subject of controversy and debates over its potential environmental and health impacts.

Numerous studies have cast doubt on glyphosate’s safety, revealing residues in soil, water, plants, animals, and even humans. The associated risks extend to pollinator declines, biodiversity loss and ecosystem dysfunction. Despite divided views among international regulatory bodies, the urgency centred around vineyard soil, vine health and wine quality takes centre stage in Napa Green’s ‘whole systems’ approach to sustainability and climate resilience.

‘If not now, when? Currently, we have 25 certified growers and roughly 40 growers actively transitioning to certification,’ said Anna Brittain, executive director of Napa Green. ‘Together, these farmers and wine growers represent over 2,800 hectares of vineyards.’

Stringent requirements

Of around 20 sustainable wine-growing certification programmes in the world, Napa Green stands alone in its lofty goal to eliminate synthetic herbicides.

‘Our ambitious 2026 vision and strategic plan has the goal to hit 8,000ha certified or enrolled in Napa Green Vineyard, as well as [making] at least 33% of Napa County vineyard acreage glyphosate or Roundup-free by 2028,’ Brittain continued.

Napa Green’s goal is to phase out all synthetic herbicides.

What is Roundup?

Developed by Monsanto in 1974, Roundup became a breakthrough weed-control mechanism for agriculture and a household name for the residential garden market.

Despite recent findings of glyphosate’s link to cancers and other clinical manifestations in humans as well as soil toxicity, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has claimed that the chemical poses no risks when used according to instructions on the label.

While Bayer, who acquired Monsanto in 2018, welcomed the EPA’s statement, the company started removing glyphosate herbicides from the home gardening market this year to manage the continuing risks of litigation. However, Roundup continues to be widely available for commercial agriculture worldwide.

In the legal arena, a federal appeals court ruled in November that California cannot enforce a cancer warning on Roundup product labels, counter to the International Agency for Research on Cancer’s 2015 classification of glyphosate as a probable carcinogen.

Glyphosate and the soil biome

‘We have heard and read many studies on the use of glyphosate in vineyards but more importantly, we have seen its effects,’ said Kendall Smith, viticulturist at her family’s White Rock Vineyards.

Smith is referring to the damage that glyphosate poses to the beneficial microbial organisms in the soil, such as fungi, lichens, amoeba and protozoa, which are the building blocks of soil health. ‘The removal of plant life within and under the vine rows increases soil compaction, it impacts fertility, biodiversity and water infiltration,’ Smith continued.

Napa Green supporters such as fourth-generation RAEN winegrower and owner of Monarch Tractor, Carlo Mondavi, couldn’t agree more.

‘Glyphosate is the number one herbicide used across the globe. There is so much used, it’s alarming,’ said Mondavi. ‘When you look at what this does to organic matter and soils, it’s troubling.’

Mondavi explains that nutrient deficiencies or imbalances due to reduced organic matter may also impact yeast metabolism, impeding healthy and natural winemaking fermentation.

The real struggle lies in changing the way farmers have been operating for nearly a century. Modern agriculture has promoted synthetic herbicides. Monoculture has led to a decrease in biodiversity. Weeds have become the unsightly enemy.

Changing habits

‘Our great grandparents didn’t farm like this,’ says Mondavi, who comes from generations of synthetic herbicide-free farming.

However, alternative methods are not without issue. Manual labour is expensive. Heavy tractor use in the rainy spring season can cause compaction and soil disturbances.

Like glyphosate, gas-powered tools are products of fossil fuel, creating sustainability challenges of their own. Equipment can be expensive and not as useful in rocky or hilly terrain. The low efficacy of organic herbicides means that continuous applications are necessary.

But Napa Green offers useful resources including the Weed Management Toolkit found on the organisation’s website.

‘We also established a pool of matching funds that growers can apply for to support phaseout, and we are planning a series of training workshops to assist members in this transition,’ said Brittain.

‘It’s not as hard as people think it is,’ said Salvestrin Winery winemaker and viticulturist Natalie Winkler, about moving toward toward organic farming. Over her 14 years in farming, she has transitioned several vineyards to organic and regenerative farming through her company, Traditional and Biodynamic Vineyard Consulting.

‘If you have vegetation that is mowed and controlled, that’s really not a problem,’ she said. Winkler claims that sheep grazing is a great tool, especially in the spring when the soil is too wet for large equipment.

White Rock Vineyards abandoned herbicides in the late 1990s, embracing diversification with fruit and olive trees, plants, insectary rows and animals. Introducing plant diversity can contribute to diverse root structures, fostering a more resilient and dynamic soil ecosystem.

According to Ben Mackie, Napa Green’s vineyard programme manager, soil health begins to rebound soon after the last herbicide application. Mackie has been designing and implementing regenerative farming systems in a variety of ecosystems for more than 15 years.

‘Fungal hyphae, bacterial diversity and invertebrates like earthworms need time to repopulate,’ Mackie said. ‘This process can be jump-started with applications of compost or compost tea under the vines, and use of nutrient-adding cover crops.’

Economics at play

Some of the main reasons for resistance to phasing out glyphosate are increased labour, equipment and fuel costs. Napa Green offers valuable case studies that cover the ‘how and costs’ of an herbicide-free vineyard by members who share useful information about weed varieties, undervine weed management costs, sheep grazing and more.

Mondavi emphasises the importance of making sustainable practices economically superior for widespread adoption. And while practising pre-industrial agriculture is a smart and effective option, incorporating modern technology – such as electricity – can be beneficial, too.

‘Mowing is 100% reduction of the chemical,’ said Mondavi, who advocates regenerative and organic agriculture with the help of smart electric tractors. ‘The savings are immense, especially for farmers who have a significant amount of land.’

Adding to the economic conversation, Winkler points out the myriad of benefits associated with improved soil and vine health over time – a return on investment with increased nutrient cycling, organic matter levels, soil organic carbon and water retention.

‘When we observe what follows after the elimination of glyphosate-based herbicides, what we gain is better vine functionality and an overall increase in soil fertility. This directly affects vineyard longevity and [the] ability to withstand adverse environmental conditions, which are becoming more common,’ said Winkler.

Terroir and aesthetics

Besides offering solutions to vineyard managers on organic and regenerative practices, Winkler also suggests educating the wine consumers’ aesthetic expectations of vineyards.

‘A vineyard floor where there is only the vine is not a healthy situation,’ said Winkler. ‘That’s a monoculture. The more biodiversity you can bring in with cover crops and native vegetation, the more diverse your microbial species are the healthier the soil can be.’

‘And how can you argue about terroir? As the chemicals are undermining the soil microbiome, they are essentially taking away the “terroir” and sense of place – the very things that wine lovers and wine producers talk about all the time,’ said Brittain. She stresses that terroir is a reflection of the land’s microclimate as well as its underground ecosystem.

The journey to eliminate glyphosate from vineyards represents a pivotal moment in the wine industry’s commitment to sustainability. Napa Green’s ‘whole systems’ approach aims to not only showcase the true essence of the vineyard site but also to preserve the environment and pass down healthier vineyards to future generations.

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Covenant founding winemaker Jeff Morgan, 70, is both driven and eccentric. He favours the underdog. Take rosé, for instance. Morgan played an outsized role in jump-starting the rosé renaissance in America more than 20 years ago – long before it was fashionable.

Not only did Morgan co-found SoloRosa, the first American winery dedicated solely to dry rosé, but in 2005, he penned the first English language book on the subject as well (Rosé, A Guide to the World’s Most Versatile Wine, Chronicle Books).

Scroll down to see tasting notes and scores for ten Covenant wines tasted

In 2003, high-end kosher wine seemed like a long shot. But Covenant was among the first wineries to demonstrate that fine wine made with native yeast and organic grapes and without fining or filtration can also be kosher. It was a novel concept at the time.

Today, you can find Covenant’s wines on such stellar wine lists as The French Laundry in Napa Valley and in wine shops and restaurants around the world.

Musician turns wine writer

‘I spent much of the 1970s living and working in France as a musician,’ Morgan recalls. That’s where the native New Yorker first discovered ‘serious food and wine.’ In 1987, Morgan had an extended engagement at Monte Carlo’s Grand Casino, working for the late Prince Rainier of Monaco.

‘I realised at some point that I was more interested in the wines I was drinking after the gig than the music I was playing on the bandstand.’ (Morgan was, and remains, an accomplished saxophonist.)

He came to a simple conclusion: ‘I make music, so I will make wine, too.’ In 1988, after returning to the U.S., Morgan found work at a small vineyard and winery on Long Island, New York, where he learned winemaking basics.

However, his creative nature led him to wine writing, and he was able to freelance for such publications as The New York Times and Elle magazine. In 1995, Morgan was named West Coast editor for Wine Spectator, where he continued to work until 1999.

Crafting kosher wine

‘Writing was terrific’, Morgan says. ‘But I missed winemaking.’ In 2000, he moved his family to Napa Valley. There he founded SoloRosa with winemaking partner Daniel Moore. Two years later, he tasted a bottle of excellent Israeli wine (Domaine du Castel) with Napa vintner Leslie Rudd and Castel owner Eli Ben Zaken.

The Israeli wine wasn’t kosher at the time, but Morgan and Rudd wrongfully assumed it was. And they grew determined to produce an equally good kosher Napa Valley Cabernet. ‘It’s an irony that is not lost on me,’ Morgan says with a smile. ‘I guess sometimes ignorance can truly be bliss. That bottle of Castel changed my life.’

Working with a wealthy partner like Rudd gave Jeff the freedom to make more expensive wines like Napa Valley Cabernet. Wines which he could not afford to produce prior to founding Covenant. The original Cabernet grape source was Larkmead Vineyard in Calistoga, and then Rudd Vineyards in Oakville and on Mount Veeder.

Rudd’s participation also opened up a world of diverse terroir and potential vineyard sources throughout California and eventually in Israel.

How is kosher wine made?

The word ‘kosher’ originates from Hebrew ‘ר‎כש (kashér)’, which translates to ‘suitable’ under the ‘kashrut’. The ‘kashrut’ is a body of Jewish laws that, among other things, stipulate the suitability of food.

• The winemaking for kosher wines is not necessarily different from how most winemakers approach the process with a few essential caveats.
• All the winemaking must be done by Sabbath-observant Jews.
• Equally important are the fining and filtration methods used in the wine’s production. Wines that are unfiltered and unfined would be eligible for kosher consideration – depending on who made them.
• A kosher wine that uses fining agents must only use egg whites, or non-organic, mineral fining agents like bentonite clay and charcoal. Organic materials like isinglass (made from sturgeon bladder, a non-kosher fish) as well as gelatin products that often contain pork render a wine non-kosher.
  

Making wine from the ground up

‘I started as a grape grower in New York, and that’s helped me feel comfortable in vineyards everywhere’, Morgan explains. ‘My first boss, winemaker Larry Perrine at Channing Daughters in Sag Harbor, NY, was originally a soil scientist. Larry helped me acquire a basic understanding of viticulture’.

But Morgan credits his friend and mentor, California winemaker David Ramey, for helping elevate his winemaking skills. ‘When I founded Covenant, Dave was Leslie Rudd’s winemaker, and I had no idea how to craft serious Napa Valley Cabernet. Dave showed me how’, Morgan explains.

‘And for many years, he helped me with a lot of my other wines, too. He taught me the value of native yeast fermentation and how to make viable wines without filtration.’ Morgan grows emotional talking about Ramey. ‘To be honest, if I’m making good wine today, it’s thanks to David Ramey’.

Morgan and Rudd travelled to Israel for a visit in 2011 ‘just to look around’, Morgan says. With its red rocky soils peppered with chalky, white limestone, the Galilee region reminded him of France’s Rhône Valley. ‘I felt compelled to make wine in the land of my ancestors’, he recalls.

‘Israel is a place where winemaking predates anything found in Europe’. And so, Covenant Israel was born. The first release was a 2013 Syrah sourced from a biodynamic vineyard there called Tzivon.

Sadly, in 2018, Leslie Rudd succumbed to cancer. The Morgans now have a new partner, Geoff Rochwarger, who lives in Israel.

Covenant: The facts

Year founded: 2003

Owned by: Jeff & Jodie Morgan/Geoff Rochwarger

Annual production: 8,000 cases

Key California vineyards: Bengier, Mahoney, Mounts, Scopus, Moaveni, Rooster, Mettler, Bien Nacido, Robert Rae

Key wines: Of the 20 different wines produced, the key bottlings are Napa Valley Cabernet, Sonoma Chardonnay, Carneros Pinot Noir, Sonoma County Sauvignon Blanc, Lake County Sauvignon Blanc, Central Coast Syrah, Dry Creek Valley Red Rhone Blend, Lake County Sauvignon Blanc, Lodi Roussanne, Lodi Viognier, Lodi Zinfandel, Lodi Chardonnay, Lodi Cabernet Sauvignon, California rosé, California sparkling wine.

Berkeley-bound as an urban winery

Covenant became an urban winery in 2014 when co-owners Jeff and Jodie Morgan moved 50 miles southeast of Napa Valley to build a winery in Berkeley, California. Second-generation Zoe Morgan-Koelewijn is now helping her parents manage the family-owned facility.

Morgan’s California winery in Berkeley is built in what was once a large auto repair shop. ‘I guess we are literally garagistes,’ he laughs.

In its twentieth year of operation, Covenant has expanded its range of varietal wines to include California appellations stretching from Santa Barbara to Lake County. Morgan has also made wines in Israel since 2013.

Keeping kosher

Morgan bristles at the question. ‘I’ve been making kosher wine for two decades, and I still have a devil of a time explaining that the kosher part has absolutely nothing to do with winemaking, wine style or a wine’s taste.’

‘There is no kosher winemaking method,’ he says with the patience of someone who is asked the same question a hundred thousand times.

‘All that’s required is a symbolic gesture stipulating the wine be touched or handled by Sabbath-observant Jews.’

‘There is no boiling or other nefarious methodology required. Covenant wines are native yeast fermented, unfined, and typically unfiltered. If I made a non-kosher Covenant, I would make it exactly the same way I make the kosher version’. He pauses for a moment to chuckle and adds, ‘Except that we could work on Saturday.’

Ten Covenant wines tasted

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The DO Cava is in the process of implementing demanding new regulations, which require all wines in the Cava de Guarda Superior category to be 100% organic by 2025.

It unveiled a new classification system a couple of years ago, which splits wines into two distinct categories: Cava de Guarda, which is aged for a minimum of nine months, and Cava de Guarda Superior.

The Cava de Guarda Superior category covers the highest quality sparkling wines from Spain, divided into three tiers: Reserva, aged for a minimum of 18 months on the lees; Gran Reserva, aged for at least 30 months; and the top tier, Cava de Paraje Calificado, aged for at least 36 months and likened to Grand Cru Champagne.

All wines in the Superior level will be produced exclusively from grapes grown in organically-certified vineyards by 2025.

‘It improves the identity of Cava, and makes people realise that it’s not just a cheap option,’ says Catarina Soares, the international sales manager at leading Cava producer Juvé & Camps. ‘It allows us to express the terroir better.’

Juvé & Camps has been 100% organic for many years, so it has not needed to implement any changes, but Soares is pleased to see more producers following suit.

‘A commitment to sustainability is very important to us,’ she adds. ‘We focus on the terroir a lot. Our objective is to preserve the landscape and all the diversity of animals and plants. Half of the estate is not farmed, and it is integrated into the site. We also do regenerative viticulture.

‘Some of our vines are more than 80 years old, and we believe that you can produce very high-quality wines from old vines if you have respect for the plants.’

Jamie Goode, an author and wine expert who recently visited a variety of Cava producers across Spain, believes that the changes can shift perceptions among sparkling wine drinkers.

