Natural Wine Makers in France

Five of France’s most representative natural wine producers, as met by one of Korea’s foremost natural wine experts.

Words Choi Yeongseon
Founder of the wine agency Vinofeel. He organizes Salon O, Korea’s first natural wine event, and is the author of ‘Natural Wine Makers’ and ‘Natural Wine Makers, The Second Story’ (Hans Media), which together tell the stories of 58 French natural wine producers.

Wine made from grapes grown organically or biodynamically, fermented and aged without any additives, and bottled without filtering or stabilizers. That is perhaps the shortest way to define natural wine. Boil it down further and you might call it ‘clean’ or ‘honest’ wine: wine you can enjoy without any complicated knowledge, with nothing more than simple reactions like good or not good, I like it or I don’t. Most labels, too, skip the difficult AOC code (short for Appellation d’origine Contrôlée, France’s designation system for controlling the origin and quality of wine, under which a grade is granted only to products that meet strict rules set for each production area) in favor of images that let you intuitively grasp the character of the wine in the bottle.
In fact, wine was originally an alcoholic drink made solely from the products of nature. When herbicides and synthetic fertilizers began to be used in agriculture in the 1950s and ’60s, vineyards were affected too. Cultured yeasts, which guarantee easy and fast fermentation, replaced natural yeasts in the fermentation process, and all sorts of additives for mass production began to be developed one after another. Oenology, the science of winemaking, was then established to support them. Wine produced this way is called conventional wine. Of wine’s thousands of years of history, conventional wine accounts for a few decades at most. So the ‘natural wine revolution’ that began in the 1980s in the Beaujolais region of France is a movement to return to the original way of making wine, not a ‘revolution’ at all.

Curious about natural wine? Salon O A natural wine fair hosted by Vinofeel, a wine agency based in Paris. Launched as a tasting event devoted to natural wine, with the aim of deepening understanding and widening the base of consumers, it has been held every year in late February, beginning with the first Salon O in February 2017. Renowned natural wine producers from across Europe, including France, Italy, Spain, Germany, Austria, Slovakia and Slovenia, come to Korea to explain their wines and pour them directly for wine lovers and industry professionals, making it a festival-like event. The ‘O’ in Salon O stands for zero, meaning no additives or artificial intervention. It is also pronounced like ‘eau,’ the French word for water, and so suggests wine as clean as water. salon-o.org, @salono_naturalwine

Jura
Pierre Overnoy

The legendary producer who cannot be left out of any talk about natural wine is, without question, Pierre Overnoy, based in the small village of Pupillin in the Jura (a region in eastern France famous for Comté cheese). From the 1980s, Pierre put natural winemaking without sulfur dioxide (SO2) into serious practice and was there at the very start of France’s natural wine movement. Now he is approaching ninety. His back is slightly stooped and his hands tremble, and he has to ask you to repeat yourself unless you speak loudly, yet his presence in the vineyard and the cellar is still a match for any young man’s.
Born into a family of grape growers, Pierre has worked the family vineyard since the 1950s and first learned winemaking from his father and grandfather. As a student he enrolled at a wine school in Beaune, Bourgogne, to learn modern winemaking, but he soon realized that most of the industrial techniques taught there did not respect nature or the soil. He says he can never forget the moment he found that the dregs of his father’s wine were full of natural flavor, while the dregs of the wine he had made by modern methods gave off an unpleasant smell. The problem was sulfur dioxide, an additive widely used to stabilize wine. That episode became a crucial turning point in Pierre’s shift to fully natural winemaking. In truth, it has been less than fifteen years since his wines began to make a real impression on wine lovers. “I still don’t understand how my wine can sell for hundreds of euros. I still make it the same way, and the price when it leaves the cellar hasn’t changed much.” These words capture his attitude: despite his enormous renown, he thinks of himself as nothing more than a grape farmer.

Signature wine: Ploussard. A clear, light-colored red made from Ploussard, the Jura’s signature red grape. Bursting with bright fruit aromas, it may feel slightly light at first, but the complexity that follows reveals great potential. Its beautiful acidity and balance are the peak of its appeal.

Loire
Jean-Pierre Robinot

Jean-Pierre Robinot was born in a small village in France’s Loire region, and he is a natural wine producer with an unusual past. At 17 he went to Paris with a single bag and started work as a plumber, a job that paid very well in Paris at the time. With its streets lined with buildings more than a hundred years old, Paris has always had a great demand for plumbers. With the money he earned, Jean-Pierre began buying and drinking fine wine, and he built up his knowledge by attending all kinds of tastings. At 22 he encountered natural wine for the first time, and it changed his life. Accustomed to fine conventional wines, he was completely captivated by the pure, natural taste of natural wine, and he went on to throw himself into introducing and advancing it. Working as a wine journalist, he mingled with wine experts and deepened his knowledge. On that foundation he took part in founding the wine magazine ‘Le Rouge et Le Blanc’ in 1983, and he opened a natural wine bar called L’Ange Vin in Paris’s 11th arrondissement, which was a great success.
At an age when others think about retiring, he went back to his hometown and began making wine himself. He started producing wine in 2002, and since 2008 he has made only natural wine without sulfur dioxide. His wines have won recognition and success around the world, in Paris, New York, London and beyond. His distinctive labels, which use photographs he took himself, are also famous. Jean-Pierre says that if he had the chance to change his life once more, his dream would be to become a photographer. Perhaps he is still the 17-year-old boy who left for Paris with a single bag.

