How I Came to Live in a Barn: part 3

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.

As a quick preface to this series, from April to December of 2010 I lived in a barn. No electricity, running water, MTA strikes or lollygagging. 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 kick the kicks, buy some boots 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 the blaug. Is this preface going to appear at the beginning of the entire serious? Almost definitely. Ready? Wunderbar.

How I Came to Live in a Barn: The Bertrand Gautherot Edition

Champagne. September of 2008.

After letting me babble at him in French for a few minutes, Bertrand kindly suggested we speak in English. I liked Bertrand Gautherot Immediately. He was genial, friendly, excited and honest. He grabbed a garden fork and we hopped in his van with his dog Chops (pronounced "shops" in French) and headed down the road to see his cows.

Vouette et Sorbée is located in the southern part of Champagne in Buxières sur Arce, not far from the city of Troyes (pronounced "Twa"). Bertrand, the farmer and winemaker, farms 5 hectares of vines, both pinot noir and chardonnay. An hectare is approximately 2.47105381 acre (thereabouts) and the only compost he uses for everything (including his personal garden) comes from these cows. He's emphatic about how important they are to the farm and how they are the best indication for how things are going. Needless to say, as a very involved winemaker, he checks in with them daily.

We stood and talked about biodynamics while the cattle regarded me impassively, then he brought me to his vines. Vouette et Sorbée has been Demeter certified biodynamic since 1998. His neighbors do not farm organically, however. If I remember correctly, they sell most of their grapes to the bigger houses in Reims and Épernay including Veuve and Moet, both well-over an hour's drive. Making that type of farming a lucrative option, one must boost the yields of their vines exponentially through the use of chemical fertilizers and the like, forming a veritable "wall of grape clusters" as Bertrand puts it. It was a bit freakish-looking, even to a neophyte like myself.

I was there in September, so I got to taste a grape from each kind of vineyard; I got to witness the vitality of his vines in comparison to their's while they were still alive; I got touch the leaves and examine the clusters. It was all wonderfully educational to someone simply trying to understand what the hell biodynamics did, and what made them so different. The answer was far more tangible than anticipated. Bertrand ran to his van and brought back the garden fork. He scooped a chunk of soil from his neighbor's vineyards, and set it gently on the ground. Then he took a chunk of his own (below, left) and sat it right next to his neighbor's (below, right).

Unsurprisingly the differences were remarkable. Barely could you call these two things kin. On the one hand you had somewhat oily and flaccid mud, and on the other you had a fluffy, mossy pillow of soil with an earthworm for punctuation. Bertrand's soil smelled sweet and tasted even sweeter, while his neighbor's smelled like nothing at all so I decided not to taste it. In that moment, organic farming completely made sense to me.

We finished off the tour and went to his house where he opened a bottle of "Fidèle" (his 100% pinot noir), and chatted at his table. He said something that I've never forgotten as I was leaving that afternoon. When I wished him luck on his new importation into the US, he said graciously, "Thank you, but I hope that one day I wont have to import my wines to the US. You can make wine there, maybe one day you'll make your own champagne..." then I left. I'm not even sure if I responded.

Later that evening as I was sitting in a garden in Burgundy, drinking my glass of aligoté, I couldn't shake what he'd said. It was both mind-bendingly ludicrous and completely logical. If one is to view wine as a what it is––a necessary, but simple fermented beverage––then we don't need it to come from anywhere in particular: there's plenty of fruit in the United States from which to make "wine." All that's required is fresh fruit and time, which I'm pretty sure we still have here. It wont be champagne, but who's to say it couldn't be comparable. Or even better––better?

I pondered it for a while, feeling the occasional twinge of patriotism, then returned to my book. I was half-way through "The Omnivore's Dilemma" and completely unaware of how it, and a number of other books, would come to shape my future. Bertrand had planted quite a seed, it was about to receive some cultivation.

Alors, á la semaine prochaine, as they say in French––till next week.

How I Came to Live in a Barn: part 2

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.

As a quick preface to this series, from April to December of 2010 I lived in a barn. No electricity, running water, twitter or bagels. 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––beyond the blaug. Is this preface going to appear at the beginning of the entire series? Almost definitely. Ready? Wunderbar.

Part 2: Natural Wines

In last week's post I gave a shout-out to September Wines, the shop I helped manage for nearly 4 years. Their selection is made up of small-production, organic, biodynamic, and sustainably produced wines and it's where I was introduced to the subject of this week's posting: natural wines. Isn't all wine natural? Well, the most concise answer is... sorta. A lot can be done to remove wine from its natural state. In the same way that root beer was originally made from the fermented roots of Sassafras; the vast majority of wine these days is made more like Barq's than actual root beer. Make root beer someday, it's a very different monster, with health and medicinal qualities I doubt A&W strives to exploit. 