‘It’s fantastic that the Cavas de Guarda Superior category is going fully organic,’ he says. ‘It gives you a brilliant talking point. No other region I know has done this.

‘Consumers are really tired of greenwashing, and so many sustainability schemes basically are greenwashing. Big companies get together and form what looks like a scientifically derived sustainability scheme, but really, it’s just rubber-stamping what they were already doing, with a few little tweaks here and there. But this is different. You can’t cheat with organics.

‘It’s very clear what organic means. Some consumers don’t understand sustainability, but they know what organic means. They’re familiar with it, and the term organic has a resonance with consumers.

‘If you can go to then and say, if you see this Guarda Superior label, it means the farming has been all organic, that’s a powerful message, because it addresses two things: the green nature of the move, the fact that it’s making these vineyards sustainable; but it’s also changing the dialogue about Cava.

‘It’s fighting that old perception that Cava is a cheap fizz and a cheap substitute that you buy when you can’t afford the others.

‘This is a wine with its own characteristics, its own intrinsic value. This is a quality region for sparkling wine, and something people need to pay attention to.’

Cava sales increased by 4.6% to 249.1 million bottles in 2022, with exports accounting for 69% of those sales. Germany, the USA, Belgium, the UK and Sweden are the top five export markets.

However, producers still need to work hard to improve perceptions of their wines and secure a financially sustainable future.

‘Ultimately, if you want farmers to farm better, you’ve got to pay more for the grapes and sell the wines for more,’ says Goode. ‘Bringing the whole region up enables everybody at every stage to be financially sustainable as well as environmentally sustainable, and that has to be the goal of all these changes.

‘This is all really encouraging, and I also love the focus on regenerative practices. Organic takes you most of the way in terms of regenerative farming, and then you can start thinking about how to introduce biodiversity into the vineyard.

‘There’s a big concern now about climate chaos, and particularly the warming trends, the drier seasons. When I was there in May, it hadn’t rained for ages, and some of the vines were really struggling. Organic and regenerative farming increases the resilience of the vineyards.

‘If you have good cover crops growing over the winter, then you can mulch or roll them over the summer, which protects the soils from really high temperatures. If you increase the organic material in the soil, it improves the ability of the soil to retain water.

‘Having other things growing in the vineyard increases the ability of water to infiltrate the soil. Finding intelligent approaches for working the vineyards bodes really well for the sustainability of the vineyards and also for grape quality.’

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Soil has been described as the Cinderella of sustainability. It is, as a recent scientific study put it, the most important but least understood part of the earth’s biosphere. Much of life on earth lies beneath our feet. Soil holds an astonishing diversity of animal life, from earthworms and insects to microorganisms and bacteria. Underground networks of plant roots and fungi interact in mutually beneficial ways, exchanging carbon for nutrients and water – a complex ecosystem, critical to maintaining healthy soil for plants to grow in.

Scroll down to see tasting notes and scores of 12 ‘regenerative’ wines to try

The science of soil is complicated; there is much we don’t understand. But we know enough to grasp that our survival depends on it, and exhaustion of the world’s soils from intensive agriculture has got alarm bells ringing. According to the UN’s Food & Agriculture Organisation (FAO), one third of the earth’s soil is degraded and 90% of topsoil is at risk of degradation by 2050. Speaking at the World Living Soils Forum in 2022, Ronald Vargas of the FAO stressed the challenges of raising awareness: ‘We stand on soil, but we don’t see or value it.’

Monocultures such as growing grapes for wine pose a particular challenge because, as South African producer Johan Reyneke puts it, ‘they have to be propped up’. To produce healthy grape harvests, most vineyards have become dependent on limiting ecosystem biodiversity through the use of chemical treatments, which disrupt so-called ‘mycorrhizal’ soil networks connecting plant roots and fungi, thereby reducing soil health.

When Reyneke started growing grapes, he was determined not to use chemicals. ‘I was very idealistic and didn’t really know what I was doing,’ he says. ‘I just wanted to do the right thing. Someone told me I was organic by neglect and I needed to become organic by design. That was the turning point.’ Two decades on, Reyneke is a leading advocate of ‘regenerative’ practices in viticulture, part of a wider global movement to change the way we farm.

Paradigm shift

Like organic and biodynamic viticulture, regenerative viticulture is based on agroecological principles. And, like them, it promotes biodiversity and discourages use of synthetic treatments. But it takes sustainable thinking further. At its core is a paradigm shift of approach to vineyard management, replacing an ‘extractive approach that depletes soil’ to ‘one that restores the land’ as Justin Howard-Sneyd MW, who runs courses on regenerative viticulture at the Dartington Trust centre for learning near Totnes in Devon, puts it.

‘The cost of not working in a biodiverse way is that we are degrading a finite resource,’ says Stephen Cronk, co-founder and president of Maison Mirabeau in Provence. Cronk, Howard-Sneyd and other like-minded activists launched The Regenerative Viticulture Foundation (RVF) in 2022. As with other recent initiatives, including California’s Regenerative Organic Alliance (ROA) and the Regenerative Viticulture Association (RVA) established by Catalan producer Familia Torres, it promotes viticultural practices that ‘reboot’ natural ecosystems.

Mimi Casteel, an RVF trustee and pioneering regenerative wine-grower in Oregon, believes we need to ‘think of vineyards as being like a body, and of the importance of shoring up the body’s immune system. Once vines are part of a natural system, they are much more resilient.’ Fellow RVF trustee Ivan Massonnat of Domaine Belargus in Anjou sees things similarly: ‘We have distorted the relationship between mankind and nature: we have to take a more holistic approach and try to create a diverse ecosystem.’

In northern Spain, Torres is currently applying regenerative approaches across about 40% of its vineyards. ‘The beauty of regenerative viticulture is that you can apply it on any vineyard,’ says general manager Miguel Torres Maczassek. ‘There is a cost to changing practices and putting more organic matter into soils; the transition can take several years, but you reach a point where the ecosystem stabilises and it can manage by itself, costs reduce, and you get higher-value grapes.’

At Chêne Bleu in the Vaucluse in southeast France, Nicole and Xavier Rolet spent years regenerating land around a medieval priory. Nicole feels they ‘kind of wrote the songbook on regenerative viticulture’. They are convinced that healthy bee populations play a key role in the productivity and resilience of vineyard ecosystems, boosting biodiversity by spreading natural yeasts and cross-pollinating plants. ‘Microbiomes are credited with transmitting a sense of place to grapes, so if that is important to you in wine, you must allow the ecosystem to flourish,’ she says.

In Provence further south, Jessica Julmy has set out to transform Château Galoupet in similar ways since LVMH bought the estate in 2019. ‘We reached out to agroforestry experts: what can we plant where? Not only to move away from monoculture but to create natural corridors between vineyard and forest. We want to regenerate flora and fauna in the forest and see the impact on the vineyard: how do we bring bees? We are working with cover crop experts to find a perfect blend of seeds for our soils: how do we bring back organic matter and humidity?

Ecosystem balance

While the concept of regenerative agriculture has been around for a while, it has only recently become a buzz phrase in the wine world and there is some confusion about how it differs from other existing agroecological approaches. Jessica Villat, an expert in strategy, regenerative agriculture and engagement, wrote a thesis on the subject at Harvard. For her, what makes regenerative viticulture distinctive is its ‘absolute focus on living soil’: feeding the soil to feed the vine. ‘Rather than asking what’s wrong with the vine, we need to think in terms of the whole ecosystem – which natural levers to pull to enable it to be in better balance,’ she says.

Regenerative producers employ a range of ‘natural levers’ to bring ecosystems into balance, such as composting, growing different cover crops, boosting wildlife and introducing animals into vineyards to control grass and provide manure. Massonnat is working with veteran Anjou wine-grower Jo Pithon to fix imbalances in his soils using organic compost. In her vineyards, Casteel runs pigs fed on biochar, a carbon-rich biomass, which enhances the fertilising effect of their manure and fixes carbon in the soil, improving its structure and water retention.

But regenerative viticulture avoids being overly prescriptive. ‘It is not a clipboard and checklist approach like biodynamics,’ says Rolet. Nick Gill of Greystone Wines in New Zealand’s Waipara region makes a similar point: ‘People are reluctant to put regenerative agriculture in a box. Every piece of land is different and it makes no sense to curtail solutions that may be appropriate in particular places.’ Casteel sees it as ‘a toolbox to empower growers to feel like a part of their landscape, to understand what has been lost that is stopping the ecosystem functioning at its highest level and what to put back to keep the cycle going’.

Improving soil

For Franco Bastías, head of agriculture at Domaine Bousquet in Argentina, ‘organic and biodynamic viticulture are about keeping things natural; with regenerative viticulture, it’s the challenge of improving, not just preserving, the soil’. And, he says, ‘you can measure the improvements through soil analysis and yields’. Bastías says that his vines are more resilient and his yields have not suffered. ‘We have the same or better yields than conventionally managed vineyards in the region.’

A major tenet of regenerative viticulture is to avoid disturbing soil as far as possible. Tilling the soil, which is widely practised in organic and biodynamic viticulture, helps to control weeds but damages the structure of the soil, disrupts microbial life and releases carbon. ‘It’s important to avoid disturbing the soil, because soils with high levels of microfungi are healthier and more productive,’ says Pablo Borelli, an agronomist who works on regenerative farming in Argentina.

Advocates see many advantages to a regenerative approach. As well as saving treatment and irrigation costs, minimising tillage improves biodiversity and soil structure, increases water retention, lowers soil temperatures and reduces topsoil erosion. There is evidence, too, that healthy, undisturbed mycorrhizal networks can help plants to resist pest attacks.

‘People have come to think of interventions such as spraying and irrigation as normal, but they’re not,’ says Jason Haas, co-proprietor of Tablas Creek in California. ‘If your system is in balance, they’re not necessary. Every year my vines are a little healthier and have more natural resilience.’

Mitigating climate change

Haas also sees it as a hedge against the growing impact of climate change. ‘In winter, cover crops and reduced tillage minimise surface erosion, encouraging the water to slow down and penetrate to deeper layers during major rainfall events. In summer, the increase in organic matter and microbial activity allows soil to hold more moisture, thereby helping the vines to withstand drought and heat spikes.’

For Casteel, it is one of the advantages of working with biochar-fed pigs: ‘Summers are becoming unbearably hot here, with very little rain,’ she says. ‘Biochar can hold many times its weight in water, which helps us get through the dry season without irrigating.’

Perhaps the biggest idea that distinguishes regenerative farming from other agroecological practices is that it could be a critical factor in mitigating, or even reversing, climate change. To limit global warming to 1.5°C, the world needs to reduce CO2 levels in the atmosphere. Plants absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, and this is integrated into soil and remains there for decades, if undisturbed.

Claire Chenu, a senior soil scientist at French national research institute INRAE and professor at AgroParisTech, says: ‘Current estimates are that it is possible to store between one and two billion additional tonnes of carbon in soil per year, which would offset a third of global CO2 going into the atmosphere.’

Certification

Without an established set of rules, there is a danger of ‘greenwashing’. Many, but not all, vine-growers embracing regenerative practices are already certified organic or biodynamic, and new regenerative certification schemes are now appearing. Tablas Creek was the first winery to obtain Regenerative Organic Certification from the ROA in 2020 and some other US wine producers have followed, along with Bousquet in Argentina. In Spain, the RVA has piloted a new certification scheme. Torres expects up to 25% of its wines to be certified under it in 2023-2024. However, certification for regenerative viticulture remains at an embryonic stage.

Do wines made in regeneratively managed vineyards taste better? Its advocates certainly feel so. ‘We’re pretty convinced,’ says Haas. ‘The wines have more character, better balance and more energy. The past five years have seen our best run of quality, despite different weather conditions. I don’t think that’s a coincidence.’

Massonnat in Anjou says the wine from vineyards that have been managed regeneratively is ‘more energetic and precise’. Gill feels that Greystone’s Vineyard Ferment Pinot Noir, fermented outside, in between the rows of vines where the grapes were grown and under the influence of indigenous yeasts, has a special ‘energy and tension’. Kees van Leeuwen of Bordeaux Sciences Agro believes the physical properties of soil are key to overall vine health, but sees no direct link between better soil and wine quality. ‘People want to believe that the more microbial activity in the soil, the better the wine, but the relationship is not as straightforward as that,’ he says. ‘Microbial activity is certainly good for sustainability, but not necessarily for wine quality. The heavy clay soils in some of the finest estates in St-Emilion and Pomerol, for example, have relatively little microbial activity because aeration is restricted in this clay. That does not stop them producing great wines.’

Reyneke acknowledges that ‘we don’t have a good understanding of the impact of the soil’s microbial content on quality’, but adds ‘we have noticed that wine from our regeneratively managed parcels tastes completely different. And those parcels are richer in microbial populations.’ Research from outside the wine world suggests relationships between plants and fungi in the soil can affect the taste of fruit. If there is a correlation between microbial activity and wine quality, it would, says Reyneke, ‘take the concept of terroir to a new level of understanding’.

The regenerative viticulture movement is still in its infancy, and not everyone sees the point of adding another category of sustainable viticulture. Is this just old wine in new bottles? Perhaps. However, in a world facing soil degradation and climate crisis, a toolkit that helps viticulture to flourish as a contributing part of a healthy ecosystem, rather than at its expense, while also sequestering carbon and increasing climate resilience, can only be a positive thing.

Joy’s 12 wines try from the vanguard of regenerative viticulture

A selection of wines from leading producers who follow regenerative principles: some are certified regenerative, but most are not.

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Champagne doesn’t have much of a reputation for collective-mindedness. Ever since the region’s governing body decided to force growers to lower their yields during the Covid-hit summer of 2020, fearful of an oversupply of bottles and an undersupply of occasions to drink them, growers and houses have been grappling with a series of disagreements.

First there was confusion and protest from a group of ecologically minded vignerons unhappy with the region’s quiet retreat from a proposed herbicide ban, with 125 winegrowers signing an indignant letter to French newspaper Le Monde in December 2022.

There was grumbling among some growers, too, over proposed changes to rules on vineyard design which some believe benefit large producers eyeing up cheaper, mechanised vineyard work. On paper, there hasn’t been much to agree on. The truth, though, is that Champagne is more collaborative than it seems.

The origins of Le Printemps des Champagnes

Le Printemps des Champagnes started life in 2009 as an effort by one group of independent producers, Terres et Vins de Champagne, to show off their new vins clairs – the still base wines destined to be turned into Champagne. The groups have since multiplied, with 26 on show this year, representing hundreds of estates and thousands of wines. Vins clairs are still on offer, but most people attend to taste the finished product.

Many of the groups make use of a (sometimes fairly loose) theme. Grands Crus d’Exception, for example, showcases one representative from each of Champagne’s 17 grand cru villages. ‘It started with a friendship – between Jérôme Groslambert from Champagne François Secondé in Sillery and Tarek Berrada from Champagne Ernest Remy in Mailly’, Jérôme Legras, of Legras & Haas in Chouilly, explains. It didn’t take long to fill up the spots, and the group even made a wine together in 2017, blending all their fruit. ‘It was winemaking by vote, “shall we do this dosage or that dosage, raise your hands!”’, Legras jokes.

Les Fa’Bulleuses de Champagne, another of the smaller groups on show, is a celebration of independent female winemakers from all over the region. The Cercle des Createurs focuses on oak-aged wines; Passion Chardonnay on top producers of Blanc de Blancs. There’s even a group of co-operatives, now, as well as groups of some of the most celebrated growers in Champagne.

An overheated market

The market for independent Champagne is very different today compared to 2009. In short, the wines are practically selling themselves: ‘It’s very difficult’, explains Fa’Bulleuses member Hélène Beaugrand, who was pouring her wines despite few attendees having any real prospect of buying them. ‘I’ve run out of everything under my own label’.

