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From Becoming a Wine Devotee Step 1: Cultivate Connection to the Wine
Francois Millet is the “chef de cave” at the legendary Domaine Comte Georges de Vogüé in Musigny, Burgundy. When those of us in the new world dream of the old world, we imagine places like de Vogüé. It is an old stone building near a church in sleepy town, a quiet village where every day is like the one before, for centuries. Francois speaks nearly perfect English, yet still I found myself lost early on in our conversation. He seemed to be talking about Amoureuses, a woman in love. She is the first lady of the village, he told me, dolled up in the finest clothes and carrying herself regally. Yet she stands at a distance, never allowing us to embrace her. We contemplate her rather than touch her. And when we do, we discover that she has sadness just below the layers of perfect make-up. She is affected by death, yet doesn’t want to show it. Every year, she is somewhat different—or I should say every vintage, for I later realized that Amoureusus is a delicate red wine, not a person.
When we went down into the ancient cellars, we first tasted her husband, the Musigny (which also, by the way, demands contemplation) and then the crazy uncle by marriage, the Bonnes-Mares. By the time we reached the lady of the day, I must admit that I was skeptical of such anthropomorphism. Perhaps it was the power of suggestion, but I have never tasted a wine in quite the same way. It was not just analyzing something but communing with someone. She was alive. I felt underdressed around her and I instinctively straightened my posture. She drew me to her, not as a wine but as a person. It struck me for the first time that great wine has this capacity like few other non-human entities on earth.
As humans born of other humans, the default parameter for understanding relationships is human. As a result, our tendency is to humanize anything with which we have a meaningful relationship. Of course, the ability to anthropomorphize is strong—think of the pet rock craze of the 1970s and longstanding tradition of sailors naming and referring to their boats by female names. It is also a staple of religious worlds, such as when people depict God as a stern father or worship in front of anthropomorphic image of a divinity. There seems to be a direct correlation between the extent of anthropomorphization and the depth of relationship formed: the more one can imagine a relationship in human terms, the more significant the relationship has the capability of being. Here wine is nearly unique in the extent that it has become personified for people. Think about the human story of wine:
Each winter in a vineyard (that is itself usually given a name), an orgy of conception occurs with new grape clusters formed seemingly out of thin air. They begin small and fragile, but their cells multiply and they become sturdier over time. These clusters will eventually become the wine with whom we have a relationship, but we avoid getting too attached because one never knows the final outcome at this early stage. The wine is still in the womb at this point and those who are part of the process are filled with anticipation. A wine has what historian William Younger calls a “heaving” birth and indeed at one winery with which I am familiar, the fermentation room is called the birthing room.
The newly-birthed wine then goes through a period of infancy where it is kept in a protective space in a barrel until it is ready to grow up and be released to the world. At this point, we talk about the wine as we talk about infants and toddlers: their personalities are beginning to show but it is all potential. We final allow it to graduate and send it out into the world, hoping that we’ve prepared it to change in good ways but fearing that we might have done something that will lead to defaults or failures, some of which might not appear for many years.
We speak of the early years of a wine’s release as being “young,” which as with people, usually means excusably brash, immature, unsubtle, and still trying to find its way in the world. Unlike wine beverage drinkers, wine devotees allow wine to mature. The collection of wine is critical because if one does not watch a wine develop throughout a case or over multiple vintages, then the relationship to wine is like a series of one-night stands: titillating but ultimately leaving one with an empty feeling. So, wine devotees look for connections across time: multiple bottles opened across time may be best or at least multiple vintages of the same wine or the same region. Most wines do improve, but some wines and some people seem to get stuck in the infantile phase and like people, wines who never mature are really disappointing jerks.
As wines and humans age, they get more complex; it is as if new layers of knowledge are added upon older ones so that we can speak of mature, aged wines as sort of wise wines, with whom sometimes you have to be patient to receive their wisdom but there is something deep and meaningful in them. At this stage, we begin to give wines human personality traits. We say that some wines are friendly and approachable; others are rather closed and reserved, while still others are dark and moody. We treat them like they belong to different types of social clubs: some wines are graceful, poised, polished, charming, and refined while others are aggressive, disagreeable, unpretentious, and ugly. We bemoan wines that look pretty but have obvious signs of inauthenticity such as additives or severe manipulation—like plastic surgery, it is fine unless we notice it.
