Christian Imbert of Domaine de Torraccia:
the indefatigable ambassador for Corsican wine

The octogenarian Christian Imbert is a tall, imposing man, with a booming voice and Hollywood leading-man, rugged good looks. His life story even reads like a Hollywood film script. For 15 years after World War II he was a French version of Sir Richard Francis Burton (the 19th century explorer, not the actor), living a nomadic existence in Chad, in central Africa, where he exported agricultural products. His living room is filled with reminders of his time in Africa: a pair of large elephant tusks lean against one of the room’s wall, and on a shelf is a wooden machete-like arm, hard as iron and used, he explains, by the natives to split open a man’s head.

Surely one of France’s most colorful winemakers, Imbert is passionate about everything he does. He has what the French might call a “grande gueule.” If you put that into your translation software, you may come up with the literal, pejorative, definition “big mouth.” However, the correct, figurative definition, in this case, is of someone who is unafraid to speak out. Other adjectives that come to mind, with Imbert, are “opinionated,” “bull-headed” and “fearless.” Without those qualities, he would never have achieved all that he has achieved today. Characteristically, for example, he chose to locate his vineyard near Porto-Vecchio, at the southernmost tip of Corsica, and not in what are considered the island’s primary winemaking regions: Patrimonio in the north or Ajaccio to the west. But when he came to Corsica in 1964 no one was making quality wine on the island, so his choice of location might not been based less on contrarian tendencies, and more on serendipity.

After leaving Chad and before coming to Corsica, he married his first wife, Jacqueline, who was a dancer and theater performer in New York City. She wanted to live in Paris, he says, so they found an apartment on the Rue du Bac in Paris. She was a mix of American capitalism (her grandfather was the American retail magnate Harry Gordon Selfridge, Sr., who founded the British department store Selfridges) and her father was a French nobleman, the Vicomte Jacques de Sibour, who was also a famous WWI aviator. Moving from the jungles of central Africa to Paris was an enormous change for Imbert. After briefly considering and then dismissing the idea of building a greenhouse in Paris to grow flowers (an idea that still makes him chuckle, over forty later), he set sail in a sailboat with one of his wife’s friends, the noted French actor Claude Dauphin, to explore the Greek islands.

Somewhere between the Cyclades and Corfu, he says, the idea was hatched for him to search for property on the island of Corsica. He can’t quite remember why exactly he decided on Corsica, but a tour of the island that he had made in 1964 with Dauphin, in an Alfa Romeo convertible, had a lot to do with the decision. He was taken with the raw, savage beauty of the island, the scented scrubland maquis, and the idea of creating something here.

This was around the time that France was repatriating and settling former residents of its North African colonies, which had won, one by one, their independence. More than 17,000 of them were settled on Corsica’s level eastern shore, where they began to plant vineyards like those in Algeria that had supplied France with low-quality, high-alcohol wine. This industrial winemaking activity increased the vineyard area in Corsica fourfold between 1960 and 1976.

Imbert had other intentions in mind. He wanted, he explains, to create a vineyard in Corsica that would produce quality wine. In a rented Citroên 2CV, he began to explore, with the aid of a topographical map, the area around Porto-Vecchio. One day he was returning from the mountains to the west of Porto-Vecchio, and he came across an old woman who was walking alongside the road.

The woman asked Imbert what he was doing there, and he explained how he was searching for a property to purchase. She said nothing, but returned the following week, with her father and several other male members of her family, to the hotel where he was staying. They offered to assist him in his search. After viewing several unpromising properties, they showed Imbert the property that would eventually become the Domaine de Torraccia.

But after paying a per-hectare price for the 75 hectares, he was told at the town hall where he went to register the purchase that their cadastral map only showed 44 hectares for this particular property. After speaking with the sellers, he discovered that the money had already been divided between five families, several of which had already spent their share on things like cars and televisions.

Imbert says that there was not a case of deception, and that no one was trying to swindle him. “The last survey map for that area,” he explains, “was done in 1868. People there had only a vague idea of where their property began or ended.”

The patriarch of the family, a former military officer, took charge, and other bits of family property were added into the deal, along with other property that the five families purchased from others in the village. Imbert had his 75 hectares, and he began to clear it for planting.

In all, over the next seven years he spent more than 3,000 hours clearing scrub trees and other vegetation off of the property. In 1965, he planted his first grapevines—two hectares of Grenache and Syrah, which were the only varieties that he could purchase in the island’s plant nurseries.

“I looked around at all of the mediocre wine that was being made with these imported grape varieties,” he says, “and I thought to myself—‘If I want to make a distinctive wine here, I’m going to have to use the native grape varieties’.”

Easier said then done. After some searching, he located an old vigneron in the north of the island, who had a vineyard with native grape vines. “It was the most incredible thing,” recalls Imbert. “He had one Niellucciu grapevine here, and the next one was a Sciaccarellu [both native, red Corsican grape varieties]. Then, over there would be a Biancu Gentile [a white Corsican variety].”