With many of the top, established independent domaines increasingly tied-up, the hunt for new names is almost frantic. It’s easy to sell, and so many wines on offer are very young. One Printemps veteran thought the quality of what was on offer from new faces at the moment is not as high as it should be: ‘Some of the importers I know have been very disappointed’, she says, expressing widely held frustration at the overheated market.

Fans of super-clean, pristine and longer-aged Champagnes from well-known houses might find less to enjoy in the current crop of new producers than those who enjoy a more naturally styled, youthful and bone-dry approach.

What’s the buzz?

The march towards dropping both sulphite levels and dosage levels continues, with many wines showing both a more open, early developed profile and invigorating dryness. Oak usage, too, is so prevalent that it is now a bit of a novelty to see independent Champagne made without it.

Perhaps the most notable reason for positivity is overall attitudes towards what’s happening in the vineyards; the Bulles Bio tasting was a gigantic, sprawling, buzzing festival of almost 50 producers of organic and biodynamic Champagne, a category that now represents almost 9% of the region’s vineyard area.

Not all the groups boasted such a strong manifesto (nor the generally high standard seen from groups such as Terres et Vins, Les Mains du Terroir and Passion Chardonnay), and it has to be said that merely being a small, family domaine does not automatically imply ethical credentials. It was rare to find a room, though, without at least one or two names to watch.

Five current trends in independent Champagne and the key producers to watch:

The 2019 vintage

It was hot and dry, but somehow this top vintage boasts freshness and delicacy too. One to stock up on.

Masters of oak

It’s not just the famous names in grower Champagne – Ulysse Collin, Eric Rodez, Suenen and the like – pitching their oak usage pretty perfectly these days. Look out for wines from Benoît Déhu and Champagne Alexis in the Marne Valley. Lacourte-Godbillon, Louis Brochet, Hugues Godmé in and around the Montagne de Reims, Oudiette and Clément & Fils in the Petit Morin, André Jacquart in Vertus and many more.

Rosé – big is back

Making rosé by maceration – bleeding colour from the skins of the grapes rather than blending with red wine – is well and truly in fashion once again. The results can be deep, fruity, vinous and food-friendly; a far cry from any image of rosé Champagne as a sweet-natured sunshine aperitif. Favourites from the week were from Emile Grados in Les Riceys, Benoît Déhu in Fossoy, Élise Dechannes and Louise Brison in the Côte des Bar, Pierre Deville in Verzy and Ernest Remy in Mailly, not to mention better-known examples from top grower estates such as Larmandier-Bernier, Geoffroy and Emmanuel Brochet.

Precision in the Côte des Bar

Champagne’s southern reaches have a reputation for broad, fruity Pinot Noir, but an increasing number of vignerons are choosing to coax out impressive focus, working with cooler sites and little (or subtle) oak usage. Look out for Remy Massin, Elise Déchannes, La Borderie, Nathalie Falmet and Salima & Alain Cordeuil.

Chardonnay branches out

Chardonnay has its stronghold in the Côte des Blancs, but there are plenty of superb Blanc de Blancs from elsewhere too, such as those from Henri Goutorbe and Marc Hebrart in the Grande Vallée de la Marne, Jacques Lassaigne and Heléne Beaugrand in Montgueux, or A Margaine in the Montagne de Reims.

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Champagne Telmont, a Damery-based house that is part of the Rémy Cointreau group, has recently finished trials of an 800g Champagne bottle, made in partnership with glass manufacturer Verallia, that pushes the very lower weight limits of what is technologically possible for bottle-fermented wines. The lightest standard bottles currently available are 835g.

Does shaving off a further 35g really make much difference to carbon emissions? Ludovic du Plessis, president of Champagne Telmont, thinks so: ‘Our goal is to become net positive by 2050….when we looked at our carbon footprint, 24% of it is from the bottle. We need to tackle the product,’ he said.

The 35g reduction saves a further 4% on production alone. It wasn’t easy to come by, though. ‘We couldn’t play with the bottom of the bottle as it receives too much shock,’ du Plessis addwd, so the weight loss ended up coming from the shoulders.

Telmont’s findings mirror that of Champagne’s pioneering efforts to measure its carbon footprint in 2003, which found that only about 15% of the region’s carbon emissions come from the vineyard and winemaking activities. Combine that with packaging and freight, though, and the figure is almost 50%. Since 2011, bottle weight has been reduced from 900g to 835g, already saving 8,000 tonnes of CO2 per year.

Telmont’s new bottles, made from 87% recycled glass, underwent a rigorous crash test regime that involved 3,000 units undergoing not only a full second fermentation, but also disgorgement, labelling, freighting, temperature tests and even a trial shipment to Singapore. After six months, only one bottle had broken.

Explosions were common in the 19th century, even though Champagne bottles weighed well over 1kg. Manufacturing irregularity and winemaking imprecision meant that around 5% of Champagne bottles did not survive the pressure created during the in-bottle fermentation (a number which was regularly between 20%-80% until 1836 when Champenois chemist Jean-Baptiste François invented a scale that allowed winemakers to precisely measure the amount of sugar required). Visitors to Champagne’s cellars will still see some (strategically-placed) exploded bottles, reminders of the somewhat hazardous work of the past.

A return to such risky times is clearly something the Champenois want to avoid, but Telmont’s lighter bottle is an example of how the Damery-based house appears prepared to go further than most in its ecological pledges. Its 46-page sustainability guide of January 2023 includes a commitment to ensure not only its own 25ha vineyards are organic, but the 55ha of bought-in grapes are, too; a move no other major house in Champagne has made. ‘Some of the growers don’t want to be organic, so we cannot renew their contracts. But there is a new generation in Champagne coming to us, asking to join,’ said Du Plessis.

He also pointed out that, unlike organics, Telmont sees no real benefit from the lighter bottle other than for its carbon footprint. ‘There are no patents, no exclusivity. If only Telmont end up using it, the whole exercise is pointless’, he said. Telmont’s commitment to use the bottles for all of its wines means there can be no clear glass (which uses no recycled glass, unlike the 87% used in the green bottle) and no special bottle shapes, either.

Following the trial, Telmont will be making 30,000 bottles in the new 800g shape, and the organic cuvée Réserve de la Terre will be available in these bottles from 2026.

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Patrick Bruel, a well-known French actor and singer, an accomplished poker player and a television poker commentator, is no newcomer to the wine scene. He is a longtime friend and collaborator of Philippe Faure-Brac, Best Sommelier in the World 1992, and since 2007 is also the owner of Vaucluse estate Domaine de Leos (named after his sons Léon and Oscar).

The 41ha estate is located near the town of L’Isle-sur-la-Sorgue in northwest Provence, in the hills and on the Plateau de Margoye.

Scroll down to see the tasting note and score for Cuvée Augusta 2022

Bruel has embraced the biodiversity of the estate with passion. Over the past 10 years he has planted truffle oaks and olive trees, and uses the lavender, thyme and honey produced on the estate in a range of jams, conserves and beauty products.

In the years to come, Bruel plans to extend the vineyard area from 13ha to 20ha. Vineyards are being replanted with Grenache, Syrah, Cabernet Franc, Cabernet Sauvignon, Cinsault and Rolle, chosen from massal selection vines from the Lilian Bérillon nursery, but the the old vine Carignan will be kept.

The first rosés produced at Bruel’s Domaine de Leos – 2020 and 2021 both bottled as Vin de France and made with Grenache, Syrah, Cabernet Sauvignon and old-vine Carignan – were successful, and all 10,500 bottles sold out.

A new direction

The 2022 vintage marks the beginning of a new chapter for the Domaine de Leos rosé. Bruel teamed up with Maison & Domaines Les Alexandrins, a joint venture between Nicolas Jaboulet and viticulturist Alexandre Caso. Together, with Leos winemaker Marie Barbé, they sourced the grapes and did the blending and production, and Maison et Domaines Les Alexandrins handles the promotion, sales and distribution of the new Cuvée Augusta rosé.

The new cuvée, named after Bruel’s mother, is made with 60% Grenache, 20% Bourboulenc and 20% Rolle (Vermentino). They sourced organic grapes for the 2022 vintage from the hills of the Ventoux, the Luberon and the Alpilles.

It is relatively rare to have such a significant proportion of Bourboulenc in the blend (20%), and it marks this rosé out as being distinctly southern Rhône, giving a fragrant floral and rich creamy character.

Big plans for the future

Bruel aims to become fully biodynamic, and to create a fully sustainable and biodiverse property. In 2023 he plans to unveil a new winemaking cellar (up until now the wines have been vinified at the nearby Cave du Luberon), and in 2024 a boutique hotel, spa and restaurant in Isle-sur-Sorgues.

Cuvée Augusta 2022 was launched in February 2023.

See Elizabeth Gabay MW’s tasting note and score for Cuvée Augusta 2022

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In the same way that a private domaine can support a family, a co-operative winery can support an entire village. So when the Cave de Cairanne was effectively declared bankrupt in 2014, a whole community of growers was left hanging from a thread.

‘Closing a co-op is like closing a church. It supports businesses, families, generations,’ says Denis Crespo. He’s an unlikely saviour, as his roots are in natural winemaking. But he provided the necessary electric shock to get the co-op’s heart pumping again. Today, it’s a model of large-scale, no-added-sulphite winemaking. But its recovery was far from guaranteed.

Scroll down to see tasting notes and scores for five Cave de Cairanne wines

From hero to zero

The Cave de Cairanne (also known as Camille Cayran) was founded in 1929, and rapidly established a reputation for quality. ‘In the 1980s and 1990s it was the best cave co-operative in the Rhône,’ says Crespo, partly thanks to the excellence of the winemaker at that time, Raymond Coulourat.

‘It had prestige at the time,’ says Crespo. So when he heard that the Cave de Cairanne had collapsed in 2014, ‘I said it’s not possible – how could this happen?’

The reason for its downfall, he discovered, was that the co-op was selling 90% of its wine to supermarkets. ‘When you dip a toe in the water, it’s not a problem,’ says Crespo. But having all of your eggs in one supermarket basket can be risky. ‘The competition is fierce – there is always someone who can do it cheaper than you.’

With 48 employees to support, the management made every sale they could – even if this meant selling at a loss. In February 2014, it could no longer pay its bills, and was put under judicial review with debts of €7.8m (£6.8m).

In good years gone by, the co-op comprised 200 growers who worked 2,000ha of vines. By 2014, only 50 growers remained, farming just 300ha. ‘We got this close to death,’ says Crespo, pinching a finger and thumb together with a millimetre to spare.

An unlikely saviour

Denis Crespo is 50 years old, but with a full head of hair, gold earrings and a mischievous twinkle in his eye, he appears younger. He grew up in Pessac in Bordeaux, where he studied winemaking for six years, but his winemaking roots are more paysan than bourgeois.

‘I got bored quickly,’ he says, ‘it’s very safe, very traditional, nobody wants change.’ On visiting Châteauneuf-du-Pape in 1994, he realised immediately that the southern Rhône was where he belonged.

He took a winemaking position at Domaine Rouge Garance in Saint-Hilaire-d’Ozilhan, just west of Avignon, where he remained for 13 years. ‘It was totally different from Bordeaux, totally free.’ He developed his style in collaboration with other natural and biodynamic producers such as Domaine Richaud, Domaine Oratoire St Martin and Domaine La Bouïssière.

In 2010 he sought a bigger challenge, so left Domaine Rouge Garance to join the cooperative Coteaux de Fournès (which has now become Les Vignerons de Remoulins Fournès). ‘I had a very bad impression of co-ops at the time – industrial methods, machine picking, lots of chemicals.’ He wanted to see if he could steer them in a more artisanal direction.

It was here that he met Samuel Montgermont of the négociant Les Grandes Serres. On hearing about the Cave de Cairanne’s desperate situation, Montgermont thought Crespo might be the man to help turn their fortunes around, and he persuaded him to meet with the co-op’s management team in June 2015.

Life support

When Crespo arrived at the Cave de Cairanne, he tasted through the range. ‘Of the 21 cuvées I tasted, I would have kept maybe one. I was traumatised. 90% of the wines they made were oaked, polished and tired.’

The supermarkets insisted on wines being made to a specific recipe, like cola. ‘The main problem is that [members] weren’t proud of their wines,’ he says.

He put together a plan to rescue the co-op. ‘Only one thing will work,’ he told them, ‘quality.’ He overhauled the range, and by merging with another local co-op in 2020, he managed to increase the holdings of organically grown vines, which became a flagship cuvée.

Another major change was in the winemaking. Crespo believes that ‘there are lots of microorganisms and yeasts that bring aromatic complexity’ during fermentation, but these are inhibited by adding sulphites. Now all the wines are made without sulphite additions.

Some are even bottled without sulphites. Due to the risks involved, such as oxidation and microbial spoilage, making wine this way on a large scale is rare, but this co-op seems to have perfected it. The Cairanne Sans Soufre Ajouté cuvée is consistently excellent, and retails at just £13.99 in the UK.

A return to health

Today the co-op has 138 members farming 1,200ha of vines, and is functioning healthily once again. ‘I have trouble hiding my joy,’ says Crespo with a beaming smile, ‘but people said it wasn’t possible.’

When he arrived, exports were almost zero; now they’re hitting 30%. His next target is increasing organic farming among his members. Currently at 20%, he aims to increase this to 50% over the next five to six years.

Crespo says that the key to success was enthusing his members, and giving them a sense of belonging and ownership. ‘In a cave co-operative, members are just growers, not vignerons… Now they know which parcels of theirs go into which cuvées. That’s what makes us different.’

He’s restored his members’ self-esteem, and tasting today’s wines from Cave de Cairanne, they deserve to be proud.

Matt Walls’ tasting notes and scores for five Cave de Cairanne wines

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Overlooking California‘s Silicon Valley to the east and the Pacific Ocean to the west, the Santa Cruz Mountains AVA is home to more than 75 wine producers and 200 growers – often with remarkably sustainable roots.

Pinot Noir, Chardonnay and Cabernet Sauvignon dominate regional plantings, accounting collectively for just over 75% of the vines. Yet there is considerable investment in Merlot, Zinfandel and many Rhône varieties too.

Scroll down for scores and tasting notes of 10 wines from the Santa Cruz Mountains

The Santa Cruz Mountains AVA is one of the coolest grape growing regions in the US. Its coastal fog, cool nights and typically temperate days create bright acidity and exceptionally concentrated fruit. These conditions give rise to elegant wines that are consistently fresh, lively, complex and often lower in alcohol.

Owing to smaller volumes and extensive fan bases, 90% of wineries here sell direct to consumers.

Several factors differentiate Santa Cruz Mountains from other appellations, says Keiki McKay, executive director of Santa Cruz Mountains Winegrowers Association. ‘The restrained use of mechanical operations, as the vineyards are often small plots within forest tracts; that most vineyards practise sustainable farming void of pesticides; they often dry-farm; and they are committed to the health and preservation of the local ecosystem and wildlife.’

Many wineries are certified organic or committed to organic practices in the vineyards and cellar. Bradley Brown, founder of Big Basin Vineyards, says: ‘Our winemaking practice was certified organic so that, with minimal SO2 use, we can label our wines as “made from organically grown grapes”.’

Santa Cruz Mountains at a glance

Unique characters One of the coolest grape-growing regions in the US and the first AVA designated in a mountainous region

Elevation From 120m on coastal-facing slopes to 790m at the highest vineyards

Area under vine 650ha (from more than 230 vineyards)

Grape varieties Pinot Noir, Cabernet Sauvignon and Chardonnay each represent 25% of plantings

Total production 75 wineries producing 3,000,000 bottles annually with 4,300 tonnes of grapes harvested

Five estates focusing on sustainability in vineyard and cellar

Mount Eden Vineyards

Considered one of the original boutique California estates, founded by Martin Ray in 1945, family-owned Mount Eden Vineyards focuses on small-lot Pinot Noir, Chardonnay and Cabernet Sauvignon planted on dry-farmed vineyards at 600m.

