Natural wines - lining up my work for the day

Monday morning at the office isn’t always so bad! My task today is to continue exploring the world of natural wines. What’s that? you may ask. I spent yesterday afternoon trying to find out at the Glouglou natural wine fair in Durban-Corbières. Most of the exhibitors were certified organic, but they have all gone much further in their quest to minimise the artificial techniques used in most modern wine production. 

​Take Gilles Contrepois of the Domaine Grand Guilhem, for example. He has been organic since 2004, but to make his wine Le Pointilliste, he ferments hand-picked grapes in clay pots using only the natural yeasts which live on his vines and grapes, and he adds no, or minimal, sulphites. It’s a fair imitation of the practices used by the world’s first winemakers in the Caucasus 8,000 years ago, although Gilles doesn’t take authenticity to the extreme of burying his clay pots in the ground.

​For others, such as Florian and Gaelle at the Domaine des Deux Clés, it means following the biodynamic principles of Rudolf Steiner. These include taking account of solar and lunar cycles, and using homeopathic preparations to improve the health of their soil and vines.

​Jon and Elizabeth Bowen are an English couple who have been making organic wine in the Corbières since 2008. Jon told me he avoids using the term ‘natural wine’ because it has no official or generally-agreed definition. But he still calls one of his wines Pourboire Nature because, ‘There is nothing added. And nothing means no sulphur dioxide, no yeast, no tannins, no enzymes, no fining agents.’

​All the exhibitors I spoke to at Glouglou agreed on one thing: being outside the constraints of an appellation gives them the freedom to be different. The flavours of their wines were certainly more intense and more varied than I have experienced at more conventional wine fairs. 

​Glouglou translates as glug-glug, but it was a much more sophisticated event than its name may suggest. It took place at Chez Lola, a mansion which on other days offers bed-and-breakfast. Upstairs, each bedroom had a couple of winemakers somewhere between the bed and the wardrobe, and on the ground floor, the lounge and dining room hosted eight more producers. The kitchen served quiche, cake, coffee, tea or water for anyone who was hungry or needed to cleanse his or her palette. It was a relaxed, homely environment, perfect for the discovery of natural wines, whatever they may be.

Will I have come up with a clearer definition by the time I have cleared my desk?