Driving through Southern French wine country, you learn to recognise the local cave co-op pretty easily. Located on the outskirts of the town, with functional concrete design and a run-down demeanour, you see countless variations all over the region. For the small wine-grower in the early 20th century, it seemed like an ideal way of making wine more efficiently. He was fed up of the small-scale facilities he would have likely had at home and saw the attractiveness of pooled resources, communal production and greater control of production. From 1901 villages all around Southern France and beyond caught the bug.
Today, these monuments to pooled production, quantity, affordability and local terroir are largely on their knees. Caught between being able to compete at the bottom, one euro a bottle market for cheap wine and the higher, quality end of the spectrum their days look numbered. Which is why, as we were driving through the Languedoc to meet cutting-edge, exciting winemakers, we were confused to be turning up at local co-ops. After retracing our steps a few times, we gained entry to these concrete temples and discovered the winemakers we were due to see, making wine, in an almost squatter-like fashion amongst the ruins of the grand old co-ops. One particularly exciting visit was to Loic Roure at Domaine de Possible. He and other like-minded vignerons had clubbed together to rent the local co-op, blast through the walls of the cuvee Betons and make small-production, foot-trod, ‘natural’, stunning wine we hope we can import a bit of next year. The winery was decorated with Banksy-style grafitti, pictures of Hendrix and a design studio in the roof. An amazing space.
Loic and his friends are all young, talented, super-generous and passionate about what they do, not beating a drum about any manifesto other then making the sort of wine they want to drink. What I find so inspiring about this kind of thing is the brilliance of French winemaking culture to innovate, change and revitalise itself and in doing so, make the sort of wines that make many producers in the new-world look hopelessly old-fashioned and out-of-step with the sort of wines we find people increasingly want to buy. Drinkable, fresh, complex wines for convivial evenings not the fatigued palates of tasting panels.
The Reinvention of the Co-op
Driving through Southern French wine country, you learn to recognise the local cave co-op pretty easily. Located on the outskirts of the town, with functional concrete design and a run-down demeanour, you see countless variations all over the region. For the small wine-grower in the early 20th century, it seemed like an ideal way of making wine more efficiently. He was fed up of the small-scale facilities he would have likely had at home and saw the attractiveness of pooled resources, communal production and greater control of production. From 1901 villages all around Southern France and beyond caught the bug.
Today, these monuments to pooled production, quantity, affordability and local terroir are largely on their knees. Caught between being able to compete at the bottom, one euro a bottle market for cheap wine and the higher, quality end of the spectrum their days look numbered. Which is why, as we were driving through the Languedoc to meet cutting-edge, exciting winemakers, we were confused to be turning up at local co-ops. After retracing our steps a few times, we gained entry to these concrete temples and discovered the winemakers we were due to see, making wine, in an almost squatter-like fashion amongst the ruins of the grand old co-ops. One particularly exciting visit was to Loic Roure at Domaine de Possible. He and other like-minded vignerons had clubbed together to rent the local co-op, blast through the walls of the cuvee Betons and make small-production, foot-trod, ‘natural’, stunning wine we hope we can import a bit of next year. The winery was decorated with Banksy-style grafitti, pictures of Hendrix and a design studio in the roof. An amazing space.
Loic and his friends are all young, talented, super-generous and passionate about what they do, not beating a drum about any manifesto other then making the sort of wine they want to drink. What I find so inspiring about this kind of thing is the brilliance of French winemaking culture to innovate, change and revitalise itself and in doing so, make the sort of wines that make many producers in the new-world look hopelessly old-fashioned and out-of-step with the sort of wines we find people increasingly want to buy. Drinkable, fresh, complex wines for convivial evenings not the fatigued palates of tasting panels.