Sustainability drives much of the estate’s strategy. They make use of cover crops, hand-harvesting and organic sprays, along with solar power providing energy for the winery and offices.

Madson Wines

Madson Wines is owned by winemaker Cole Thomas and viticulturists Ken Swegles and Abbey Chrystal. They work solely with 100% organic vineyards, intending to build soil health through organic composts, fertilisers (including fermented kelp extracts) and sprays with an eye towards regenerative practices.

‘Ken wanted to show that it’s possible to farm at the highest level without using Roundup,’ says Chrystal. Thomas uses natural whole-cluster fermentation and minimal sulphur at bottling for his precise, expressive wines of moderate alcohol.

Sante Arcangeli Family Winery

With annual production of 1,500 to 2,000 cases a year, Sante Arcangeli primarily sources fruit from two vineyards in the Corralitos region of Santa Cruz Mountains, refusing to work with vineyards that use herbicides. Owner and winemaker John Benedetti maintains site integrity through dry-framing and hand-harvesting, with strategic cover-crop selection as the bedrock of his viticulture program.

Pinot Noir and Chardonnay come from the 2ha Split Rail Vineyard at 520m, with stunning views of Monterey Bay. The vineyard is surrounded by redwoods and madrones; Benedetti says this indicates dynamic soil structures since both tree species have significantly different demands on soil nutrients.

Windy Oaks Estate

After working and travelling throughout Australia and Europe, Jim and Judy Schultze settled in Corralitos and planted their first 1.2ha of vines in 1996. Today they cultivate 11ha (9.3ha planted to Pinot Noir) using organic and biodynamic practices. Minimalists at heart, the Schultzes use native yeast fermentation and gravity flow, bottling their wines unfined and unfiltered.

Perhaps the most exciting aspect of their sustainable vineyard practices is the use of a German-built heat blower by Agrothermal Systems. ‘The machine reaches temperatures of 150°C to 260°C, and its ability to dry out the entire fruit zone is truly incredible,’ explains Jim. This heating technology stops controls pests, including mealybugs, while reducing the need for significantly spraying against rot, powdery mildew and other diseases.

Ridge Vineyards 

Ridge Vineyards is the largest grower of organically certified grapes in the Santa Cruz Mountains AVA as well as Sonoma County. It makes its organic compost from grape stems and pomace remains, using it to fill gaps in the vineyard where cover crops cannot meet all of a vine’s nutritional needs.

Its broader sustainability initiatives include integrated pest management through beneficial insects and predatory birds, water conservation, and limited soil tilling to amplify cover crop and composting efforts.

The emphasis on ecological balance and biodiversity builds a firm foundation of soil integrity. Healthy soils ultimately lead to higher-quality fruit, and not using chemicals ensures safer conditions for vineyard workers.

Santa Cruz Mountains: 10 sustainable wines to try

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How sustainable is your wine?

To Kalon, a vineyard regarded as California’s crown jewel thanks to its enduring renown for producing world-class, top-scoring Cabernet Sauvignon, has secured its legendary status with organic certification.

Blue-chip producers such as Robert Mondavi, Schrader Cellars, To Kalon Vineyard Company and Cliff Lede have all cemented their reputations on To Kalon fruit. But as iconic as they and this vineyard are, there is always room for improvement.

The past three years have seen rigorous overhauls within To Kalon in pursuit of the ambitious California Certified Organic Farmers (CCOF) organic certification.

‘While the To Kalon vineyard has been farmed sustainably for many years, the challenge was in the commitment to a certified organic programme,’ says Blake Wood, director of vineyard operations, To Kalon Vineyard, Constellation Brands. ‘There is a mindset shift there. The margin for error is very narrow. It’s been fun to watch our team respond to this challenge.’

The To Kalon legacy

To Kalon vineyard, in Napa’s Oakville appellation and planted with just over 80% Cabernet Sauvignon, is primarily owned by Constellation Brands. Today 177ha are managed by the Robert Mondavi Winery with an additional 94ha held by University of California Davis and Beckstoffer Vineyards, among others.

To date, 134ha of To Kalon’s vines have received the CCOF certification. Younger vines await certification while several established blocks act as buffer zones where the vineyard abuts conventionally farmed properties. Organic certification on this scale marks a major milestone for both To Kalon and Napa Valley.

‘This is an important moment for the industry,’ says Thomas Rivers Brown, winemaker at Schrader Cellars. ‘When such an iconic, high-profile vineyard like To Kalon makes the commitment to organic farming, it demonstrates a belief that it truly does impact quality for the better. Through organic practices, we’re making better wine by helping to balance yields, increase concentration and manage canopies with minimal intervention.’

The challenges of converting to organic viticulture

Transitioning a vineyard of To Kalon’s size, scope and reputation from conventional to organic farming and achieve certification is an immense undertaking. It requires detailed adherence to stringent standards on vineyard applications, renewable resources, soil and water conservation. Everything needs documenting and milestones checked – all part of Constellation’s future-focused sustainability plan.

‘The main challenge with farming organically is that there is no margin for error,’ says Sally Johnson Blum, director of winemaking at Robert Mondavi Winery. ‘In a difficult vintage, our options to adjust are extremely limited. Our vineyard team has to be several steps ahead of Mother Nature at all times. It’s a big challenge, for sure. Was it worth it? Absolutely, 100%.’

Blum adds: ‘Weed control is a major challenge in organic viticulture. Mechanical weed control is one of the best options, but the additional tractor passes can present a carbon emissions challenge. To address this, we have purchased the first six fully electric, driver-optional smart tractors in the wine industry, made by Monarch Tractor, a company co-founded by Carlo Mondavi.’

The first organic To Kalon vintage

The first certified organic grapes from the To Kalon vineyard will be harvested in this year’s 2023 vintage. But will the wines echo the changes in the vineyard? Andy Erickson, winemaker at To Kalon Vineyard Company, thinks so.

‘Organic farming in To Kalon Vineyard has always been very important to me,’ Erikson says. ‘We live and work among the vines, so it’s good to know that we’re farming the right way. I’m so happy that we’ve reached this milestone. The vineyard already feels so alive and I know that will be reflected in the wines.’

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Frédéric Zeimett, CEO of Leclerc Briant, and Hervé Jestin, cellar master, have made strenuous efforts to revitalise this boutique Champagne house, founded in 1872 and purchased in 2012 by an American couple, Denise Dupré and Mark Nunnelly.

Zeimett, a former supply director at Moët & Chandon, has a clear vision of the future of the house (he launched a new cuvée from a single vineyard, Château d’Avize, earlier this year). Jestin, former cellar master at Champagne Duval-Leroy, is probably one of the best winemakers in the region and the biggest biodynamics enthusiast in Champagne.

Scroll down for notes on the latest Leclerc Briant Champagnes: Abyss Rosé 2018 and Le Clos des Trois Clochers 2016

Subaquatic

Together they have developed a cuvée called Abyss. The concept is to submerge Leclerc Briant Champagnes in the ocean, off the island of Ushant in Brittany, ‘to capture a universe where land and sea spirits come together’, says Zeimett.

This year sees Leclerc Briant release the first rosé iteration of cuvée Abyss. It is a blend of 85% Chardonnay, and 15% Pinot Noir elaborated as a red wine. Bottles were submerged in the sea in September 2021 for 10 months after being disgorged in July 2021 without dosage.

The 2018 vintage is considered a success according to Champagne’s trade association body, the Comité Champagne. The summer was scorching hot and dry, breaking the record set in 2003. Fortunately, the vines suffered no water stress. Harvest took place in ideal conditions and the year was generous, with high alcohol levels.

I don’t know if submersion is a benefit to the wine, but I have to admit that this wine has much tension, iodine and saltiness when compared to all the other wines I tasted from the 2018 vintage (either bottles not yet disgorged or vins clairs).

Single vineyard focus

Alongside the first opus of Abyss rosé, Leclerc Briant has released a new vintage of the single-parcel cuvée Le Clos des Trois Clochers. This is a tiny vineyard of only 0.4ha, planted with Chardonnay and situated in Villers-Allerand, a premier cru village in the heart of the Montagne de Reims. The calcareous soil imposes a mineral-driven, pure and tense style.

The 2016 vintage was difficult for winegrowers. With floods and hot weather, downy mildew was everywhere. The rain stopped early in July and gave way to a sunny, dry summer, allowing the harvest to take place in good conditions. Like many vintages in Champagne, it was saved by great weather at the end of the season.

Leclerc Briant’s Abyss Rosé 2018 retails for £300 in the UK and is available through The Finest Bubble. Le Clos des Trois Clochers 2016 retails for around £150 and is available through a number of retailers. See the tasting notes below for stockist information.

Yohan Castaing rates and reviews the latest Leclerc Briant Champagnes:

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Speaking exclusively to Decanter, Jacky Lorenzetti, owner of the 52ha estate since 2009, spoke of his conviction to sustainable viticulture and a desire to produce the best wine possible in harmony with nature.

Despite organic practices beginning at the estate 10 years ago in 2012, official conversion began in 2019. ‘When we arrived, we had a lot of work to do to bring soil back to life’, says the real estate investor and owner of Bordeaux estates Château Lafon-Rochet and Château Lilian Ladouys in St-Estèphe as well as co-owner of Château d’Issan in Margaux and Paris rugby team Racing 92. The team began with the ‘most difficult and disease-prone terroirs’ and worked ‘step by step from there’.

‘It was a conviction from the beginning, and made sense for us’ Lorenzetti said.

Château Pédesclaux a timeline

2009: Acquired by the Lorenzetti family, Jacky and Françoise and their daughter Manon. Primary objective to decompact the soils and stimulate life

2010: A return to tillage while setting up competitive grassing to control excessive vigour and create a deep root network as well as stopping mineral fertilisation

2011: An in-depth study created of 100 soil pits across the vineyard identifying 19 different types of soil leading to a restructuring programme to best match grape variety to terroir.

2012: First organic trials begin on a 2ha parcel of vines, one of the most difficult and complex in terms of disease pressure.

2014: New gravity cellar installed

2015: Organic trials doubled in plots which systematically go into the grand vin. Biodynamic trials also begin using the know-how of Antoine Leptit de La Bigne. Rigorous comparisons are undertaken in the winery between normal, organic and biodynamic viticulture,

2016: 7.5ha organic

2017: 12ha organic

2018: 24ha organic. Organically farmed vines showing more resistance to disease and global warming effects

2019: Official organic conversion begins

2020-2021: Participated in the IACUSA (Impacts and accumulation of copper in agricultural soils) conducted by the firm Novasol Experts alongside French wine growers concerned about the environmental impact of their practices such as Romanee-Conti, Château Latour and Palmer. Objective to measure the ecotoxicological impact of copper on the biological quality of wine-growing soils using a scientific approach.

2022: Officially certified organic and gravity-fed. New packaging to be revealed as of this vintage.

A new, modern, gravity-fed winery was established in 2014 with 58 vats for specific parcel micro-vinfications, ranging in volume and size with 12 options between 60 and 140hl), but Lorenzetti insists terroir contributes ‘80% to the quality of the wine. A great chai helps the work of humans to gain precision but the vineyard is number one’.

Lorenzetti insists the objective is ‘not necessarily to make an organic wine but to make the best wine possible’, admitting that it hasn’t been easy. The average production cost has risen 15% while the average yield loss per vintage over the past 10 years has been -10% on average.

‘It has an impact of course, but we accept the difficulties because we’re convinced this is the right path to take.’

Today, 50% of the vineyard is conducted organically and 50% biodynamically which is still being assessed for its impact on the vineyard and the wine. ‘Organics gives us the best warranty for the environment, but we’re trialling one step further’.

An agroecology programme is also in place with trees and hedges planted to encourage and develop biodiversity and ‘balance the vineyard’. Massal selection is also used to keep the most resistant varieties and characters of successful old-vine plantings. ‘We find when the vineyard is balanced you need to use even less organic products’.

When asked if the same philosophy and endeavours extend to the other properties in the portfolio, Lorenzetti said; ‘We can’t have a belief in one vineyard and not the others,’ insisting that it’s a ‘global vision that is going step-by-step’.

Trials have begun at Château d’Issan of which Lorenzetti owns a 50% stake alongside the Cruse family headed by Emmanuel Cruse, also director of Vignobles Cruse-Lorenzetti, in addition to Pédesclaux and Lilian Ladouys (60ha) which is currently in organic conversion due for certification in 2024.

The group’s newest acquisition, Lafon-Rochet (45ha), was already in organic conversion when it was purchased last year (2021). Working closely with Cruse, Christophe Congé has been brought on board as managing director, moving from his role as oenologist and wine operations manager across Château Lafite Rothschild and Château Duhart Milon for over 22 years.

There is now a collective between the four estates to share knowledge and best-practices as well as a growing exchange of initiatives across Pauillac to see which viticultural methods are working the most successfully and the quickest and most efficient activities going forward.

Sustainability is also key with an energy audit completed at each estate measuring energy and water usage. Solar panels have been listed as a potential source of future power generation.

To celebrate the certification there will be a label redesign for Château Pédesclaux when it comes to bottling the 2022 vintage with the positioning of ‘organic’ a discussion among the team.

‘Customers naturally look to the back of the label for that kind of information, but we may put it on the front, which could be a first for Bordeaux’.

Looking ahead, such is the commitment to the environment, Lorenzetti said; ‘We’re ready to sacrifice a harvest not to use any chemical products. It’s also our conscience,’ adding ‘we will never go back’.

See notes and scores for a selection of recently-tasted Château Pédesclaux wines

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Emmanuel Lassaigne – vigneron inspiré

Despite his lack of formal training and his base in Montgueux, a relatively obscure corner of Champagne, Emmanuel Lassaigne is producing some of the most compelling wines in the region.

A restless innovator, he is always ready to try a new technique. According to Lassaigne, ‘most people do a blend in Champagne, to have every year the same, but it is not my goal. It would be very boring to have every year the same.’

More often than not, his experiments succeed, and the cognoscenti fight to find his wines. It was once almost necessary to be in Champagne to drink them. Now he is exporting to 40 countries, and the wines are more readily available.

Scroll down to see tasting notes and scores for 10 Jacques Lassaigne wines

‘Among the most outstanding value wines anywhere in Champagne’

Lassaigne strode out of his winery to greet us for our visit in April, and thus began one of my most memorable visits to the region as we stood overlooking the vineyards of Montgueux.

Keen to emphasise the unique character of Montgueux, he insists that it is a region apart. I suggested that while it was politically a part of the Aube département, it bore more resemblance to the Côte des Blancs. He insisted it was not a part of the Côte des Blancs. ‘It has similarly chalky soils, but the chalk is completely different’, he explains. The chalk in the Marne is from the Campanian period, while that in Montgueux is from the Turonian period, tens of millions of years earlier.

What makes Montgueux special?

Lassaigne has a point – Montgueux is distinctly different. It has a unique vantage point over the plains of ancient Troyes, where almost 1,600 years ago the Romans and the Visigoths teamed up to defeat Atilla the Hun. However, Montgueux stands apart from the rest of the Aube where it is located.

The Aube is dominated by Pinot Noir planted on Kimmeridgian marl, while Montgueux is an outcropping of Turonian chalk covered with a thin layer of clay and flint, planted to Chardonnay.

