A drink with... Florence de la Rivière

For her book, The Look of Wine: Reading Wine Colour (Abrams, £25), colour designer Florence de la Rivière talked to 50 well-known names in the world of wine in her quest to understand the winemaker’s relationship with colour, and to create an inventory of chromatic language. She recently spoke to Decanter for the magazine's 'A drink with' series.

Florence de la Rivière: 'People struggle to describe colour in wine'

‘I have worked as a colour designer for more than 20 years, mainly on interior design projects in the public and private sectors.

‘The Institute of Vine and Wine Sciences in Bordeaux asked me to create a course for professionals about colour in wine. Visual observation is the first point of contact with wine, and yet vocabulary around colour has been lost. It used to be much richer, but today people struggle to describe colour in wine, so I’m trying to establish a new vocabulary.

‘I drew on Emile Peynaud's book Le Goût du Vin during my research. He was the last oenologist to define colour in wines very clearly, using a good vocabulary. I have added what I’ve taken from my observations in the vineyards and cellars, and using my professional knowledge.

Engaging a new generation

‘I want to help establish a link between the producer and the drinker. It feels as though we’ve lost the connection between the person who produces the wine and the consumer. Wine has become a very academic subject, but what matters to me is who made it and their intention.

‘From being a sensation, colour has become an index, measured by instruments. Science has taken over from the eye, and visual analysis entrusted to numbers has become lexically impoverished. I wanted to restore order and clarity, to propose a chromatic vocabulary – reference points for a common language. By helping to demystify the subject, hopefully it will encourage the younger generation to give wine a chance.

‘Colour is characterised by its intensity and its hue. In my book, I identified five major families of hues for red wines: ink, purple, ruby, garnet and tiled. I wanted to keep it simple. For white wines, we are in the realm of golds and ambers.

A wine’s colour provides clues

‘The only two wine styles named after their colour, vin jaune and orange wine, are white wines! Orange wine can be orange, but its colour spectrum is much broader. White wines are not white, but a variation of gold. The colour yellow has long had pejorative connotations – a yellow card in football, or yellow as a cowardly colour, for instance.

‘A wine’s colour provides clues about its origin, grape variety, winemaking and age. Wine is alive and its colour testifies to this, evolving over the lifetime of the wine. Red wine fades, white wine intensifies, and eventually the colour fades in all wines, losing its brightness, and turning terracotta. Back to the earth like humans!

‘Colour can mislead, of course. There is an assumption that paler red wines will be less powerful, but any connoisseur knows that is not always the case. It’s more an indication of the grape variety, and terroir. Similarly, the association between paleness and quality in rosé among some drinkers is misguided – they are using it as the sole quality control, judging on colour and intensity alone. Pale doesn’t equal better.

Colour can influence taste

‘Sight is predatory, and colour can famously influence our taste. We must master our vision. Jean-Claude Berrouet, winemaker at Petrus in Pomerol, says: “Knowledge makes perception intelligent.”

'To know something again is to recall information stored in our minds. And to be able to summon up this memory, we need words. Language shapes our thoughts and memories, but it may also limit them.

'Without words, a sensation goes unnoticed or is associated with another nearby sensation. Great sommeliers are great sommeliers as much because of their exceptional memories as their sensory abilities.

‘That's why I went to meet winemakers – I wanted to capture the vocabulary they would use. In general people were surprised to be asked about the colour of their wine, but ended up having a lot to say.

'Colour often guides the winemaker in decisions, consciously or unconsciously. When they have a finished product, there is a signatory colour, associated with the land that it comes from, the winemaking and the grape variety.

From Jura to Château d’Yquem

‘I remember, at Tissot in Jura, looking at its vin jaune, a classic example of the long-lived dry wine, made from a single grape variety (Savagnin), vinified under a veil of flor, and matured for six years and three months.

'The word “buttercup” came immediately to mind, but I didn't dare suggest the term at first to the winemaker Stéphane Tissot, as I didn't think it sounded serious enough. When I finally suggested it, he said it was exactly the colour of his wine. And it becomes a useful reference, because everyone knows what a buttercup flower looks like.

‘Similarly, I was trying to define the sweet Sauternes wines of Château Yquem, and the descriptors eluded me. I visited the Amber Treasures exhibition in Paris, and had a revelation. The shades of yellow, orange, red and mahogany amber highlighted by the antique dealer Kugel literally put these colours of sweet wines into words.

'I met with artisans in different fields beyond wine for my research, also – jewellers, goldsmiths, painters, gold leaf manufacturers, amber collectors and fabric publishers. It gave us the opportunity to exchange our views on colour, weaving a canvas of universal words and enriching visual appreciation.’

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