We also set up our wines on dates. These dates can be with new palates or with different foods. We speak like Jewish grandmothers proud of their matchmaking abilities when they work—“I just knew she would like the 2005 pinot” or “I just knew that wine would go well with my duck recipe.” And when these dates fail, we entertain all the disappointment and second guessing that occur in human relationships.
Sadly, wine can get over the hill. They lose their vivacity and tend to smell more and more like a nursing home. One gets the sense that their best days are behind them. And there is sadness in watching this decline and often regret: I wish I got to spend more time with it at the height of its vivacity. But all things must die and ultimately, wines that are over the hill return to the earth and the cycle of life begins anew.
The ability to form deep relationships with particular wines makes it unique. You might keep sophisticated art or music for extended periods of time, but there is no reciprocity or dynamism in the relationship to a painting or a piece of music. You might be changing over time, but the object of your interest is not. A dish of food may have incredible complexity and be rapidly changing, but you do not experience it over a long duration, usually just for a few hours. Many of the fermented portions of our diet–cheese, coffee, beer, spirits, breads, pickled vegetables, and others—demonstrate complexity and dynamism, but their duration is also limited when compared to wine. As one winemaker told me, “There is no back label with a story on a beer can.”
Certain intoxicants, tobacco products, and natural drugs might be consumed over time and display complexity but there is little dynamism present—one does not speak of tobacco getting better over time and no other product places so prominently on it, a birthdate. There may be regional examples that come close to developing a relationship like wine—the Chinese with tea, the Swiss with cheese, the Japanese with soy sauce, the Italians with balsamic vinegar, the Latin Americans with chilies, Californians with marijuana—but there is no other category where the association is so strong for so long across such a wide array of cultures.
The story of humanity’s relationship to wine is unlike any other: humans fall in love with wine like no other non-breathing entity. We fall in love with wine as if it was a person or, perhaps, a deity. The ancient Greeks made wine human through a personality, Dionysius. Perhaps the modern wine devotee is simply doing the same. Dionysius may no longer be invoked, but he is certainly smiling.
From the chapter on Wu Wei Winemakers in the Spirit of Winemakers
...Lafarge, Labet, Millet, and de la Morinier are representative of a new Burgundy that stands in contrast to the manipulated vineyards and wines of the 1980s and early 1990s. There seems to be a revolution of active non-activity. Andrew Jeffords describes it in New France: “In winery terms, France is a giant experimental laboratory of inaction at present—willed inaction, understood inaction, observed inaction—and it is this, together with dramatically reduced yields and healthier vineyards, which has spawned a new generation of wines of shattering articulacy and strange beauty. It often requires daring: doing nothing is sometimes the winemaker’s equivalent of exhibition acrobatics, of pulling out of the dive at the last possible moment, of skimming the tree line with a shaking fir cone to spare.” While often linked to ‘traditional’ winemaking, Jeffords is right to note that it is something new. The methods might be the same as a hundred years ago, but there is now an awareness and deliberateness that was absent previously. The vinological zeitgeist has shifted dramatically. Perhaps the motto of this movement is captured by a phrase that is attributed to the late Rene Lafon of Meursault, but relayed to me in nearly every interview in Burgundy: “you have to have the courage to do nothing.” The “courage to do nothing” does not mean, the vignerons assured me, that they heaved the grapes into vats and awaited bottling. Rather, they practice what Fred Mugnier calls a “philosophy of subtraction.” Reflect upon every action and then eliminate anything that is trying to force the wine into a predetermined mold. Let the terroir speak through the wine, not the winemaker. Act only when necessary to restore the conditions for a wine to reach its destiny. Embrace harmony. Have faith in the grapes. This is the new Burgundian Creed that I heard throughout the celebrated hillsides of gold and beyond.
