The famous wine writer, Robert Parker, loves to bandy about the word “Garrigue” (pronounced Ga-reeg) when describing certain wines. I never grasped the sense of it until I went to visit Tim Ford in the Midi-Pyrenee’s district of France, where he has a winery, Domaine Gayda. I quickly noted that Tim is very proactive where the environment is concerned. Carbon footprints are very serious here. The winery is organic and biodynamic, and they have just gotten their certification from the government. Wild flowers grow among the vines unlike any other vineyard I saw in the area. It looked wild when compared to the bare, brown, stark vineyards that were sprayed into oblivion. Tim tells me that these go to the co-operatives where they are sold in bulk to huge American wineries and plastered with a fancy label. Full of chemicals and about as unnatural as one could find
Tim took me to his favorite vineyards in the Black Mountains of the Minervois district, above the town of La Liviniere. Here, the soil, I use the term loosely, is nothing but rock, acres and acres of rock. Some sedimentary, some shale, while other vineyards are strewn with small granite boulders. Each plot different from the next, and all laden with wild blooming flowers (wild lavender, gorse, pyramid orchids and antirrhinums), herbs (wild Thyme and rosemary), fruiting trees (fig and plum) and filled with biodiversity, bugs, birds, animals and the like. Each vineyard is tiny and hand managed without machinery, while more labor intensive, it guarantees the best quality.
We pulled into his highest vineyard, which is a north-facing slope. With little afternoon sunlight, the grapes take longer to ripen. Ensuring plusher tannins, the harvest isn’t until October. An October harvest allows Tim to use his tanks twice a vintage as the warmer, earlier ripening fruit gets picked in September. As soon as I stepped out of the Range Rover, you need 4X4 on these rocky slopes, I could smell a cacophony of wild herbs. As if a McCormick spice truck had crashed and spilled its contents in the vineyard. There were fewer flowers here, but loads of herbal, earthy scents.
When we visited one of the south facing vineyards the place was filled with wild flowers, blooming fruit trees and wild roses. Here, my nose was assailed with the most fragrant wild perfume that only Mother Nature could create.
It all made sense. I had tasted wines from each of these vineyards and could appreciate the soil, the mineral shale, herbs, flowers, sedimentary, friable clays and warm granite. Here was the French term “Terroir,” in a nutshell. I could taste what terroir means; all the influences on the grape during its ripening period, the soil, the slope aspect, the rainfall, the sunlight, the surrounding vegetation. It was all summed up on the palate for me in the word “Garrigue”, the physical manifestation of the terroir. The ability to taste one’s surroundings was incredible, and captured in a bottle. If it wasn’t for Tim’s foresight in leaving Mother Nature to her own devices and creating an environment where she takes care of herself, this could not be. The flowers would be sprayed, the herbs would be sprayed, the bugs would be sprayed and the birds wouldn’t visit, the flowers wouldn’t pollinate and you would have one of those other, desolate, barren vineyards that are so unhealthy that you have to spray them all the time to ensure you can get a crop.
So, when I taste Tim’s wines, expertly crafted by Gayda’s winemaker, Vincent (pronounced Van-son), I can see the vision they are making. A vision where the vineyards do the talking, site specific Garrigue in a bottle created by Mother Nature over the centuries. Now I get it, and you will too when you taste this wine.
