n.d.p. in burgundy: yann durieux / recru des sens, villers-la-faye

When vignerons ask me about my blog, I tend to become Mitt Romney. "It's a blog about ... wine in Paris," I'll affirm, and the descriptor that goes in the elipsis depends entirely on my audience.

People are touchy about it. Since pretty much every vigneron considers what they are in the habit of doing to be 'natural,' I find that many choose to take the term as referring not to wine itself, but rather to vignerons who seem to attract a lot of attention using the term. This is paradoxically sort of anathema to the intent of the appellation system;* nor is it helpful that "natural wine," like any brand, invariably gets associated with its most visible or colourful proponents, who can themselves be anathema to more conservative personality types.

Anyway, I felt welcome enough hanging around with the Burguet brothers in Gevrey-Chambertin, Eric and Jean-Luc, to express my particular interest in low-sulfur, minimal-intervention wines, and Eric suggested my friend J and I go see a friend and former roommate called Yann Durieux, who had just begun making wine in the Hautes-Côtes de Nuits. Eric being the scrupulous Oscar of the Burguet Odd Couple winemaking team, he would only tell us that Durieux's wines were "très speciale," which I took to mean he thought Durieux was bonkers.

n.d.p. in piemonte: giorgio barovero, monforte d'alba

The great wines of Piedmont are a popular counter-argument to the concept of natural wine. As much as wine geeks like myself might advocate use of wild yeasts, low sulfur, and total disavowal of pesticides, herbicides, anti-mildew agents and so on, we're still uniformly unable to refute the majesty of good Barolo and Barbaresco, appellations in which these virtuous habits are rare to non-existent. So visiting Piedmont recently I maintained a sort of hopeless mini-agenda to sniff out whatever natural or organic wines I could find in the area, out of curiosity for how Piemontese grapes would be affected by more or less natural viticulture.

What I tasted was, on the whole, immensely intriguing. Like, potential-business-opportunity intriguing, for someone with more means and patience and Italian skills than I presently possess.

There are apparently three small organic producers in Monforte alone. One, I'm told, is Francesco Clerico, a cousin of the more famous Domenico, neither of whose wines we were unable to taste on this trip. Another is Enrico Boggione, whose rich and vibrant Nebbiolo d'Alba is available for a song at the little organic boutique run by his wife off the main square in Monforte. The third is Giorgio Barovero, to whose stunning 2005 Nebbiolo d'Alba we were introduced by the excellent bartender at Casa della Saracca. My friend J and I enjoyed the wine so much we set up a tasting appointment for the next day, and drove the short distance to Barovero's spare cellars in the valley just south-east of Monforte, outside of the Barolo appellation, on the frontiers of Piemontese natural wine.