A Story of La Peira -Terrasses du Larzac (Languedoc wine) by Rob Dougan

Recently I came across a quote from Andrew Jefford's The New France (probably the most comprehensive book about French wine and certainly most the beautifuly written):

"The aim of French AOC wine law is to lend a sensual print to rock, stone, slope, and sky,"

It had been typed into a mobile phone somewhere in the Pacific Northwest, letter by letter, and sent by text to a site, and after having been processed through the maze of 0s and 1s that govern much of modern day digital existence it appeared on my laptop in London, looking much the same as it did on the printed page when I first read it in 2004.

I was struck that someone had taken the time to type this, by it's Haiku quality, and by how incongruous it was that the now relatively ancient idea of appellation (and a sense of place) had been best expressed by an English writer, and that the idea could now be communicated around the world in a matter of seconds.

But most of all by how it transported me back in time to the first half of this decade.

Perhaps those who love Mediterranean, Italian or French food would have had a similar reaction to pulling a book by Elizabeth David out off the shelf...

For it was in 03/04 with all sorts of Jeffordian phrases buzzing about my head, and in a tiny stone stable in the foothills of the Cévennes (with two compatriots) that we set off on what now seems like a impossibly idealistic mission.

We were convinced that the higher slopes of Southern France could produce wine equal in quality to the greatest of France's traditionally hallowed regions, and at the same time convey something strikingly different in terms of its esthetic...something of the beauty and wildness of the South.

It's hard not to let such thoughts take control when in that rugged landscape of olive and mulberry trees, with the smell of fennel, rosemary and thyme in the air, and with stony soils ideal for vine growing below your feet. Yet the South has never been regarded in France as one of its premier wine regions. Then again France never thought much of the internet in the beginning, preferring its laughable (now dead) Minitel system, and it certainly never had a Sergey and Larry deciding to put a thesis into practice, or a Jobs and Wozniak setting up shop in a garage for that matter...

La Peira in Autumn

Of course many have set out to make excellent wines that express a sense of place in the South and have succeeded beautifully. We all enjoy these wines. Others seduced by the climate enjoy the same pursuit for reasons of lifestyle.

But our mission was different:

To make a wine equal in quality to the greatest of Bordeaux, the Rhone, or anywhere else in the world while expressing a sense of place that was distinctive, different and totally unique.

To do this meant one thing: Growing grapes with a rigor, detail, and precision found only in the world’s finest domaines...Something that is expensive, and requires an enormous amount of hard work. In a sense it’s a vote of confidence in a piece of ground, a slice of climate, and a group of vines...an experiment...

We were lucky to have a single tapestry of soils and vines to work with, collated by a succession of changing owners and growers over the last 50 years, but in the end (regardless of modern tests) it is an experiment.

To embark on this type of endeavor in one’s life is to find yourself in Dante’s basso loco “deep place” selva oscura “where the sun is silent”. Our finest plot is called the Bois de Pauliau (Forest/Wood of Pauliau) and walking the five miles there I often wondered if we had not entered that same author’s “Dark wood” and would never get out. At times it seemed like a round trip of hell. "Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch'intrate", or "Abandon all hope, ye who enter here" is the inscription over the Dante’s ninth gate of hell, and it could be a warning for anyone who starts a Restaurant or a Wine Domaine (or any serious business really.)

At some times in despair you draw inspiration from whatever source you can. For us examples such as Paris’ Salon des Refusés (the “exhibition of rejects”) in the 19th Century, of works (now famous paintings) rejected by the jury of the official Paris Salon which celebrated the status quo and mediocrity. The Fauvists (Wild Beasts), the collection of artists such as Matisse and Derain who, inspired by the light of the south, gathered around Collioure to create a new school of painting (Matisse once said of their teacher Gustave Moreau, ‘He disturbed our complacency’.) But the most heartening articulation of the difference between what the wines of Northern France and Southern France had to offer came from the poet Robert Browning.

In his poem ‘De Gustibus’ (on taste) he details the tastes of two people. Of his friend (for me Northern France and its wines) he writes, ‘Your ghost will walk, you lover of trees, (If our loves remain) / In an English lane, / By a cornfield-side a-flutter with poppies”. Of his own preference (for me Southern France and its wines) he writes, “ What I love best in all the world / Is a castle, precipice-encurled,/ In a gash of the wind-grieved Apennine/ Or look for me, old fellow of mine, / If I get my head from out the mouth / Of the grave, and loose my spirit's bands, / And come again to the land of lands / In a sea-side house to the farther South, / Where the baked cicala dies of drouth, / And one sharp tree - 'tis a cypress - stands, / By the many hundred years red-rusted, / Rough iron-spiked, ripe fruit-o’ercrusted.”

The full poem is here. Many things helped us through and that was one....

And what of our story? How did it end?

Well no story is ever ended, but in the same way some earlier readers of Elizabeth David probably ended up cooking for her as Chefs (and feared her verdict) we ended up presenting our work to our early inspiration, the writer Andrew Jefford.

His article (in the World of Fine Wine) on La Peira can be found here.

Other tasters such as Robert Parker, Gary Vaynerchuk of Wine Library TV have tasted and praised the wines as the finest ever made in the the region, and great on any terms. That’s beyond our fervently hoped for expectations. Yet perhaps for us nothing will eclipse the first words written after the initial 1000 days of our Odyssey...

Andrew Jefford's site can be found here.

For more details about La Peira (and our work in the Terrasses du Larzac) look here.