How I came to Live in a Barn: Part 5

Welcome to Friday and another edition of "How I Came to Live in a Barn," the series that strives to connect drinking to farming as relevantly as humanly possible.

If you're just tuning in, as a quick preface to this series, from April to December of 2010 I lived in a barn. No electricity, no running water––no way! Yes way. Anyway, during that time I worked on a legitimately (though proudly uncertified) organic farm in Southern Kentucky. This series is about the many whims, fascinations and revelations that eventually inspired me to drop everything and go farming. Once we catch up to the present, I'll use the occasion to explain what I'm up to now, you know, beyond pushing the limits of the blaugosphere. Is this preface going to appear at the beginning of the entire series? Damn skippy. Ready? Wunderbar.

How I came to Live in a Barn: The Éric Texier and Hervé Souhaut Edition

 Eric Texier tasting

January of 2009

When we finally found Éric's place, and introduced ourselves, he promptly led my friend Josh and I into his cellar and began telling us about his life. Éric is a reserved man, but excitable, and he never seems to lack for interesting musings. Being a nuclear scientist turned winemaker, this is not shocking. Around 30 years old he returned to his homeland of Bordeaux and went to school for winemaking then eventually found himself in a small town outside of Lyon called Charnay where Josh and I were about to taste his wines. 

The wines he poured for us were perfect, all of them. This came as no surprise to either of us, as we've always enjoyed his wines, but what did come as a surprise was what he told us next: he was "moving away from biodynamics...."

Wait, what? This was the first (albeit modest) hint of negativity about biodynamics from a biodynamic producer I'd ever heard. He said that he didn't need them anymore, that his goal from the beginning was to become sustainable and he couldn't by simply practicing biodynamics. Biodynamics is about healing the earth, so what does one do once it's healed? All the gas he wasted driving back and forth to the vineyards, plus the numerous times he had to spray copper sulfate had turned him off. His vines, he told us, would die without him. Three years prior, he'd begun farming one vineyard under the tutelage of Fukuoka's writings (see last week's post), using clover cover crops and moving towards a no-till system of viticulture. These Fukuoka vines, he assured us, "don't care about Éric Texier," and he laughed.

He eventually led us into an entirely separate part of his facilities where a lone barrel of wine awaited. He kept it apart from his biodynamic barrels, uninfluenced. Using his wine thief, he thieved us all a small taste and we stepped out into the light. Vibrant. Textural. Wild––this was his first vintage of Fukuoka, and we, he told us, were the first people to taste it besides himself.

Hervé Souhaut Sainte Epine Vineyards

+++++

Later that week Josh and I, along with our friend Anca, were shaking hands with Hervé Souhaut in Ardèche––a couple hours south of Éric. He invited us to climb the steep Sainte Epine vineyards behind his house where his St Joseph grapes were grown, and he lamented the fallen parts of the stone trellis––victims of a rainy '08 vintage. He pointed to other famous vineyards on the massive, rolling hillsides as we carefully stepped through his 100-year-old syrah vines. Then he and his lovely wife, Beatrice took us about 30 minutes into an ancient, winding, aqueduct-laden paradise where his 1400's era cellar/castle houses his barrels. Then we tasted through a number of wines at different levels of bubbly fermentationess and slowly and reluctantly crept back towards his house.

After the general tour, we sat at his kitchen table and chatted––a sentence that does nothing to express how much of an honor it was being invited to do so. We talked wine philosophies, and the industrial revolution and the bourgeois of old Lyon and tasted numerous ingenious concoctions. His wife brought us some local cheese and sausage, and I attempted my best not to overindulge, by conveniently changing my standards of what it meant to indulge in the first place. As we were leaving that night, I realized that we'd just spent 8 hours hanging out with one of my favorite producers, in his home, drinking his wines and eating the cheese and sausage of his region. I'd flown halfway across the world, nearly killed Josh and I driving in Beaujolais, and spent absurd amounts of money, all for the opportunity to hang out with a few artisan farmers. All in the name of wine. wow.

 Vineyards of the Ardèche

+++++

Although on the surface, it might not seem obvious how tasting the first vintage of Fukuoka wines with Éric Texier or sitting down at Hervé Souhaut's house and kickin-it for eight straight hours might inspire someone to want to move to a barn, but it absolutely did. Almost more than any other factor. As I was driving back to Lyon that night, Josh said something about becoming a winemaker, and it lingered cruelly in my thoughts. I realized I loved wine, and talking wine, and tasting wine, but that's as close to it as I'd ever get. I'd never have to make a decision to switch from biodynamics to Fukuoka, or to bemoan the hardships of a vintage even. Wine is far more than just tastes, collections and experiences, but being a wine clerk, I was only allowing myself those few sensory qualities. I would always just be a tourist of these artisan farmers like Philippe Faury, or Mathieu Lapierre, or Jean-Paul Brun, who we'd also visited on this trip and who were also off enriching their communities, culture, selves and land while making extraordinary tipple. There are plenty of tourists, I decided, but not enough communities, and especially not in the United States. I wanted to be on their side of the dinner table, inspiring people like myself, who'd came halfway across the world to meet me in my homeland, where I was busy trying to make my own champagne––OUR own champagne––while getting to know the substance that'd inspired me to do so: good ol' nature.

 Josh and Philippe Faury in the Northern Rhone

Next week's post will be about the subsequent year and the decisions that had to be made––an intermezzo before the finale––and then we'll conclude the series. Ready for that bomb? mega. Until next week––cheers!

 Jean-Paul Brun

Dipping corks at Marcel Lapierre




 (Note: My spell check hates France and the word Blaugosphere. HATES.)