ShowViniste The Citizen Wine Blog

As a journey, in the center of the earth

This time, I urge you to get rid of your preconceived ideas, anything that can hinder the understanding of a new world, to expose to you, ready to hear what will be the norm tomorrow, when the Men have finally matured.
I take you, as a journey, in the center of the earth, on a floor mat shale, flat stones, slivered, chopped, with blue and gray, in the vineyards of Faugères . Mediterranean, behind you, beyond Beziers, emphasizes the horizon. Before, the foothills of the Cevennes torturing the landscape, made ​​of valleys and hills, crossed by streams below, colorful oak and scrub , covered with vines, always aligned in rows close together. The winter continues and some vines, all ruffled in the wind, have not lost their hair.
If the name has its classics, just move away from the highway to explore an area atypical as the Clos Fantine, at a place called The Liquière. The father, a postman by trade, in its heyday, the adventure began investing in the vineyards of his homeland.

Today, on 24 acres, his three children, Carole, Corine and Olivier, the job experience working as an artist expressing his talent through intuition. Nevertheless, they have already certainties like this: "It is nature which controls and is the man to learn to adapt and understand that it is one with it, without taking themselves to a predator. " Each season, they are testing with their vineyards and wine natural practice. This is not a return to the past. It's not flee progress. This is not only refuse the use of pesticides and fertilizers. It is, however, a fierce will to go ahead and experiment with natural processes for the cultivation of the vine. At this point they will, for example, to not to use copper to treat this damn mildew, which, more than ever, in 2008, has seriously affected the production of grapes throughout the country. Carignan alone requires, according to them, treatment with the flower of sulfur and an alga, the Lithotame.

In spring, they observed that the vegetation, that is to say, the grass, flowers, emerging, gives a particular color on the ground that will be different depending on the climate of the year. Violet will be the sign of bacteria. The green fungi etc. ...

They consider the plots as the undergrowth of a forest, autonomous, and grapes as a wild fruit, balance in nature for millennia. If, through the vineyards today, neatly groomed, frozen, everything rid of uncertainty, one easily notices the efforts and effects of men, it is not this world invisible to our eyes. This living that modern agriculture is bent on exterminating.

In the world of Clos Fantine, the earthworms that gives the wine its authenticity, it is the fungi that are born in the soil that will allow the wine cellar. But what a job they give there, three there, to listen and watch the vines: "We cut the grapes by hand, we feel, we touch, when we see the grapes must be harvested or not. We want to keep the firmness of the night, the freshness of the fruit, natural acidity, which will take up the wine in your mouth, do dwell on the palate "

The juice in bowl, take their time to ferment, until 2 years. Unthinkable for many makers of wine, when, for them, modern techniques allow them to finish a wine in less than a week.

The range of the field is divided into four red wines, between 8 and 20 euros, AOC 2 and 2 of table wines . At the opening of bottles, remember to decant the wine. The natural, sulfur-free or added in very small quantities, required in return to keep the carbon dioxide that is released to fermentation for better preservation. The decanter is to aerate it. That is to say removing the gas that will always give it in the mouth "curling", and for some pleasant surprise to those who taste it for the first time. But the carafe is also to give him oxygen, place it in the atmosphere of the meal and make it live with you. Is sharing a drink energy!

Clos Fantine gives you a choice of wines true to the rules of the appellation Faugères Courtiol as the vintage, subtle blend different every year, and wines of expression, more personalized, more atypical, released on the table. My advice: Be tempted by t ... chuuuuu, a pure Mourvèdre, different vintages, or The Red Lantern, shivering fruit.