In early July I decided on the spur of the moment to join the Native Companion for an evening in the Provençal seaside town of Hyères, where she'd gone for work. The sojourn presented a fine occasion to follow up on my recent chat with Var natural winemaker Jean-Christophe Comor, who I'd run into at the Côteaux Varois AOC 25th Anniversary party back in late May. His 15-hectare domaine in La Roquebrussanne is just a 45 minute drive north from Hyères.
I've bought Comor's wines for several restaurant wine lists in Paris over the years, having initially made his acquaintance at various tasting salons. As a vigneron, he cuts a peculiar figure: owl-eyed, eloquent, slightly hunched, he's a former souverainiste politician and law professor who renounced politics in 2002 to make natural wine in the Côteaux Varois.
Today his idiosyncratic range of wines - 11 cuvées in all - includes highlights like the lightly-macerated, foudre-aged carignan blanc "Analepse" and a suavely powerful Bandol bearing the silly pun "L'Amourvèdre." But I have a special fascination with Comor's two natural rosés, simply because the category itself has grown so scarce in the present era of ultramodern colour-corrected Provençal Stepford-Wife rosé. In the cellar of his beautiful newly-constructed cuverie - built from local stone along the same foundations as an ancient sheepfold - we discussed what it means to produce natural rosé in Provence today.