Champagne Jacques Lassaigne at a glance

Date founded: 1964

Owned by: Emmanuel Lassaigne

Annual production: 50,000 bottles

Key vineyards: Bouillerate, Clos Sainte-Sophie, La Grand Côte, Le Cotet, Les Paluets

Key wines: Autour de Minuit, Clos Sainte-Sophie, Haut Revers du Chutat, Les Vignes de Montgueux, La Colline Inspirée, Le Cotet

Vines have been grown in the region for centuries, but many vineyards were not replanted after phylloxera. The village’s vineyards were not developed to their current extent until the 1960s.

Emmanuel’s father Jacques was among the pioneers at this time, planting the lieu-dit of Le Cotet in 1964. Jacques, along with most of his neighbours, sold his grapes to the négociant houses based in Reims and Epernay.

Grapes from Montgueux quickly found buyers among the chefs de cave from the large houses, particularly Jacques Péters of Veuve Clicquot and Daniel Thibault of Charles Heidsieck. Thibault was known for comparing Montgueux to Montrachet, and loved to purchase fruit from the village.

Lassaigne points out that even today, most of the fruit from Montgueux is still sold on to the négociant houses: ‘There are 80 growers in the village; 22 make wines, but only 12 of us make wines in Montgueux.’ His own production varies from 45,000–55,000 bottles according to the vintage, with half of that total sold in France.

What style of wine does Montgueux produce?

According to Lassaigne, the tendency is for the vines of Montgueux to produce very ripe grapes – ‘showing almost exotic fruits, like melon, pineapple, and mandarin’. The wines show these tropical aromas because Montgueux is in the southern part of Champagne and because most of the vines face due south. The lieu-dit La Grande Côte typifies this kind of terroir.

To arrive at a perfect balance, Lassaigne blends the wines from different sites, using the freshness of the grapes from his east-facing vines higher on the slope in Le Cotet as an antidote, and to bring more citrus aromas of lemon and grapefruit.

According to Lassaigne, the saving grace of Montgueux is the Turonian chalk, which gives a saline minerality to the wine, ‘like the crystals of salt in a piece of aged Comté’.

Unlike some producers in Champagne, he has come to terms with the vinous side of his wines. ‘Some put the bubbles before the wine. I put the wine before the bubbles’. It is an almost Burgundian approach – he uses less yeast than most producers for the second fermentation (for the tirage) to have softer mousse and accentuate the wine-like character of his Champagne.

‘Nothing is added at all’ – Lassaigne’s winemaking philosophy

From 1970, Jacques began to hold back some bottles to sell locally, but these were still wine, not sparkling. Sparkling Champagne was not produced here until 1980.

Emmanuel joined his father in 1999, and his first solo vintage was in 2002. Although the domaine is not certified, he has continued to employ the organic methods used by his father in the vineyard. He points out that he uses no soil inputs (fertiliser, manure, or compost), herbicides, or insecticide (even organic), and all the rows are grassed over.

Lassaigne presses everything at his winery, including the grapes that he purchases. He uses an old Coquard press from the 1950s because he likes the control it gives him.

Approximately two-thirds of the juice is fermented in tank and one-third in barrels, both in large foudres and smaller casks made from local oak harvested near Troyes in the Forêt de Vauchassis.

As in the vineyards, ‘natural’ methods are used in the winery. Although he uses a small amount of sulphur under the press, no more is added during the winemaking process nor when the wine is disgorged.

In fact, nothing is added at all – the bottles are disgorged by hand to limit the loss of wine, and they are not topped up. No dosage has been added to any of the cuvées since 2012, and the wines are not filtered.

An eclectic range of cuvées

Lassaigne describes the range as having five types of cuvée. The entry point is called Les Vignes de Montgueux. This is the flagship of the house and among the most outstanding value wines anywhere in Champagne. There is also a single-vineyard, multi-vintage blend called Le Cotet; a cuvée fermented in barrel called La Colline Inspirée; a vintage cuvée fermented entirely in tank that is made every year; and a single-vineyard, barrel-fermented wine, the Clos Sainte-Sophie.

He purchases the fruit for this last wine from the Valton family, who have owned the Clos for a century. It was one of the favoured sites of Daniel Thibault, who bought all of the grapes from the 1.2-hectare vineyard. Lassaigne considers himself fortunate to purchase grapes from a third of this, which he began to vinify in 2010, making one of the best examples of a prestige cuvée from a grower.

Lassaigne loves to experiment. His description of his range is somewhat disingenuous since it ignores these experiments, which he calls ‘Cuvées Ephémères’, which can be one-offs or make periodic appearances. These are identified as ‘scenes’ belonging to different ‘acts’. Acte I refers to still wines (Coteaux Champenois), and Acte II was a series of non-vintage rosés that are now discontinued, while Acte III is a series of vintage-dated wines fermented in various types of barrel, including some purchased from natural wine producer Jean-François Ganevat in the Jura and others purchased from Cognac. Acte IV is consecrated to single-vineyard wines from the site La Grande Côte, while Acte V refers to skin contact wines.

Each of these is unique, a compelling example of the terroir of Montgueux, and a great reason to discover Champagne Jacques Lassaigne.

Champagne Jacques Lassaigne timeline

1964: Le Cotet planted

1970: Jacques Lassaigne begins to sell ‘Vin Nature de Champagne’ (precursor of Coteaux Champenois)

1980: First (sparkling) Champagnes were bottled from Le Cotet

1999: Emmanuel returns to assist his father

2002: Emmanuel’s first solo vintage

2004: First production of barrel-fermented La Colline Inspirée

2010: First vintage of the Clos Sainte-Sophie

2012: From this vintage, all the Champagnes are sold without dosage

The 10 Jacques Lassaigne Champagnes to try:

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Organics

Organic are a set of farming and food production standards to which producers must abide to be granted organic certification. These aim at reducing the environmental impact, promoting biodiversity and ensuring animal welfare.

Among the fundamental guidelines of organic farming and production, in the context of wine, are:

• Strictly no use of chemical pesticides, herbicides, insecticides or fertilisers (of the 300 or so pesticides permitted under EU law, just 20 are permitted under organic standards, all of which derive from natural ingredients)
• Use of natural fertilisers only
• Strictly no use of GMO (Genetically Modified Organism) yeasts
• Sulphite addition is permitted (in the EU) but the total levels allowed are lower than those for non-organic wines: 100 mg/L for red wines (vs. 150 mg/L for conventional wines) and 150 mg/L for whites and rosés (vs. 200 mg/L)

Organic practices must have been in place for at least three years before certification is granted.

Organic certification is regulated by government bodies although the certification process itself is, in many countries, outsourced to external approved agencies. Still, the requirements to be met are those inscribed in the law, which means that a product classified as organic in a given country might not automatically receive the corresponding stamp across a border. For example, in the USA, in contrast with the EU regulations outlined above, organic wine cannot have any added sulphites – if sulphites are added it can only carry the ‘Made with organic grapes’ mention.

[Note that any wine might be produced using organic grapes but not be itself organic if the production standards in the cellar do not follow the required guidelines.]

Biodynamics

More than a set of agricultural practices, biodynamics is a philosophical approach to living, ultimately reflected in the work in the fields and cellar. The principles of biodynamics are based on the theories outlined in 1924 by the Austrian philosopher Rudolf Steiner (1861–1925) which defined a holistic, homoeopathic approach to agriculture. His work emerged in response to a request from farmers observing degraded soil conditions and a deterioration in the health and quality of crops and livestock resulting, they believed, from the use of chemical fertilisers. But it is also imbued with a strong level of symbolic meaning, sometimes criticised for compromising the scientific validity of biodynamics, not least due to Steiner’s connections with German nationalism. This is why many producers adopt the farming practices associated with biodynamics, acknowledging their clear beneficial impact on soil and plant health, while remaining critical of some of its philosophical aspects.

Biodynamics are based on the belief that everything in the universe is interconnected through shared energy forces which emit a universal resonance. All things, animated, inanimate, as well as celestial bodies (planets, comets, stars, meteors, ..), are, according to the theories of biodynamics, constantly pulsing and influencing each other with these energies. The farmer and winemaker therefore needs to work with, rather than against, these universal energies by understanding their natural flow and cycles. The tasks in the vineyards and cellar (planting, pruning, ploughing, picking, fermenting, and bottling) need to be timed according to the biodynamic calendar to harness the vital forces of earthly and celestial cycles (namely planetary, solar, stellar, and especially lunar).

From a purely technical perspective, biodynamics is stricter than organics. For example, while in organic winemaking the use of cultured (non-GMO) yeasts is allowed, a biodynamic wine can only be fermented using natural ambient yeasts. It also only treats the vineyards with specific homeopathic preparations.

Biodynamic certification is not government regulated. It is overseen and granted by private institutions, notably Demeter International and Biodyvin (more details below).

Sustainability

Sustainability is a wide term that refers to the awareness of the long term impact of human activities on the planet. As such, organics and biodynamics make use of practices that have sustainability at their core, in that they are concerned with minimising the negative environmental impact of farming and food production, promoting soil health and guaranteeing animal welfare.

However, while looking mostly at the work in the vineyard and cellar, with a particular attention to environmental consequences, there are wider aspects they do not touch upon.

On the other hand, there are sustainability programmes which take a broader look at how companies operate, looking not just at farming and production but also at the impact of the whole supply chain, energy consumption and even social responsibility. As an example, the International Wineries for Climate Action are a group of leading producers with a shared strategy to become carbon neutral across all the whole wine value chain, as shown here:

There are different sustainability programmes around the world (see below), that set strategic guidelines across all the different facets of production and operations. Some have a clear environmental focus (therefore often overlapping with government organic certification) while others are more holistic, touching, for example, on corporate responsibility, long-term energy saving goals or carbon neutrality.

Most of these programmes are state regulated and/or recognised and therefore the certification is legally defined and can be displayed on the labels.

A word on natural wine

At this point you might be wondering what natural wine is. Is it organic? Or biodynamic? It can be either or neither. “Natural wine” is not a legally or technically defined term and is used in different ways by different people, therefore not indicating any particular set of practices or requirements.

The so-called “Natural wine movement” refers, loosely, to a style of low-intervention winemaking popularised by different groups of producers, sommeliers and consumers. Some of these wines are organic and biodynamic certified but not all – and not necessarily. In general, “natural wines” are spontaneously fermented, bottled unfined and unfiltered (hence often looking cloudy). However, many commercial, large-scale conventional producers have used the term ‘natural’ on labels to try and position some of their ranges differently and attract a specific audience, without this being reflected in any specific “low intervention” winemaking.

On the other hand, many producers who follow organic and/or biodynamic practices might not have certification due to either the complexity and cost of the certification process(s), making it even more difficult to really know what’s inside the bottle.

An overview of sustainability certifications and the symbols you can expect to find on the wine bottle/label:

EU Organic certified

The certification granted by the European Union, through control agencies or bodies, under the same rules across all member states.

More info

USDA Organic Certified

The American government’s certification organic certification standards. In contrast with EU-certified organic wine, USDA-certified organic wine cannot have any sulphites added. If it does it should be labelled as “Made with organic grapes” and sulphite levels kept under 100 mg/L.

More info

Demeter International

The first biodynamic certification organisation to be created. It certifies all practices and products, not just wine.

More info

Biodyvin

A biodynamic certification body for European wineries only.

More info

Haute Valeur Environnementale (HVE)

Certification created by the French Ministry of Agriculture. It recognises environmentally-friendly approaches to farming.

More info

Terra Vitis

The Terra Vitis certification is similar to HVE but was created by a group of producers and industry associations and is independently regulated.

More info

Respekt

Austrian-based, self-regulated association of Austrian, German, Hungarian and Italian producers following biodynamic practices.

More info

Sustainable Wines of Great Britain

Sustainability certification for WineGB members only. The stamp may only be used on the labels of bottles if the wine is made in a scheme-approved winery from fruit grown in a scheme-approved vineyard.

More info

Sustainable Wine South Africa

A joint venture between the Wine and Spirit Board (WSB), the Integrated Production of Wine (IPW) scheme and Wines of South Africa (WoSA).

More info

Sustainable Winegrowing New Zealand

An industry-wide certification programme led by New Zealand Winegrowers.

More info

Sustainable Winegrowing Australia

A relatively young program created to help grapegrowers and winemakers demonstrate and improve their sustainability credentials through the environmental, social and economic aspects of their businesses.

More info

California Sustainable Winegrowing Alliance

A San Francisco-based nonprofit organisation created by the California Wine Institute and the California Association of Winegrape Growers.

More info

LIVE

Independently certified the sustainable practices of winegrowers in the Pacific Northwest.

More info

Certified Sustainable Wine of Chile

A cross-section certification program (environmental, corporate, commercial) created by Wines of Chile

More info

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With climate change becoming an increasingly serious topic for the spirits industry to tackle, so too comes a greater level of awareness amongst consumers that brands should be doing more in relation to the environmental footprints they leave behind globally.

Every element, from the cultivation of raw materials, to the composition and distribution of finished glass bottles is now under tighter scrutiny. This year’s Earth Day, a celebration of climate awareness, held on 22 April (founded back in 1970 by US environmental campaigner, Gaylord Nelson), comes amidst a tide of alarming data. It suggests that the world is on course to see global temperatures rise beyond the 2°C target set collectively by over 190 countries in The Paris Agreement climate treaty, which came into force back in 2016.

Although spirits production isn’t yet classed as a major environmental offender, the good news is that this stark warning is making the whole industry take notice. Spirits companies are reducing their carbon footprint further, creating more innovative, sustainable, recycled and refillable packaging and introducing more environmentally friendly practices into production. This includes a greater efficiency in dealing with waste CO2 to become a step closer to Carbon Neutral status. There is also a tighter focus on organically managed crops, such as locally grown barley, or less intensively farmed sugar cane.

Leading the way

A number of UK whisky and gin distillers have so far been prominent advocates to promote the importance of sustainability and other environmental issues. Islay’s Bruichladdich was the first in the UK to gain B-Corp status, effectively the Gold Standard for transparency and accountability in tackling climate change issues. While small craft distiller The Oxford Artisan Distillery became the first to be certified organic from grain-to-glass.

So what does all this mean for your favourite tipple? Well, largely speaking, organic and biodynamic spirits are distilled from grains or fruit that remain untreated by pesticides, herbicides or chemical fertilisers that can leave a profound, lasting impact on the soil and water they grow in.

To be classified as organic in the UK, a spirit must meet the rigorous standards outlined by the Soil Association and comply with the EU Organic Regulations on the use of pesticides and soil management of the crop. However many organic distillers will argue the results go a great deal further than simply benefitting the landscape – and that the spirits themselves simply taste far more wholesome, unique and flavoursome.

