Working in hospitality, in the way that I have been working in hospitality, we talk a lot about the impact of what we are serving has on your body. I used to think about publishing a zine with folk remedies for bad digestion, the only one I remember is extra spicy radish. Eating just one would feel like your belly full of bread was being dissolved, less of a thing to carry during service. The rest are a casualty of time but that’s ok, the tradition is bigger than I knew as its alive and well in natural wine.
Wine inspires all sorts of folk science and it seems like it invites continued contribution. For instance, I believe that when you drink wines from many different places you’re inviting a lot of different bacteria into your body that might be hard to process the next day. As if you were in the whole of France, north of Spain, and central Italy all at the same time. Another thing is that this bacteria puts a lot of energy into your body, especially from healthy wine, and if you just sit down and eat and then sleep you are going to have to experience the unused energy dying in there. I find dancing or a long walk home with a friend to be the best cures. It works for some people to sweat it out in the morning, for me it’s too late. It has to be in the moment. This isn’t something we normally talk about outside of ourselves because it’s driven by a gut feeling and it feels like a secret. But we love gossip and spilling (our own) secrets here so why not.
I’ve also had a thing (aka a thought that feels half assed) about Covid changing trends in what wines people get excited about. There is more of a thirst for higher alcohol, more structured, maybe higher sugar, definitely higher intensity wines. Which came up again a couple weeks ago when tasting Axel Prüfer’s new vintage with him. He was about to pour a taste of his new Fou du Roi, a mix of Grenache, Cinsault, and Carignan. He layers the grapes “like a sandwich” in tank, and like sandwich construction, how you layer really matters. The Carignan was in the middle and had a lot of influence on the wine, Axel is known primarily for his light but detailed red wines made with carbonic maceration. This wine is not that. He asks what we think about the wine, about redder reds in general. I tell him that in the past two years I have found the patience for them, that the pace of our life has maybe helped us catch up to those wines. Being able to sit with them and appreciate their sprawl or their density. Axel says he has too, but he thinks it has happened since he had Covid. He is fine, but has lost a bit of sensitivity to something that can be harsh because of the virus’s relationship to our capacity to taste and smell. I’ve never heard this before but I like it, in my mind I am propping it up against the bigger wines of recent warm dry vintages and leaving it there for now.
Axel also gave us a book with interviews of influential Catalonian producers, he is featured too and had a few copies at home. It’s in French and while my speaking is impossible my reading is semi-okay. We accepted it because I thought it would help me learn to listen to French winemakers talk about their work. I skimmed the whole thing but the first interview I sat down with was the chat with Laureano Serres, a winemaker in Pinell de Brai referenced by almost everyone in the book. We got to see him a few weeks ago too, but there was a lot going on and the possibility for quality time was minimal, especially across our languages. So there was a desire to connect those moments with his voice. It really did help, and I want to share this part that expresses both the feeling of his wine in particular and the sentiment of this writing:
…Je compare toujours les personnes avec des raisins. Nous sommes à 80% de l'eau, pareil pour le raisin ou le vin. Le raisin, c'est de l'eau et du sucre. Le vin c'est de l'eau et de l'alcool. L'alcool fait battre le cœur, l'eau nettoie les reins. C'est parfait dans le cycle de la vie. Nous avons l'opportunité de vivre ce moment de perfection, non?
Basically he is saying we, grapes, and wine are all 80% water. Grapes also have sugar and wine also has alcohol. It is perfect because the alcohol makes our heart beat and the water cleans the kidneys. And it’s perfect in the cycle of life, and we have the opportunity to experience this perfection.
One might not feel that this is true but it doesn't really matter, that exact notion of truth. Sometimes better to have a light heart, sense of humor, and trust in someone else's experience.
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