Signature wine: L’Iris. Chenin Blanc, the grape Jean-Pierre considers the finest. Minerality and structure are in perfect balance, and a brilliant acidity blends beautifully with the citrus aromas that follow. A wine that brings happiness and a flutter of excitement.

Beaujolais
Philippe Jambon

Philippe Jambon’s winery sits at the southern edge of Burgundy, right where Beaujolais begins to the south. Few wines demand as long a wait as his. Several years is the minimum, and plenty of his bottlings age for a decade or more, until the wine is in a condition he likes. After all that time, Philippe waits several more years once the wine is bottled before he sells it. He is a slow, devoted perfectionist. By comparison, Beaujolais Nouveau takes just over three months from harvest to fermentation, bottling, and sale.
Following his own philosophy of winemaking, Philippe uses no chemical additives at all and makes his wines only from grapes in their natural state. His farming goes beyond organic, yet he has no interest in organic certification labels. “Organic farming is the most basic condition for making natural wine. Why would I need to put a logo on something so basic just to show it off? It’s only natural.”
His vineyard looks the way nature made it, with weeds and flowers growing together among the vines. He believes grapes raised in this environment make the best wine. For him, the appeal of natural wine lies not only in the taste but also in the energy and naturalness the wine carries. It may sound strange, but Philippe is convinced that wine made in a natural way is good for your health too!

Signature wine: Les Baltailles. The grape is Gamay. After three to four years in a stainless steel tank, the wine spends another four to five years in oak barrels before bottling. Then it waits again until it becomes the wine Philippe wants, and only then does it reach drinkers. It is a rare wine, a Gamay that goes beyond even a Grand Cru.

Auvergne — Aurélien Léfort
Aurélien Léfort

I first met Aurélien in 2014 at a natural wine event in Arles. He was quietly pouring his wines without a word of explanation. With the first sip, I knew at once that the wine carried tremendous energy, the exact opposite of the producer’s calm demeanor. Still, his region, Auvergne, was completely unfamiliar to wine lovers in Korea, and natural wine was even more of a novelty then. So I simply gave him a quiet thumbs-up and a few words of admiration. That was how I was introduced to his first vintage, the ‘2012.’
Aurélien soon rose to stardom, and getting hold of his wine became harder and harder, like reaching for a star in the sky. He originally trained at the École des Beaux-Arts in Brittany, France, and has an unusual background: he walked the path of an artist before falling in love with wine. He designs every label himself, and he says it feels as if he is showing his work to the whole world through his wine. After all, people who drink his wine are appreciating his art along with it. “Art and the vineyard are only a step apart,” says Aurélien. Is he not breaking down the boundary between artist and winemaker?

Signature wine: 1=1. A Pét-Nat made from Gamay and Chardonnay! It is a very distinctive wine, fresh and fruity. Fermentation continues in the bottle, giving it fine, lively bubbles, and a very small amount of residual sugar adds a touch of sweetness.

Ardèche — Anders Frederik Steen
Anders Frederik Steen

Anders once worked as a sommelier at Noma in Copenhagen, Denmark. Noma is a restaurant that food lovers around the world rave about. It is famous for its cuisine, but especially renowned for its vast natural wine list. Any food lover should visit at least once, assuming, of course, that you manage to get a reservation…
I first met Anders in 2017 at the winery of Gérald Oustric, one of the natural wine producers of Ardèche. At the time, he was making wine in a rented corner of Gérald’s winery. Later, a wine called ‘Peach’ was imported to Korea and became a huge success. That wine effectively launched Anders into stardom.
Every year, Anders uses different grapes to make wines with new characters. “The climate and the ripeness of the grapes change every year, so there’s no need to try to make the same wine,” he explains. He and his wife come up with the wine names together, and they are just as distinctive, each carrying a sincerity about the wine. For example, the white wine named ‘I can see you from the other side of the valley’ blends grapes he grew with grapes grown by Gérald, showing the harmony of two vineyards set in different valleys. Somehow, it also resembles Anders’s own life, which crosses between Copenhagen and Ardèche.

Signature wine: The Bright Cider of Life. This is not a wine made from grapes but a cidre, made from apples. At 6.5 percent alcohol with a light touch of residual sugar, it makes an ideal aperitif.