So defining natural wine is simply defining wine itself. Wine, in its essence, is fermented grape juice. It's the combination of grape sugars being consumed by yeast, the byproduct of which is alcoholic fermentation. Under the right circumstances, this results in the fermented beverage we call wine. Famed fermentation enthusiast Sandor Katz once said that fermentation is simply choosing what we want to happen to something. All living things will either rot or ferment––from our perspective, become either compost or preserved nutrients––we're just choosing their destiny. Natural wines are as close to that natural process as possible, without excessive filtration, use of industrial yeasts, sulfides or chemicals. This applies to both growing and vinification. Back then however, I had no idea what natural wines were, or why they tasted better than other wines, I just appreciated that they did.

I had booked a trip to France for the upcoming fall and a friend at Domaine Select had suggested I visit their new champagne producer. He was biodynamic, "right up my alley," he said, and made the appointment.

No wines taste quite like natural wines, and I was rendered endlessly curious because of it. When the opportunity arose to visit one of these biodynamic producers, I leapt at it, hoping to get to the bottom of what made these wines tick. That autumn I met a dude who offered me a more tangible understanding of biodynamics, and a better understanding of how sensitive of an agricultural product wine is. Unexpectedly, like my first experiences with natural wine, this compounded my curiosity infinitely. Next week, we'll tell the story of Bertrand Gautherot's many effects on my world, and how he helped perpetuate my growing love-affair with natural wines; a love-affair that started innocently enough, until one day I found myself living in a barn, more sober than I'd ever been. Ironically, all thanks to wine.

Happy Friday!

How I Came to Live in a Barn: part 1

Friends! You've made it to Friday! Congratulations and welcome to the first installment of "How I Came to Live in a Barn."

As a quick preface to this series, from April to December of 2010 I lived in a barn. 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 move from the grime of New York City to the dirt of Bugtussle, Kentucky, each piece of the story utterly invaluable to the next. Once we catch up to the present, I'll use the occasion to explain what I'm up to now, by that I mean, beyond the blaug of course. Shall we begin? Wunderbar.

Part 1. September Wines

September is a petite boutique wine shop in Manhattan's Lower East Side, specializing in small-production, organic, biodynamic and sustainably-produced wines. It gets its name from the harvest month of the Northern Hemisphere, and the fact that September is a pretty excellent month in general. The shop rests in a corner spot, its windows towering over the thoroughfare of Ludlow and Stanton with its facade illuminated by a brilliant set of interior light fixtures, ones of which I must have been asked about ten dozen times during my 4 year run as assistant manager there. Minimum.

I spent a healthy percentage of my 20's in that shop either tasting, talking about, or selling wine with all my might. My appreciation for the stuff grew exponentially in that time. What I liked about September was that the wines we brought in were a group effort. We tried to bring in wines upon which we all agreed. September is a store with neighborhood sensibilities whose selection has always been based on quality, not branding. The results of this method were that there ended-up being very few big-name brands in the store, but rather a constantly revolving selection of lesser-known gems that consistently happen to beat the brands in every category from taste to value.

Certain patterns emerged not only in the wines we carried, but in the wines I enjoyed personally. My preferences became increasingly centered around a specific style of wines that were unpolished and unashamed of it. Wine had never wowed me like these wines wowed me, and I realized that most of the wines I was falling for were unfiltered, organic, biodynamic or something like it. It was a trend I couldn't ignore if I were going to get my hands on more of them. Wines like the Hilberg Vareij, or Emile Heredia's "G" gamay for example, exemplified this and everything I liked about wine, and I drank a lot of bottles of them in appreciation. There was something alive about them––healthy even. Sometimes they seemed almost effervescent––other times they actually were. I wasn't particularly organically-minded at the time, but the quality of the experience was thoroughly undeniable, and helped make a valid case for why I should be.

The style of wine I'm talking about, we call "natural wine" for lack of a more appropriate term. Natural is a vague and untrustworthy label in reference to food, but it's remarkably specific in reference to wine; you can't fake a natural wine, they taste like nothing else in the world. If and when Yellow Tail decides to produce a "natural" wine (!!!), it will still taste like Yellow Tail, and that's how you'll know it's not natural.

We carried a number of natural wines at the shop, and more so as we all became increasingly enraptured with their genius. Truthfully, I liked wine before September, and before these, but I never obsessed over it. Natural wines consumed me and in next Friday's post, I'll explain how they changed my world, for this week however, I wanted to salute the place that introduced me to them: here's to September Wines - where oh where would I be without you? Parish the thought.

Cheers.

PHOTO BY TYLER MAGYAR

How I Came to Live in a Barn: The Series

As you might or might not know, I spent the better part of last year on a farm in Southern Kentucky living in a barn with no electricity and no running water, but the best damn food this side of the Great Salt Lick. Respectfully. Of course, there is a wonderful story behind how this came to be; a story about how someone would go from living in the sky in Brooklyn, New York, to living in the dirt in Kentucky.

Starting this Friday I will begin the series, carrying on until the story catches up. There will be drinking, foreign travel, food, wine and foolishness. Hopefully it will inspire a little, entertain a little, and kill a little time for you while you wait on your weekend. Every Friday there will be a new installment, so set you ICAL, friends, it's gonna be a party.



Cool runnings,
Jesse