The most visible prophet behind this clarion call is Aubert de Villaine of Domaine Romanée-Conti . Even among the celebrated cast of the new gilded Burgundian aristocracy, de Villaine stands out as a living legend. He is the elder statesman, esteemed sage, and venerable saint. For a wine lover, walking into DRC for an interview with de Villaine is like walking into the Sistine Chapel for an audience with the Pope, though with the promise of better wine at the conclusion. In fact, the winery is appropriately a converted monastery that, while it may now be lined with modern glass and beams, still appropriately retains an air of its original sanctity. Passionate about the restoration of the monastery, De Villaine himself reminded me of many of the monks I’ve known in my life: quiet, studious, and humble yet oozing gravitas and integrity. Yet, as we spoke, he emerged as the paradigmatic wu wei Burgundian winemaker whose wisdom comes out so effortlessly that one could hardly be judged for thinking it is closer to revelation.
If a domain is not a location or a business but “a philosophy,” as de Villaine has argued, then the epistemic foundation of Domaine Romanée-Conti is found in the notion of climat, the Burgundian word for the terroir specific to small, designated plots of land. De Villaine is quick to point out that the source of DRC’s greatness is found primarily in the land itself, not in their skill as winemakers. In the world of celebrity winemakers, this perspective is both rare and refreshing. He told me, “Each year, you give birth to a wine where you must act but you know that the talent and the soul does not come from you but it comes from something beyond you that is stored in the land that you were given. It is a real school of humility.” The climat for de Villaine, then, extends beyond just the physical properties typically associated with terroir, even if these are profoundly influential. Climat is also a receptacle of history, so that efforts of countless nameless monks who labored in DRC’s fabled vineyards are not just historical footnotes but rather their energy and spirit inform the grapes today. While de Villaine does not want to take away from the centrality of the immediate climatic conditions of a particular vintage, he suggests that those who are attuned to it can also “taste the history.” This statement is meant to suggest not only that the vineyards today represent the culmination of hundreds of years of human cultivation but also that there is some non-material essence presence that works its way into the wine. He calls it the “soul” of the wine. Burgundy’s uniqueness derives from its ability to capture this soul quality. “The difference between the wines of Burgundy and other wines is the soul of the wine,” he tells me. “And the soul is given by the terroir. Many places around the world make wine with Pinot Noir and many of them are very good wines but they don’t have the soul like we have in Burgundy that comes from our terroir, from our history.” Thus, de Villaine approaches the vines as complete entities, with a material ‘body’ and a soul, to which one has a responsibility. He once told a wine writer, “We are at least as much the keepers as the owners of our terroirs (since they possess us as much as we possess them).”[ii]
The importance of the non-physical elements to the vineyard was evident for de Villaine in a story that he recalls from before he ran the domaine. The vines of the most fabled vineyards, Romanée-Conti, were perhaps hundreds of years old in 1945 and were becoming unproductive and vulnerable to the phylloxera pest, since they were some of the few vines not to be replanted around the turn of the century when most of France’s vines were grafted onto American rootstock to confront the phylloxera plague. The decision was made to rip out the most hallowed vines in the world. For various reasons, they were not replanted until 1947 and the first vintage under the new vines were from 1952. Normally, young vines produce inferior wines, however the 1952, 1953, and 1954 DRC are among the best in the century. De Villaine asked the director of the vineyard how he could explain the 1952 miracle? His response was a form of reincarnation: that the old root system was mulched into the soil when the new vines were planted and the soul was transferred to the new vines. The vines may have been physically young but they retained an “old soul.”
De Villaine’s deep awareness of history and his sensitivity to the non-material essence of the wine provides for him a more expansive and meaningful framework for his work compared to other wine makers. He is not just harvesting a fruit or manufacturing a product but has a wider cosmic purpose that is intimately tied to revelation of harmony inherent in the land. De Villaine once remarked in an interview:
For the monks of Cluny, who were in the Middle Ages owners of most of the “grands crus” of the Domaine and of Vosne in general, ars (only roughly translatable as art) had as a function and as a goal not the creation of a product that would have a market value, but rather the restoration of harmony to the world through the high quality of the work. The role of the vigneron, as artisan and artist, is to make visible in the wines that he produces the harmonious structure of the world, that is to say the harmonious structure as revealed by the terroir. Man remains the essential, indispensable translator, the humble interpreter of a harmony that fills, if one knows how to listen to it, the world created (at least for the monks and for many others still today) by God.[iii]
Harmony, he believes, is inherent in the cosmos. If he had been Chinese rather than French, he probably would have used the term the dao, which functions in the same way. Regardless of what one call it, his task is to reveal it, not to create it. In fact, the task of the winemaker is to carry that harmony into the bottle to share it with the world.