Best organic and biodynamic spirits to try

Fatty’s Organic Gin

Founded by London-based Philippa ‘Fatty’ Gee and unusually using dill as one of the key botanicals, Fatty’s gin is certified organic by the Soil Association and has a deliciously light citrus note, alongside a distinctive savoury aroma, which works best in a G&T, garnished with cucumber. Alcohol 40%

Oxford Artisan Distillery Organic Gin

Head distiller Cory Mason has been on a mission to promote sustainability and transparency in the grains used to distil his base spirits, working closely with archaeo-botanist John Letts to resurrect heritage strains. The gin is distinctively malty and rich, with bold juniper and citrus notes. Alc 43%

Air Vodka

New York-based Air Company is taking the science of distillation to a whole new level. Its pioneering vodka is produced via patented a technique, which takes CO2 from the air and turns it into pure ethanol, all using renewable solar energy, to be the world’s first carbon negative spirit. Sounds like alchemy, but the result is a surprisingly clean and crisp spirit. Alc 40%

Eight Lands Organic Vodka

Distilled at the Glenrinnes distillery in Speyside. Founder Alex Christou has continued his family’s passion for organic farming by only selecting non-GM and pesticide-free crops for his base spirits, alongside sustainably grown botanicals. The vodka is made from both organic barley and wheat, giving hints of marzipan and vanilla pods. Alc 42%

Waterford Luna

The Waterford distillery is one of the pioneering voices in celebrating ‘terroir’ in Irish whiskey. Luna is made from rare strains of barley, grown by three Irish farms, using biodynamic farming methods. The spirit is rich and oily, with notes of fresh fruit, spiced chocolate and a distinct malted barley note. Alc 50%

Nc’nean Organic Single Malt – Batch 11

This B-Corp certified craft Scottish distiller uses 100% organic barley, approved by the Biodynamic Authority, alongside renewable energy sources to power the distillery and recycles nearly 100% of its waste products. The whisky is light and fruity, with sweet cereal notes and a buttery finish. Alc 46%

Renegade Dumfermline Farm Rum

Rum is often considered the Wild West when it comes to transparency of production. However Grenada’s Renegade has sought to fundamentally address this issue, by focusing completely on the specific local terroir and soil type the cane grows in, to produce – quite literally – a transparent single farm origin white rum full of fresh, sweet flavour. Alc 50%

Copalli Organic Single Estate Rum

Founded in 2018, the Copal Tree distillery, located in the southern Belize rainforest, is committed to supporting the local ecosystem by distilling fresh-pressed cane juice from a native, non-GMO, heirloom sugar cane variety, grown on the first organically certified farm in the country. Vibrant, fruity notes with a touch of freshly picked herbs. Alc 42%

Avallen Calvados

This noble French brandy has been given a truly ethical makeover thanks to the B-Corp-certified Avallen, which has focused on the importance of bee preservation to help the sustainability of future apple crops. A wonderfully fruity, buttery calvados, it works well with tonic and a dash of bitters. Alc 40%

Del Maguey Vida Mezcal

Tequila’s smoky cousin, mezcal has often been described as rustic, thanks to its traditional distillation and production methods. Del Maguey Vida uses 100% organically-grown Espadin variety agave giving a warming, savoury, oily and surprisingly smoky flavour, which will transform your Margarita. Alc 42%

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Organic wines come in many different guises, and the best examples show all of the delicious balance and bright fruit that you’d expect from a great bottle.

Below you’ll find a range of excellent styles reviewed by Decanter experts in the list below.

As many readers will know, organics has been a major trend in recent decades as both winemakers and drinkers consider their impact on the environment.

Around 6% of the world’s vineyards were certified organic in 2019, equal to 454,000 hectares, according to the International Organisation for Vine and Wine (OIV).

There are different rules and approaches around the world, but broadly speaking organic wineries and grape growers avoid the use of synthetic chemicals in the vineyard and seek to promote soil health and biodiversity.

Some organic producers say their wines better reflect a sense of place or terroir.

A key facet of organic winemaking rules has been the use of sulphur dioxide, or sulphites.

In the US, organic wines can’t contain added sulphites, beyond those naturally occurring in the wine itself. Wines labelled as ‘made with organic grapes’ can have sulphites added up to a certain threshold, according to the US department of agriculture (UDSA).

In Europe, organic winemaking rules agreed at EU level in 2012 set down limits for sulphites, but below the threshold for conventional wines.

Some producers use organic methods without pursuing official certification, and there are brilliant winemakers who have long eschewed chemical pesticides and fertilisers in the vineyards.

It’s worth doing some research behind the label if you have the time.

Alternatively, speak to your local wine merchant before you buy, because they will likely be able to share more information about the winery.

There are differences between organic and biodynamic approaches, and also from loosely-defined natural wines. Private and government-sponsored sustainability schemes have also risen to prominence in the last couple of decades.

To some extent, these separate strands show how environmental considerations and judicial use of intervention techniques in the cellar are central conversations in modern winemaking.

Top organic wines to try

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The South of France is a vast region, ranging from Nice on the Mediterranean coast in the east, to Biarritz on the Atlantic coast in the west. It’s separated from northern Spain and the Iberian Peninsula by the Pyrenees Mountains.

The latest Occitanie tasting showcased the sheer variety of appellations that can be found here. Historically, Occitania was a culturally distinct area encompassing parts of France, Spain and Italy, where the Occitan language was spoken. Today the term Occitanie describes a French administrative region, created in 2016 by combining the areas of Languedoc-Roussillon and the Midi-Pyrénées.

The region is bordered by Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur in the east, Nouvelle-Aquitaine in the west and Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes in the north.

Occitanie is now the largest wine region in France. A total of 263,000ha of vineyards produce around a third of the country’s total wine production.

In particular the area is known for organic and biodynamic viticulture, thanks to a generous Mediterranean climate. There are a total of 1,557 organic wineries here, working with 23,303ha of organic vineyards.

Wine styles

The numbers are impressive and perhaps it’s no surprise that they translate into a vast array of wine styles. Wines from Occitanie can be red, white and rosé and are produced across 87 AOP (Appellation d’Origine Protégée) regions. These include Languedoc, Faugères, Minervois, Corbières, Côtes de Gascogne, Pic-St-Loup, Cahors and Côtes de Roussillon.

Producers can choose to make wines within the appellation system or the less restrictive IGP (Indication Géographique Protégée) system. This is a great place to start if you’re looking for value wines from this area.

Stylistically wine lovers are spoiled for choice in Occitanie. Options range from crisp whites such as Picpoul de Pinet – perfect with seafood – to the full-bodied reds of Côtes du Roussillon-Villages, via fruity Pic-St-Loup rosés. Not forgetting the naturally sweet wines of Banyuls.

Many wines are approachable blends, featuring grapes such as the red Grenache, Mourvèdre, Syrah and Carignan, or white Colombard, Roussanne and Chenin Blanc.

The choice can be overwhelming, so we’ve highlighted some favourites from the tasting, all costing less than £20. They include a honeyed white blend of Grenache Blanc, Roussanne and Vermentino from Côtes Catalanes; an organic IGP Pays d’Oc rosé and a hidden gem red, made from the unusual Fer Servadou grape in the little-known IGP of Aveyron.

Great value wines from Occitanie:

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Biodynamic wine production is similar to organics in that it promotes the use of manures and composts and avoids synthetic chemical pesticides, fungicides and fertilisers in the vineyard and cellar. The main practices of biodynamics state the importance of keeping in tune with the fundamental forces of nature to create a self-sufficient ecological environment, with ethical and spiritual considerations. Biodynamic wines are produced in accordance with biodynamic principles – originating with the work and theories of Austrian-born philosopher Rudolf Steiner in the early 20th century – that emphasise holistic agricultural methods and minimal intervention post-harvest. Some biodynamic winemakers claim to have achieved improvements in the health and biodiversity of their vineyards, soil fertility, crop nutrition, and pest and disease management.

Biodynamics in viticulture has grown in popularity in recent years, with more than 450 biodynamic wine producers worldwide. For a wine to be labelled biodynamic, it must be made using nine specific preparations and meet internationally recognised standards laid down by the Demeter Association. Most biodynamic wines are Demeter-certified but, as the organisation also certifies an array of vegetables, fruit, dairy and meat products, many biodynamic vineyards in France also seek certification by Biodyvin.

Both Biodyvin and Demeter have rules on growing and vinification that can be stricter than organic alone – for example, less use of copper sulphate per hectare, and the use of natural yeasts for fermentation. With biodynamics, the homeopathic preparations used on the compost and on the vines are key, and the vineyard must be as self-sustaining as possible, with minimal external inputs. The influence of the planets on the growing season and on vineyard and winery operations is also taken into account.

Some wineries that use biodynamic methods in all or part of the vineyards aren’t certified at all. This is a personal choice. There are also those who are using, or trialling, biodynamic methods, who just use EU organic certification. But only a very small proportion of certified organic producers can be considered fully biodynamic.

Are biodynamic wines better than organic wines? This comes down to personal taste. Many proponents of biodynamics will say that the wines show clearer/brighter fruit and stronger terroir character. The vines may be healthier, but as for the final bottled wine, it will still come down to the skill of the winemaker and vinification methods used.

Biodynamics in the glass – 10 wines to taste

10 wines from iconic biodynamic-certified producers, tasted and scored by the Decanter team.

Wines grouped by style and ordered by score, in descending order.

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On the western flank of Spring Mountain, on the Sonoma County side, amid the rugged terrain of the Mayacamas range sits a 97-hectare ranch. Vineyards were first cultivated here in the 1850s, then torn out in the 1920s during Prohibition.

The site lay fallow for 80 years, until Henry Cornell purchased it in 2000 and established Cornell Vineyards.

Originally, the ranch comprised 46.5ha of varying slopes and aspects in Sonoma’s sub-AVA of Fountaingrove District but had no vineyards to speak of. It was bookended, however, by Fisher Vineyards and Pride Mountain Vineyards, and is in the same neighbourhood as Terra Valentine and Immortal.

Scroll down for tasting notes and scores of a full vertical of Cornell Vineyards wines

Keen to have some vines of his own, Cornell hired a local winemaker and viticulturist to plant Cabernet, Merlot, Malbec, Cabernet Franc and Petit Verdot. He planted about 4ha in 2001, then another 4ha in 2003.

Meanwhile, Cornell added another 50.5ha of neighbouring land parcels and renovated six homes on the ranch, including one for his own family. As of 2015, he had moved a full-time vineyard crew, along with their families, into the other five.

Cornell Vineyards produces a flagship Cabernet ($185), a second wine called Courtship ($85), and a Chardonnay ($75). The wines are currently produced at Arkenstone on Howell Mountain, and most are sold through a mailing list, with some wine in the US wholesale market – mostly in high-end bars and restaurants. The total production is less than 2,000 cases.

The journey from vine to bottle has been an unusually long one for a California winery. After 21 years of ownership, Henry and his wife Vanessa Cornell – longtime New Yorkers with backgrounds in finance and wellness – have only released six commercial vintages, starting with the 2013.

From 2001 to 2012 they made wine but didn’t release any. ‘We were experimenting,’ explains Cornell. ‘And to be honest, we didn’t love the wine back then.

‘All the farming and winemaking needed to be rebooted, which is what happened. Now I reach for my own wine, which to be honest, I did not do in our first decade.’

Replanting and rebooting

In 2011, the reboot began with an introduction to Françoise Peschon. Peschon had apprenticed at Château Haut-Brion in Bordeaux and later worked at Stag’s Leap Wine Cellars, Viader, Vine Hill Ranch, Kelly Fleming Wines and Araujo Estate. She currently works at Drinkward Peschon, Matt Morris, Heimark, Almacerro and Accendo.

Peschon met the Cornells in November 2011. Driving up the road to the property, ‘all I could think of was, why?’ she recalls. ‘It seemed very Fitzcarraldo to me,’ she added, referencing the 1982 film about an eccentric dreamer wanting to build an opera house in the Peruvian jungle.

The Cornells felt Peschon could tame the rich, ripe style of their early vintages. But she felt their vineyard was the issue. ‘There were some blocks that had viruses, were poorly planted with row directions that didn’t make sense, and low yields,’ recalls Peschon. She suggested a full replant; the Cornells began almost immediately.

By 2013, Peschon had officially joined Cornell Vineyards as consultant winemaker, bringing Graham Wehmeier along as winemaker. ‘It has had its fair share of challenges, but the reward is evident,’ she says. ‘The wines reflect the environment. And being mountain fruit, the challenge has always been to rein in those rustic tannins and make something elegant and kind of mystical.’

Wehmeier left in 2017 and the following year Peschon recruited Elizabeth Tangney to oversee farming and winemaking. Today Tangney – formerly of Saint Helena Winery – is director of viticulture and winemaking, and Peschon is consultant winemaker. Their combined efforts have seen the Cornell Vineyards’ Cabernet style come into focus.

The wines are longer ripe and rich but linear. They centre around fine-grained, ageworthy mountain tannins, gentle but firm acidity and layers of refined dark berry flavours interlaced by deep, savoury earthy notes.

A common passion

Raised by his mother Rose, Henry Cornell grew up in a two-room apartment in the Bronx in New York City, and recalls wine always present at Sunday dinners: ‘It was usually Mateus rosé because that’s what mother could afford.’ When Cornell began practicing law at Davis-Polk, he traded up. The first bottle that really ignited the wine spark was a 1966 Cos d’Estournel.

Cornell spent 30 years at Goldman Sachs (mostly in Asia) rising to vice-chairman of its merchant banking division. In 2013 he founded Cornell Capital, and today is the acting senior partner. But it was in 2000, while at Goldman, that he first met his future wife.

Vanessa Hoermann was born in Egypt to a Chinese Malaysian mother and German father who worked at the Nile Hilton. He had an obsession for first-growth Bordeaux and would challenge his teenage daughter to give her impression of those wines. When she met Cornell (she was 23, he was 44) they immediately bonded over their shared passion for fine wine.

Between work, travel and their philanthropic activities (they support a range of charities) the Cornells don’t have much downtime. Especially when also raising five children aged eight to 15.

But when they do, they let loose. On Spring Mountain, Cornell careens around the property on an all-terrain quad bike, handling it like a family minivan in Manhattan rush hour traffic.

And it’s in this relaxed environment he’ll offer up some stories. As a boy, he says he would skip school in the hopes of obtaining an autograph from New York Yankees all-star Mickey Mantle. As an adult, he got to meet and spend time with with legendary Yankees owner George Steinbrenner – ‘Mr Steinbrenner’– as Cornell deferentially refers to the late businessman.

The Glass Fire

On my first visit to the estate, Cornell pulled the quad bike to an abrupt stop under an oak tree, then reenacted the day in 2005 when, underneath its branches, he asked Vanessa to marry him. Their love for each other and the land is intertwined. Which made the phone call from Tangney in autumn 2020 one that will forever weigh heavy in their hearts.

Henry and Vanessa Cornell were at their Manhattan home on 27 September 2020 when the Glass Fire erupted. Tangney was the first to the property that afternoon and called them immediately.

When the Cornells came out to survey the damage, it was gut-wrenching. Three of the six homes on the ranch, including their residence, along with half of the vineyard had burned.

Miraculously, the oak tree under which Henry had proposed was still standing. ‘I had an abnormally large emotional reaction to that,’ recalls Vanessa. ‘It survived; it was symbolic.’

‘Whether it’s fire, hail, locusts or rain, this property is part of our family history now. So we don’t give up easily,’ says Henry. ‘The neighbourhood has been particularly damaged, but the core of the vineyard actually acted as a fire break. We were hit but did not succumb.’

Within a few weeks, work was being done around the clock to rehabilitate the land. Felled trees were being helmed into lumber and used to rebuild the lost structures. New vines are now in the ground, and life goes on.

Cornell Vineyards: looking forward

From the Cornell property, the Pacific Ocean is about 50km as the crow flies, and its western exposure provides a direct maritime influence. By early evening, temperatures fall up to 6°C, the wind picks up and the vines shut down, leading to a longer growing season.

Vines rooted in sandy, loam and volcanic soils from 426m to 579m in elevation require a lot of micro-farming, says Tangney. The estate is at the fog line, typically bathed in many hours of sunlight but not at the expense of heat, ‘which allows us to harvest at lower Brix [potential alcohol] levels to achieve more restraint’, explains Peschon. Farming has been certified organic since 2014, and grapes are harvested at optimal ripeness by hand.

The vineyard crews are slowly returning, which ‘has brought life and vibrancy back since the fires’, says Tangney. Bees are aiding in pollination, and chicken and sheep will soon roam the property again, naturally fertilising in their wake.

‘It’s about creating a space that works with nature, rather than trying to eliminate all these variables and just farm grapes,’ says Tangney. ‘We’re inviting everything in so that everything can flourish.’

The fire may have altered life at Cornell Vineyards temporarily, but it hasn’t slowed any ambitions. With all the necessary permits in place, the Cornells are wasting no time breaking ground on 929sqm of cellars and a 464sqm winery.