He went around behind the old winemaker, attaching different-colored pieces of electrical tape to the different grapevines. They took cuttings that were then attached to rootstock, and Imbert began slowly to cultivate these long-forgotten, native grape varieties that had been displaced by higher-yield varieties.

Lacking a wine cellar, Imbert took his grapes to the local cooperative to make wine. “They laughed when they saw my native grapes,” he says. Not many of those who laughed initially at his efforts are still around. The cooperative is gone, and, of the 2,400 hectares that was planted in vineyards around Porto-Vecchio in the early 1970s, only 400 hectares remain today.

A lot of the credit for the removal of those low-quality, high-yield grape varieties rests with Imbert. He created, in 1971, the group UVA Corse (“uva” means “grape” in Corsican). Imbert, who served as the group’s president for more than 30 years (he is now President Emeritus, having relinquished the post of president recently), says that UVA Corse is more than an association of winemakers. “It’s more a philosophy of winemaking than an association of winemakers,” he explains. “UVA Corse’s key principles are respect for our terroir, the return to traditional Corsican grape varieties and traditional grape growing and winemaking techniques, and a continuous effort to improve the quality and typicity of Corsican wine.”

Imbert was also instrumental in obtaining the AOC Vin de Corse-Porto-Vecchio designation in the early 1970s. He remembers those times as exciting, but difficult. “The Corsican vignerons resented me because I was an outsider, coming here and telling them how to do things. The ‘pieds-noir’ [the French expression for French nationals who were born in Algeria] in Corsica didn’t like me much either, as I was against their low-quality, chaptalized wine [before being outlawed in the late 1970s, the high-yield wine that was commonly made in Corsica was often “chaptalized,” meaning that the alcohol strength was increased by adding sugar].”

There are undoubtedly some who still dislike Imbert, who has never hesitated to make known his opinion, and who doesn’t tolerate dissent easily. Just ask his son Marc, who has taken over operation of the Domaine de Torraccia recently. He tried twice earlier to work with his father, but left each time, first to spend time in Bordeaux working with several vineyards, and the second time in the Napa Valley.

The third time appears to be, as they say, the charm. He is anxious to build on his father’s work, which includes manual weed control with hoes, not chemicals, and harvesting the grapes by hand. The only treatment they use for controlling mildew in their certified-organic vineyard is bouillie bordelaise, what is known as the “Bordeaux mixture,” a lime-copper-sulfate-water mix, and a sulfur spray. It would seem to be relatively straightforward to go biodynamic, if the younger Imbert cares to apply the expertise gained by working with leading biodynamic winemakers in France and Napa.

Filling Christian Imbert’s very large shoes would be a tall order for anyone. He has been producing consistently excellent wines for over two decades now, including some of the most age-worthy Corsican red wines made. This is a particularly amazing fact, since none of his wines, red or white, are aged in oak barrels; he considers the addition of oak to be uncharacteristic of traditional Corsican wine. The Domaine de Torraccia red, a distinctly-perfumed, medium-bodied wine made primarily from the Niellucciu grape, with the addition of some Sciaccarellu, Syrah and Grenache, can be kept for up to 15 years.

The domain’s flagship wine, the AOC Vin de Corse-Porto-Vecchio Cuvée Oriu, is 80% Niellucciu and 20% Sciaccarellu. “Oriu” means cache or stash in Corsican, a reference to the longstanding practice by the island’s infamous bandits of hiding money and arms in mountain caves. You’ll want to stash any bottles of the Cuvée Oriu that you get your hands on in a safe place, as this powerful and concentrated red, with its strong, earthy minerality and elegant notes of violets and cherries, can be kept for up to 25 years.

The younger Imbert is obviously happy to be back home at the Domaine de Torraccia. And who wouldn’t be, with its 43 hectares of vineyards and 25 hectares of olive trees, 300+ days of sunshine in a typical year (the most in all of France), and magnificent views of the Mediterranean? He says that his father’s wines have evolved (not in terms of aging, but in style) over the years. “His first wines,” he says, “were more rustic, as there was a need to learn how to get the best from the Corsican grape varieties. More recently,” the younger Imbert adds, “his wines have become increasingly finessed and balanced. We must avoid, at all cost, making wines with a ‘standardized’ taste. Our wines should have the individuality and specificity of this place, and that is where I hope to continue my father’s work.”

Arguably, Christian Imbert has done more for Corsican wine over the past three decades than anyone else. Both with the creation of UVA Corse and his untiring, unceasing promotion of traditional Corsican grape varieties and traditional wine, he has helped to dispel clichés about how Corsican wine does not travel, or age well, and that it’s rough and unrefined. Now, it’s time to welcome a new generation of Corsican winemakers (and there are many, young, talented winemakers on the island, including his son Marc) to take the stage. Some of them will be featured here in future Vine Route articles.

Tagged as: Corsica