Taming the Grapes
“Ahhhh, carbo -
“All the wines taste the same,’”‘you can’t taste the terroir anymore,’” or worse, “it’s a young people’s thing.”
Yet, thanks to ‘delicate’ vinification techniques, be it carbo, infusion, or whole bunch fermentation à la Bourguignonne, our Southwestern grape varieties have been enjoying a new lease of life over the past decade.
They say the industrial practices of the 1960s to 1980s sounded the death knell for our indigenous grape varieties (machine harvesting, marc pumps, excessive pumping over, excessive woodiness, etc.). Perhaps it wasn’t just the standardisation of taste at work, with the overwhelming dominance of the Merlot-Cabernet Sauvignon-Cabernet Franc trio in MAGA mode, but also the desire for the vine to serve the machine, when it should have been the opposite.
Today, a great many of us believe the opposite: we need our intelligence to serve the vines. Our thin-skinned grape varieties, which release a lot of tannins at the slightest touch, reveal all their majesty during carbonic maceration, without losing an ounce of their identity. Fabien Jouves’ ‘Autochtones’ in Cahors and Vincent Alexis’ ‘Bergecrac’ in Bergerac are two examples that everyone agrees on!
These delicate grape varieties need delicate winemakers. There are around a hundred of us in the Southwest with examples that counter the miserable reputation of our indigenous grape varieties. We’d love to share them with you. Will you be coming in November?
Is it possible to revive grape varieties in the light of our know-how today? The answer is obvious.”
Translated from the French @contrastes.salon
Contrastes Natural Wine Fair Southwest France
📆 9/10 November 2025
📍Prep’Art Toulouse