They want it all completed by the spring of 2022. Like the indomitable spirit of Fitzcarraldo, If anyone can, they can.

Cornell Vineyards: a complete vertical, from 2013 to 2018

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A pastoral outdoor lunch at the Château Pontet-Canet belied determination as Alfred Tesseron urged guests to taste all white wines before seating for the reds.

Twelve certified organic and biodynamic wines from beyond the estate, including Nicolas Joly Clos de la Coulée de Serrant 2018 and Block 3 Pinot Noir Felton Road Central Otago 2013, proved a clever way to stress the family’s green passion as universal, extending further than Bordeaux.

Scroll down to see scores and tasting notes for Château Pontet-Canet wines

Earlier that late summer morning, the Pauillac fifth growth had invited French television to the estate’s herbal tearoom, where staff prepare organic treatments.

As the Bordeaux 2021 vintage faced mildew, technical director Mathieu Bessonnet described how the tree bark Bourdaine fights fungal diseases and reduces treatments of Bouillie Bordelaise, the so-called ‘Bordeaux mixture’ of copper sulphate and quicklime sprayed as a fungicide.

Bouillie Bordelaise is authorised organic, but the estate stresses its biodynamic infusions, beyond basic certification requirements, for naturally boosting vine defences.

These include including yarrow, dandelion, wicker, rosemary and chamomile, which, for example, improves flowering and can fight the dangerous powdery mildew oidium.

Pontet-Canet director Justine Tesseron showed how estate well water ‘dynamises’ such ingredients in tanks before workers spray infusions in the vineyard.

She and brother Noé Tesseron posed with cow horns, which will be packed later this autumn with cow manure – the biodynamic (BD) 500 preparation – and buried underground for about six months before being ‘dynamised’ with water and sprayed to naturally help root development in the spring of 2022.

And, unlike tractors, 12 estate horses currently on-site do not aggressively compact the soil, helping to avoid vine root development becoming constrained, Noé Tesseron said.

After winter pruning, horses pull tools with biodynamic treatments to treat the cut wood. No time is set to replace all tractors with horses, but that is the goal.

Biodynamic debate: A snapshot

Some describe biodynamic winemaking as involving a lot of mysticism and marketing. Founder Rudolf Steiner, Austrian scientist and philosopher, described life forces that link the universe to living things, as related to cosmic and lunar rhythms.

But Paz Levinson, Groupe Pic head sommelier present at the Pontet-Canet event, explained the practical side. ‘Organic and biodynamic means producers care more for the vineyard, which wasn’t the case before,’ she said. ‘Fruit is better when the plant is more comfortable.’

Levinson took part in a recent blind tasting of wines and found ‘greater fruit purity and palate tension’ from those certified organic and biodynamic.

Some green-minded estates craft excellent wines without seeking certification commitments, which they consider too constraining in challenging vintages. ‘The mildew this year (2021) will cut about 30% of our potential harvest,’ said Nicolas de Bailliencourt, of Château Gazin in Pomerol, which has no certification. ‘I cannot imagine not having that flexibility.’

Pontet Canet lost two-thirds of its potential 2018 crop because of especially virulent mildew attacks, but Noé Tesseron counts that as a costly lesson learned.

‘We did not react quickly enough,’ he said. ‘This year is different because the organic and biodynamic methods work, as long as we are on constant guard.’

How this tasting worked

The Tesseron family organised a vertical of all bottled wines since the dual certification (see tasting notes below) to showcase changes over time.

Its 2012 vintage marked an essential change as the first that saw 35% of the wine aged in concrete amphorae, whose walls also included estate soils like gravel and limestone. A brochure says the strategy was ‘extending terroir into cellars’.

Bordeaux oenologist and barrel expert Nicolas Vivas says that the reduction of new oak (accounting now for 50%) plus the use of amphorae for ageing have ‘improved fruit purity, noticeably’ at Pontet-Canet.

The evening before, the Tesserons poured older vintages – including a 1945 in magnum and an amazing 1961, from a 75cl bottle – to reflect inherent excellence of the 81-hectare estate, planted to more than 60% Cabernet Sauvignon. A key ingredient in this success is its well-drained outcrop of Günz gravel over limestone.

The cosy dinner ambiance reinforced family ownership, rare today among Médoc châteaux.

Since its founding in the 18th century, only three families have owned the estate: the original Pontet owners, who witnessed the birth of the 1855 Classification, followed by the Cruses from 1865 and the Tesserons from 1975. And unlike many other classified estates, Château Pontet-Canet has not changed very much, stresses technical director Bessonnet, who found an 1818 map of the vineyard that is similar to today.

Almost immediately after taking over from his father in 1994, Alfred Tesseron embarked on a green voyage, with substantial assistance over 30 years with technical director Jean-Michel Comme.

Pontet-Canet’s going ‘green’ timeline

2004 – Following test on 14 hectares, decision made to convert entire vineyard to biodynamic

2007 – Biodynamic conversion set back when chemical spraying used to protect crop from rot

2008 – Draft horses first used to avoid soil compaction

2010 – Pontet Canet wines certified organic by Ecocert and biodynamic by Biodyvin

2012 – Concrete amphorae made from estate soils introduced for ageing wine

2014 – Pontet Canet wines certified biodynamic by Demeter

2015 – First year that no second wine is produced

2018 – Despite devastating mildew attack, the estate stays green

2020 – Mathieu Bessonnet replaces technical director Jean-Michel Comme, whose 30 years at the estate contributed enormously to the biodynamic vision

How the wines showed themselves

The vertical on-show here proved that vintages since the dual certification can display more focus, fruit purity and tension.

Pontet-Canet 2010, for example, has more depth, clarity and nuance than the excellent but more traditionally styled 2000. The 2016, meanwhile, surpasses the 2010.

And extra vineyard (and winemaking) care contributed to a fine performance for the very difficult 2013 vintage.

Vintage quality still matters, whether certified or not. The 2017, for example, engaged most tasters less than the superlative 2010, the fantastic 2016 or the flamboyant 2018.

Jeff Zacharia, president of US-based Zachys Fine Wine, acknowledges organic and biodynamic as important factors for Pontet-Canet having become ‘more interesting since 2010’, but he added that ‘buyers need to keep a closer eye on vintage variation in terms of both quantity and quality’.

The magical 1961 vintage tasted over dinner at the château reflects the superb Cabernet-driven terroir. ‘Chemical treatments did not really come into the picture in Bordeaux until the mid-1960s,’ remarked Bessonnet. Although the estate used more Bouillie Bordelaise back then, farm animals were used in the immediate post-war years, he added.

In some ways, the movement towards organic and biodynamic winemaking is a return to a simpler era of less intervention, but more enlightened, with greater knowledge of viticulture and vinification. Many of the latter vintages illustrate this.

Château Pontet-Canet at a glance

Appellation: Pauillac

1855 Classification: 5th Growth

Vineyard surface: 81 hectares

Owners: The Tesseron Family (since 1975)

General Manager: Justine Tesseron

Technical Director: Mathieu Bessonnet

Certified: Organic (Ecocert, 2010) and Biodynamic (Biodyvin, 2010 & Demeter, 2014)

Average vine age: 50 years

Planting density: 9,600 vines per hectare

Vinification: Manual sorting and de-stemming, indigenous yeasts for fermentation, soft extractions, and malolactic fermentation in vats

Ageing: 16-18 months: 50% new oak, 35% concrete amphorae, 15% in one year old oak barrels

A note on biodynamic vs organic

Organic and biodynamic have overlapping qualities but are not interchangeable. Organic wine is made from certified organic grapes. The use of pesticides or synthetic fertilisers is not allowed in organic winemaking. European standards allow for added sulphites during winemaking, but with limits.

Biodynamic certification requires biodiversity and ecosystem preservation, soil husbandry, livestock integration, prohibition of genetically engineered organisms and viewing the vineyard as a living ‘holistic organism’.

Demeter certification, for example, requires specific preventive plant protection measures, a good knowledge of microclimate and reducing interference during vinification. Biodynamic wines employ organic practices, as they avoid pesticides and depend on compost, rather than chemical fertiliser. The majority of these wines are thus also organic in practice.

See scores and tasting notes for Château Pontet-Canet wines

Wines are shown by vintage, in ascending order.

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Bordeaux sees sharp growth in organic vineyards

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Bordeaux wineries have continued to embrace organic farming in their vineyards in ever greater numbers, according to data released this week by the regional wine council, the CIVB.

It said there was a 43% jump in the amount of Bordeaux vineyard land either certified organic or in conversion in 2020, to 19,952 hectares – citing figures from national body Agence Bio.

The CIVB also published data on a range of other sustainability initiatives and schemes being adopted by wineries. It said 75% of Bordeaux’s vineyard area had a ‘certified environmental approach’ in 2020, up from 55% in 2016.

It added that €400,000 of research funding was being spent annually to help cut pesticide use. France’s wine industry has previously faced criticism over pesticides, and the government is committed to reducing use across agriculture as part of its Ecophyto plan.

Organic and also biodynamic methods have been of growing interest to a number of Bordeaux estates in recent years, although not all producers believe in certification and there is debate about certain practices, while other producers have been pursuing some of the core principles for a long time.

Thomas Duroux, CEO of biodynamically-farmed Château Palmer in Margaux, said it was fantastic news that more producers were going organic and biodynamic in the region.

‘The path to organic or biodynamic farming is not an easy one, especially in Bordeaux with our Atlantic climate, but this is the way,’ he told Decanter via email.

He said that each estate had different challenges and, for this reason, ‘it may take time’. But, he added, ‘I am totally convinced that together we will be stronger and that together it will be easier to face difficulties.’

Commenting within the CIVB report, Luc Planty, estate manager at Château Guiraud in Sauternes, said, ‘It’s difficult to say categorically that organic wine has a better taste, but it is better at expressing the terroir of a vineyard.’ He added, ‘It is of course less harmful to the body and the planet.’

Figures from the CIVB came as a new global report estimated that 6.2% of the world’s vineyards were now certified organic.

There were around 454,000 hectares of certified organic vineyard globally in 2019, according to new report by the International Organisation for Vine and Wine (OIV).

It said this figure had been growing by 13% per year on average since 2005.

‘The rate of conversion of vineyards to organic production has increased considerably since the beginning of the 21st century,’ said the OIV.

Spain, France and Italy, already the largest wine-producing nations, accounted for around three-quarters of the world’s certified organic vineyards, it said.

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Christophe Baron has been busy. The Champenois transplant to the Pacific Northwest has built a worldwide reputation for his winery Cayuse, in Oregon’s Walla Walla Valley, where he began planting in 1997 and launched his first vintage in 2000.

The Walla Walla Valley AVA is one that crosses state lines. While more often associated with Washington, Baron’s vineyards are all located on the Oregon side. They include Armada, Sur Echalas, The Tribe and Hors Catégorie.

Scroll down for tasting notes and scores of Christophe Baron wines in Oregon and Champagne

Cayuse takes its name from a Native American tribe, and its flagship site is the 4-hectare Cailloux Vineyard. The etymology of both names is the French word for ‘stones’. It was these that drew Baron to the region.

From the beginning, he has employed organic methods in the vineyard, although they are not certified. In 2002, Baron hired Philippe Armenier from noted Châteauneuf-du-Pape producer Domaine de Marcoux to engineer the switch to biodynamic methods.

Like Baron, Armenier felt a kinship with the terroir of the Walla Walla Valley, littered with the same type of galets roulés (pudding stones) also found in Châteauneuf-du-Pape.

Horsepower and Hors Catégorie

Starting in 2008, Armenier trained the vines on stakes – a technique called ‘sur echalas’ in French. The inspiration came from Northern Rhône producers that Baron adores, such as Pierre Gonon, Jean-Paul Jamet, Noël Verset and Marius Gentaz-Dervieux.

These vines were planted one metre by one metre and would become Horsepower Vineyards, which eventually included four sites: Sur Echalas, The Tribe, High Contrast, and Fiddleneck. As the name suggests, only horses work the total planted area – now 7.25ha.

The Horsepower Vineyards are generally well-shaded and deliver fruit that is not as forward as that from the Cailloux Vineyard. They can get physiological ripeness at lower sugar levels, and the wines often ferment out to a maximum of 13.5%abv. Fermentation is with little or no destemming of the fruit, and the wines age mostly in older 600-litre casks.

Baron’s most recent project is Hors Catégorie. Planted on two sites totalling barely 1ha, where the North Fork meets the Walla Walla River, these steep vineyards recall the Northern Rhône. The slope is so intense that some sections of the vineyards have to be cultivated by a winch.

As at Horsepower, the wines see whole-cluster fermentation and age in 600-litre demi-muids, the youngest of which will be a third-fill barrel.

Back to Champagne

If these three projects – all under the umbrella of Bionic Wines – were not enough (four, if you count No Girls, where Baron’s assistant winemaker Elizabeth Bourcier produces wines from the nearby La Paciencia Vineyard), Baron has now returned to his roots to produce Champagne Christophe Baron. Project number five.

Baron is the grandson of the founder of Champagne Baron Albert in Charly-sur-Marne, which his cousins still operate. His father took his share of the vineyards out of the family holdings and, since 2014, Baron has produced three stylish single-vineyard Champagnes.

His holdings total 3ha, all of Pinot Meunier, spread over the western villages of Crouttes-sur-Marne and Charly-sur-Marne (including the hamlet of Porteron). The youngest vines were planted in 1969, and the oldest in 1925.

Yields are low – in some years only 6,000 kg/ha, often just half the allowable quantity. Each of the three wines is fermented in used 600-litre casks, and bottled unfined and unfiltered in magnum.

Ageing is for a minimum of three years on the lees to make them all vintage Champagnes. The wines are all finished without dosage to emphasise the purity of the fruit.

The success of Christophe Baron across a range of styles and idioms is genuinely astonishing. One can only wonder, at this pace of innovation, what the future will bring.

Champagne to Cayuse and more: Christophe Baron wines

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This year the renowned Burgundy producer and négociant, Maison Joseph Drouhin, celebrates the 100-year anniversary of their ownership of Beaune Clos des Mouches 1er Cru, a vineyard named after the honeybees who would forage here.

Their first parcel was purchased in 1921 by Maurice Drouhin, son of founder Joseph, after he took over the family company in 1918. Maurice’s objective was twofold: to improve the quality of Maison Drouhin wines; and to secure his grape supply by buying vines.

Since transportation was still by horse in those days, he decided to buy a high-quality parcel that he knew and liked, and which was not far from their winemaking facilities in the centre of Beaune.

Scroll down to see scores and tasting notes for 11 Clos des Mouches wines

Though it would still be 22 years before Clos des Mouches was officially recognised as a premier cru by the French appellation system, the vineyard had been acknowledged by both well-known botanist Jules Lavalle and wine critic Camille Rodier, as a top cru (‘1ère Cuvée’ & ‘Tête de Cuvée’) in both 1855 and 1920, respectively.

Clos des Mouches therefore represented exactly what he was looking for.

This article contains:

• History of Clos des Mouches and current practises
• Maison Joseph Drouhin at a glance
• Clos des Mouches – an overview of the vintages tasted: 1990-2019

Maurice bought many more parcels of the premier cru over the following 10 years to create the 14 hectares that Drouhin owns today, representing just over half of the climat.

However, the parcels were not in good shape. Following the ravages of phylloxera and World War I, the vineyard needed replanting.

At the time it was common to plant Pinot Noir intermixed with Chardonnay, Pinot Blanc and Pinot Gris (known locally as ‘Pinot Beurot’). These white varieties were picked at the same time and co-fermented with the Pinot Noir. They were viewed as beneficial, adding roundness and refinement, particularly helpful in the years Pinot Noir struggled to ripen.