The word de Villaine prefers is ‘transparency’: the terroir should be transparent in the bottle, not the will of the winemaker. The production of great wine is always a partnership with the climat, but the winemaker is the junior partner. Success comes from the junior partner disappearing into the corner to allow the senior partner to shine. This task is little different from the monks that worked the land for a millennium. “When the monks were making wine here,” de Villaine notes, “they sought to be at the level of what God created. They were given these vines and were trying to make the wine as great as possible. Just as when they pray or act in their life, they want to be as close as possible to perfection, to God.” Despite working out of a monastery, de Villaine may not be traditionally religious but his aims seem quite parallel. De Villaine feels a deep sense of responsibility to something greater than his shareholders or even his industry. He is carrying on the traditional spirit of the monks, who were conscious that their winemaking was for a greater purpose.
De Villaine finds himself in a continual dialogue with Nature. The paradigm is found in the monks who worked closely with the land, believing that it was a mechanism for the communication of God’s will. As wine writer and critic Alan Medows noted about DRC, “God was speaking to them though messages sent from the earth.” De Villaine shares such sentiments, noting that they speak much like a child, however. “When you have a child, he doesn’t tell you what he needs but there is some form of communication so that you come to realize what he needs…the vines may not speak, but they tell you what they need.” De Villaine and his team thus spend a lot of time in the vineyards listening. They are waiting to hear the subtle signs to which they can react. “The role of the winemaker is to enable the terroir to be in the best condition possible–to help bring forward (like a mid-wife) the product of the exceptional land. The role is to listen to the terroir. One listens always to the terroir to understand what to do to achieve an equilibrium in the soil, what to use as vegetal material, how to prune, how to treat the vines. There is always a selection of the best methods so that the terroir is in its best disposition possible to make a good wine. One should not get the impression that DRC does not have a plan or that they merely meditate over the vines until the sheers begin pruning themselves. Rather, their plan is the result of an iterative process whereby they proffer an idea, listen to vines, read the climatic conditions, and adjust the plan accordingly. It is true dialogue, not a series of rigid directives.
Perhaps the most important element is the attitude that informs this dialogue. “Like the monks who had an attitude of prayer,” de Villaine begins, “you do things for the vines rather than do things for yourself….if there were two ways of doing things and one was easier, you would do what is best for the wine rather than what is easier for you, if you love the vines.” This attitude is thus marked by the subordination of the ego. Winemaking is not about heroically creating something, but humbling serving something greater. He is not making the wine, but caring for it as it makes itself. De Villaine’s favored analogy for his task is the midwife, whose role is not to create the baby or even to force the baby to emerge but rather guides the natural process along to its conclusion. While the midwife is important, she should not be the focus of attention. Neither should be the winemaker. “The winemaker’s signature should be the lack of a signature,” de Villaine told me (who nonetheless places his signature on his wines for counterfitting purposes). He is trying to actively remain passive, wei wu wei. He summarized this philosophy to another author, “We try not to get in the way.” When you open a bottle from DRC, it should be the voice of the climat you detect, not the winemaker’s.
As with many religious worldviews, the wine maker’s task for de Villaine ultimately widdles down to love. “The love you bring to the vines and to the wine you make is very important to the soul of the wine,” de Villaine confesses, “There will be no soul in the wine if there was no love in it as well.” In the end, it is love, actually. Such a statement from anyone else in the cynical modern world of wine would come across as primarily crass marketing, yet from him, it seems closer to a reflection of his heart and a perhaps a humble plea to world. Or perhaps it is revelation. The secret of DRC may not be found in its soil but in the love from its people, not just de Villaine but the thousands of monks who worked his vineyards before him with whom he identifies. DRC is a product of 1200 years of love; no wonder it is so expensive. Walking into his monastic offices, it is not a message that I expected but it was a fitting conclusion from one I was told was the sage, statesman, and saint of Burgundy: the soul of wine comes from an overflow of love. It is the secret of Burgundy and perhaps those who share their spirit around the globe.