But Maurice instead decided to plant his Chardonnay separately, in another parcel.

In 1928, serendipity struck. The Chardonnay was not ripe enough when the Pinot Noir was ready for picking, so he had to harvest it later and vinify it separately. He was so delighted with the result that he contacted Eugène Cornuché, a friend who was the director of Maxim’s in Paris, a restaurant who had counted King Edward VII, Maurice Chevalier and Jean Cocteau amongst its customers.

Enchanted by the wine, M. Cornuché asked for all 300 bottles. While it wasn’t much in volume, it was enormous in terms of symbolism. And thus the reputation of Clos des Mouches Blanc was born.

Maison Joseph Drouhin at a glance:

Year founded: 1880

Head winemaker: Véronique Drouhin

Technical director : Jérome Faure-Brac (since 2006)

Hectares owned : 80 (90% premier & grand cru)

• Chablis : 38ha
• Côte d’Or : 38.5ha (Clos des Mouches 1er Cru – 14ha)
• Côte Chalonnaise : 3.5ha

Number of wines: 100 (circa 60 from owned vineyards)

Today, the four children of the fourth generation of the Drouhin family all work together, a rare occurrence in Burgundy nowadays.

Philippe, the eldest, looks after all the Domaine vineyards in both Burgundy and Oregon. He and his father Robert worked together to convert Clos des Mouches and their other vineyards to organic viticulture in the late 1980s. This led to ongoing biodynamic practices which gave life back into the soil following years of chemical fertilisers and treatments, common in the region in the previous decades.

Chardonnay is still planted in separate parcels from the Pinot Noir, with a 50/50 split between the two varieties. Though Philippe has more or less kept the same plantation layout as Maurice, he thinks that further development could be done to see if certain parcels are better suited to Pinot Noir and others to Chardonnay due to the diversity of soil types, drainage, depth and slope.

Robert’s daughter Véronique works as head winemaker for the company, alongside their technical director Jérôme Faure-Brac.

She explains Clos des Mouches is treated like a grand cru, where each harvest requires multiple passes and can take up to 8-10 days to pick. Because each parcel is vinified separately, she is able to see that there are clear differences between them, showing the complexity of the terroir.

When asked what makes Clos des Mouches special, she pauses for a moment and says; ‘It is a white Burgundy like no other and yet like all of them in one. It has the minerality and richness of Corton-Charlemagne and the freshness and elegance of Puligny-Montrachet. If you taste it blind, you cannot really pinpoint where it is from. It is unique.’

So does the red wine have the same attributes? She continues; ‘The rouge is an excellent Beaune 1er Cru too. It has more elegance than other top crus from Beaune, even though it is situated next to Pommard, a wine known for its structure. Clos des Mouches rouge has a delicateness similar to Chambolle-Musigny. But there is still something additionally special about the Blanc.’

To commemorate the centenary on a personal level, the Drouhins have planted a linden tree, known for its fragrance and highly appreciated by the family, at the top of the vineyard. The tree was named ‘Maurice’.

‘In the coming years, we are looking forward to watching it grow and take root, just like my grandfather did with his vineyard,’ Véronique avows. Here’s to the next 100 years!

Clos des Mouches – an overview of the vintages tasted:

2019 – The second vintage in a row with a long, hot and dry summer. But despite the somewhat extreme conditions, many of the resulting wines are strikingly fresh with lots of fruit and good acidity. Quantities at Drouhin were, however, down by 20%.

2017 – A vintage with healthy fruit and yields following on from the devastatingly low production caused by the frost that struck the 2016 vintage. Many wines have good energy and a fruity touch, creating an easy-drinking, moreish yet fresh style.

2011 – One of the earliest harvests on record which started in August for many. Fruit was generally healthy though under-ripe berries had to be picked out. Wines are generally more fruit-driven with moderate alcohol levels but also with good density.

2008 – A challenging vintage that suffered from hail, threats of mildew, some issues with ripeness and nail bitingly slow malolactic fermentations. Rigorous sorting was required. The resulting wines have an appealing classic structure and a moderately strict style that respects the individual terroirs. Whites were generally more successful.

2006 – A more challenging growing season with both hot and cold summer temperatures. Though a wonderful September helped finally set the right pace, a thunder storm mid-month caused the Chardonnay to ripen quickly. Despite reds having the advantage in many domaines, Véronique feels the opposite is the case for Drouhin and says they produced some excellent whites, including Clos des Mouches, that have always shown well.

2000 – A vintage that produced notably high yields and delivered rain at the end of the growing season in parts of the Côte de Beaune. Resulting reds are fruity, appealing and have aged well despite being only moderately dense. Whites are thought to have the slight upper hand, offering more poise and freshness.

1999 – A five-star vintage in red which is considered one of the best in the last 50 years. Despite the huge quantities of grapes that were produced, many of the wines have shown impressive density, power and complexity. Many have not yet peaked. Not as revered in white, which can be rich, ripe and evolved.

1990 – A vintage that was extremely well-viewed in its youth, particularly for red, as conditions were not unduly different from the legendary 1959 growing season: hot, dry and intense. Reds showed impressive fruit and concentration, but over the years many have evolved quicker than expected.

11 Clos des Mouches wines tasted:

The wines are ordered by colour and by vintage in descending order

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Back roads of Burgundy, part 1: the Côte de Beaune

The story of Esk Valley and The Terraces label begins in 1933 when Robert Bird established Glenvale Winery & Cellars at Bay View in the north of Hawke’s Bay.

Producing mainly Port and Sherry wines, Bird built a successful business sourcing grapes from growers around the region as well as from his own site. This included a steep, north-facing, terraced vineyard that he planted in the 1940s.

Scroll down for tasting notes and scores from an exclusive vertical of 12 vintages of Esk Valley’s The Terraces

However the yields and cost of production became prohibitive. So Bird decommissioned the vineyard and replanted it with pine trees.

When the third generation of the Bird family inherited the company, they started making small quantities of varietal wine using Esk Valley as a new brand name. With a market shifting into table wines, the potential for wine production grew.

In 1986 Sir George Fistonich (who founded Villa Maria in 1961) purchased the Glenvale land and assets after it fell into receivership. Sir George transformed the company away from fortified production into boutique table wine solely under the Esk Valley name and, in 1988, made the decision to resurrect the former terraced vineyard.

The pines were felled, the terraces reformed and, in 1989, the 1ha vineyard was planted to Malbec, Merlot and Cabernets Franc and Sauvignon. With its north-facing aspect and mix of limestone, volcanic ash, clay and shell deposits, it is a unique site.

(In August, New Zealand’s largest contract winemaker, Indevin, announced it would acquire Villa Maria Estates. Villa Maria’s parent company, FFML, went into receivership in May 2021.)

Heipipi: the pinnacle of Esk Valley

While long known as just The Terraces, from the 2013 vintage (including on bottle labels) this organically managed, dry-farmed and low-yielding vineyard has been referred to as Heipipi.

This is the Te Reo Mãori name for the top of the hill where the vineyards lie, and where a Pa (hilltop fortress) sat atop the terraces for more than 400 years. The Terraces is now the name of this iconic single-vineyard cuvée, with its second-label – The Hillside – also sourced from Heipipi.

‘Heipipi is a grand amphitheatre and the pinnacle of what we do,’ says head winemaker Gordon Russell. ’It never fails to impress and showcase what a grand site it is. It’s also still in good health which allows us to maximise the benefit of what are now old vines.’

Russell joined the Villa Maria team in 1988 as a cellarhand, working with then chief winemaker Kym Milne MW. When an assistant winemaker position came up at Esk Valley (one of several brands in the Villa Maria portfolio), Russell moved to Hawke’s Bay in late 1989 to take up the role, under then head winemaker Grant Edmonds.

Russell was responsible for The Terraces from 1992, its second vintage, and became head of winemaking in 1993.

Making wine at Esk Valley presented Russell with a slew of new challenges. Not least of which was using concrete fermenters with no temperature control. But he soon learned this kind of treatment contributed subtle differences and complexities in each ferment.

‘The whole progression of winemaking for The Terraces aims to capture the grandeur and uniqueness of the site in bottle. When you taste the wine you are literally tasting the place,’ says Russell.

The Terraces: from grape to glass

The Terraces collection is something special. Tasting through 12 vintages reveals a consistent quality, timeline and rare look into the influences of vine age, vintage and climate from the very first 1991 vintage to the current 2018 release.

Fruit is hand harvested on one day, then sorted, destemmed and lightly crushed into a single open-topped concrete fermenter. Hand plunging gives full extraction of colour and tannin, and maturation is in new and one-year-old French barrels. It is racked as needed, then bottled after 17 to 22 months, depending on the vintage.

While the inaugural 1991 vintage was a blend of Merlot, Cabernet Sauvignon, Cabernet Franc and Malbec, from 2002 Russell dropped the Cabernet Sauvignon. He harvests the remaining three varieties (Malbec dominant since 2002) as a field blend and co-ferments them. Recent vintages make use of wild yeast and the wine is bottled without either fining or filtration.

The Terraces: 12 vintages of Esk Valley’s top Hawke’s Bay red

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Château Rayas, Gourt de Mautens, Cros de la Mûre and Moulin de la Gardette. What do these estates all have in common?

Sure, they’re all among the very best in their respective appellations, but there’s something else, something rather more peculiar.

They all wait for it to rain before picking their grapes.

Most winemakers prefer a little more control when deciding on picking dates. They carefully measure ripeness and sugar levels, rather than leaving it to the will of the gods. And rain brings with it the risk of dilution and mould.

So why do they do it? It seems they all have slightly different reasons, but according to Jean-Baptiste Meunier of Domaine Moulin de la Gardette in Gigondas, there are several benefits.

Scroll down to see Matt Walls’ tasting notes and scores for eight Moulin de la Gardette wines

Why wait for the rains to come?

He finds that it brings drinkability to the finished wines and gives them rounder tannins. Admittedly to begin with he was concerned that it might reduce acidity due to dilution, but in his experience this has not been the case.

He does gain a little extra volume, but if anything the wines are fresher for it. And so far, his grapes are robust enough to fight off any serious rot.

For some, a major benefit of picking after it rains is cleanliness: it washes the grapes clean before picking and pressing. Meunier wondered if it might also wash away the natural yeasts present on the grape skins. Yet his ferments still start successfully without the need to add any cultured yeasts.

With organic viticulture, very light filtration and very low sulphite additions, his wines are ‘not natural’, he says, ‘but close to natural’.

Whether a wine is natural or not is, to me at least, secondary to whether or not it is delicious. And Meunier’s wines are certainly that. They are also fresh, detailed, balanced and highly drinkable.

It’s surprising that his wines aren’t better known. They are beautiful expressions of Gigondas that are among the most brilliant wines of the Southern Rhône.

Jean-Baptiste Meunier’s winemaking background

After a stint at Diamond Creek in Napa Valley, California, Meunier returned to the family estate in 1988. He helped his parents to make the wines until 1993, after which point he took over the reins.

He’s not quite sure how far back his winemaking roots go, but he’s at least the fifth generation to be making wines here at Moulin de la Gardette.

With just 10ha of vines, Meunier is keen to continue making exclusively Gigondas. ‘It’s on a human scale, and it’s enough,’ he says.

Indeed, Gigondas is all he makes; three red cuvées and a little rosé. (Rosé is permitted in Gigondas, but overall production is miniscule).

He has a few old Clairette vines dotted around, so if and when white Gigondas is permitted by the appellation authorities (which could be soon), he might make some of that too.

His 25 parcels of vines are dispersed around the appellation. Most are planted just to the south of the village in the adjacent lieux-dits of La Gardette, Les Bosquets, Saint-Jean and Jasio, sitting at around 300m altitude.

La Gardette is mostly clay limestone with small pebbles, but otherwise he describes the soils here as a mosaic, with varied patches of clay, sand and pudding stone.

Details of the wines in the range

To describe the Petite Gardette cuvée as ‘entry-level’ doesn’t really do it justice, though it is quite different from his Tradition and Ventabren bottlings. It’s made from younger vines between nine and 23 years old, and is fermented and aged for 10 months in concrete. It’s certainly the most immediate and fruity style of the three.

Where the Petite Gardette is almost entirely destemmed, the Tradition and Ventabren cuvées are whole bunch-fermented.

During the 2000s Meunier experimented with using destemming for his wines, and although it made them more accessible, he’s discovered that it has reduced their ability to age.

‘It was an error for us,’ he concedes, which he’s since corrected. Outside of this trial period his wines age reliably for 20 years, sometimes much longer.

The Tradition bottling is from older vines, around 50 to 60 years old. And although Ventabren isn’t a single vineyard wine, it’s drawn from the same, 90-year-old vines every year. These are the oldest vines in the estate, mostly from lieux-dits Jasio, L’Argnée, La Gardette and Les Terres.

The blends are a little different; both Tradition and Ventabren contain mostly Grenache and 10% Cinsault, but the former has 20% Mourvèdre in the blend, whereas the latter instead has 10% Syrah.

Tradition and Ventabren are now both aged exclusively in foudres and demi-muids. They’re largely old barrels, but when he needs to replace one, he buys it new in order to ensure his barrels are home only to yeasts and bacteria that are native to his cellar.

Patience is a virtue

For the last three vintages, he’s worked with one of his children alongside him.

‘It’s an immense pleasure to make wine with my daughter,’ he says, but for now she’s off travelling again; she’s 23 and still has itchy feet.

‘Perhaps she’ll come back,’ he hopes. But Jean-Baptiste doesn’t mind waiting. The rain has taught him that.

See Matt Walls’ tasting notes and scores for eight Moulin de la Gardette wines

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Walking 130 meters up uneven steps along the 45-degree incline of Champagne’s warmest slope – the Clos des Goisses – Champagne house director Charles Philipponnat was looking forward to a vertical of vintages reaching back to 1964.

Scroll down for Panos Kakaviatos’ Clos des Goisses tasting notes and scores

Gripping chalk from the 5.83 hectares vineyard, he was determined to prove that precision and freshness co-exist with maximum ripeness, even in an era of global warming.

After surviving a serious case of Covid-19 last year, he was happy to invite a few people to a vertical of mainly special-edition wines – vintages disgorged after at least 25 years on their lees in bottle.

Halfway up the summit, French wine critic Michel Bettane stressed how Pinot Noir grown on the slope ‘handles climate change better than Chardonnay‘.

Indeed, Clos des Goisses tends to be a blend of two-thirds Pinot Noir and one-third Chardonnay. To maintain as much freshness as possible, the wine almost never undergoes malolactic fermentation, Philipponnat stressed.

Philipponnat’s son, François, 28, joined the team in September last year to focus on exports, after having working three years in sales in Paris for several Champagne houses.

Going organic

As employees worked the soils along the slope in early June, François spoke of a recent push towards organic viticulture to increase wine purity: ‘2021 will be the first year that Clos de Goisses will be worked 100% organically,’ he said.

For all grapes used to make other Philipponnat wines, the estate aims for HVE (High Environmental Value) by 2025, François added.

Sharing the organic vision, with prior experience at Mareuil-Sur-Ay, is recent hire Aurélia Jamain as vineyard manager (chef de culture), who replaced Claude Laurent after he retired in 2019.

The drive towards organic certification, expected ‘within three to four years’, says François, will not change winemaking methods, which recently include a series of rare ‘LV’ bottles (long vieillissement) of Clos des Goisses disgorged 25 years after ageing on lees in bottle.

Charles’ enthusiasm to share such rare wines was palpable, adding a ‘mystery magnum’ after the vertical, made mainly with 1976 harvested grapes.

See Panos Kakaviatos’ full tasting notes and scores

See also:

First taste: Krug new releases

Champagne De Venoge: producer profile

How Champagne 2020 wines are shaping up