French Revolution: old, New World meets new, Old World

A visit to the Domaine de Sainte Rose, a Languedoc vineyard purchased in 2002 by a young English couple, provides lessons in the pluses and minuses of globalization.

As I drove up to Servian, a small village in the Hérault, one of the original 83 departments created after the French Revolution and one of the primary wine-growing regions in the Languedoc, I thought about the news from here of the previous week. Members of CRAV (the French acronym for the Regional Committee for Viticultural Action) had attacked twice within 50 km of this small provincial village, setting fire to a wine cooperative and vandalizing the bottling line of a négociant.

Several months previously I had watched the Internet video that the group had sent to France 3 television, demanding that the French government of Nicolas Sarkozy provide them with assistance. Their increasingly desperate actions to attack perceived symbols of the globalization that they believe threaten their way of life are weekly news items.

It’s actually a case of history repeating itself. Just over a century ago this same area was the scene of a civil insurrection by disaffected winegrowers who could not sell their wine. Then French President Georges Clemenceau put down this 1907 revolt with the army, and six demonstrators were killed. I’m sure that some of the descendants of protesters in that first Winegrowers Revolt are CRAV members.

As any Francophile knows, protest in France is not limited to the wine industry. Rarely does a day go by without a newscast about some new sort of résistance sociale. Why there’s even a website of that name with a list of manifestations (protests), grèves (strikes) and suppression d’emploi (redundancies). From the viewpoint of the protesters, which range from socialists to anarchists in the political spectrum, any anti-globalist target is fair game in the interest of social solidarity.

Worker-employer relations, even in the best of times in France, are not the best. So about-to-be-sacked employees at Sony, 3M, Caterpillar and several other international companies with offices in France have taken to holding their executives hostage to get a better redundancy package. Then there were the union employees for a Corsican maritime company who hijacked one of the boats in the company fleet as part of the “negotiations” of a labor contract.

The romantic notion of organized social protest starts at any early age here. Students at a large number of French universities blocked or disrupted classes for most of this year’s school term in protest against proposed higher-education reforms. It’s unsure, as this is being published, if they will have their end-of-term exams, or, in the case of final-year students, receive their diplomas.

These university protests were started by President Sarkozy’s decision to overhaul higher education by allowing each university to directly recruit professors, decide how to spend its budget, and seek private money from donors; all pretty logical initiatives to someone from outside of France. But higher education is considered to be a basic right in France. And public universities, which charge just a few hundred euros a year, are required to accept anyone who has passed the high school baccalaureate exam. The result is a higher education system that, outside of a few elite Grandes écoles that are separate from the mainstream public university system, is characterized by overcrowded classrooms, inadequate libraries, cafeterias and social facilities, and underpaid, unmotivated professors.

Which is a long explanation about why I was in Servian. It wasn’t because I was researching the 1907 Winegrowers Revolt. Or even to try to locate some CRAV members and ask them why, in a time of declining wine consumption in France, they didn’t request some of the EU money (up to 8,000 euros per hectare) that was available for replacing low-quality/high-yield grape varieties with premium varietal wines such as Syrah or Chardonnay. Or why they did not think more about the branding of their wine or about the type of wine that people wanted to drink.

One thing that I have learned from living in the land of Cartesian logic is that inflexible commitment to fixed principles and positions is often preferred to Anglo-Saxon pragmatism. So, if your boss is making you redundant, seize the moment–and the boss. If someone trying to mess with your school, shut it down, regardless if the other 90% of the student body would prefer to study and earn their degree.

I was actually in Servian to speak with a young British couple, Charles and Ruth Simpson, who have thought long and hard about all of the questions facing small wine producers in France. The Simpsons had purchased the 55-hectare Domaine de Sainte Rose in 2002. Previously, it was known for its inexpensive wine that was sold through the local cooperative. Charles, with an international marketing career in the pharmaceutical industry, brought his business and general management acumen to this venture. In addition to experience in the international humanitarian sector, Ruth has a blue-blood pedigree in the drinks industry; she is the fifth generation descendant of William Grant, of William Grant and Sons Scottish Whisky fame.

They told me that they had considered purchasing a vineyard in Australia, New Zealand, USA, Italy, Spain and Georgia before choosing France’s Languedoc region. What drew them here, they explained, was the quality of the terroir and the quality of life in France.

The property had not produced wine for the previous decade so there was plenty of work. A replanting project was their first priority, ripping up 18 ha of lesser-quality varieties to prepare the way for better white grape varieties such as Sauvignon Blanc, Muscat and Marsanne, and red grape varieties such as Mourvèdre, Petit Verdot and Syrah. Other vineyard improvements consisted of a high-tech, flexible plastic trellising (wooden posts and wires) that allows better support and control of the canopy as the vines grow. They also have changed the style of pruning to reduce grape yield significantly. They have reduced the use of herbicide at Sainte Rose with the “side plow” or Intercep, which seems to have become the default organic weed control method in France. To limit vine growth, encourage friendly insects, and promote biodiversity and soil fertility, they now mow, rather than plow, between the wine rows.

There has been a significant (upwards of a quarter of a million euros) investment to renovate and redesign the winery. State-of-the-art equipment (a new pneumatic press, sophisticated cooling and heating systems, and the latest stainless steel tanks) has been installed. Their intent, as they mention on their attractive and informative website, was to create “small quantities of affordable, hand-crafted wines.”

By and large they have achieved this goal. On a personal level, they have been accepted into the community (“No trouble with CRAV,” said Charles; “I understand their grievances, and even though I don’t agree with their tactics, I empathize with their frustration in not being able to support their families.”), and their two young daughters attend school in the village.

Their wines are now sold in a dozen countries. A very small percentage of their production is sold in France, and, unlike the majority of small vineyards, they don’t advertise their location with signs that draw in the public for tastings and sales. On reflection, however, this isn’t so surprising. The heavyweight bottles, stylish labels, screw caps on the lower-priced wine, quality corks on the more-expensive wine, are very, very New World. It’s somewhat obvious that this wine was never targeted at the French wine consumer.

Not that the wines are bad. Critical acclaim from leading wine authorities like Jancis Robinson, who called their Barrel Selection Roussane, which is part of their Barrel Selection series of varietal wines produced in small quantities, the “junior version” of the legendary Rhone Valley, Chateau de Beaucastel Chateauneuf-du-Pape Blanc, Roussane “Vielles Vignes.”

The Domaine de Sainte Rose Barrel Selection Roussanne was recently awarded a Trophy Winner in the “Top 100 Vins de Pays of France 2007″: “Full-on toasty, buttery oak, hint of cedar. Textured, rich and complex with lemony, citrussy acidity giving a zesty lime finish.”

This whole concept of a Barrel Selection of “special, one-off cuvees,” the existence of a Sainte Rose Wine Club that offers members regular news updates, exclusive offers and discounts, along with Tasting Nights is top-notch marketing. Local vignerons, many of whom have never given a thought to what the consumer wants to drink, could certainly stand to benefit from considering some of these marketing, branding and production ideas.

I did enjoy the Barrel Selection Roussanne, along with other white wines they produce using the Roussanne grape. However, when it came to the reds, I found them short on complexity, too contemporary and lacking a je ne sais quoi. Actually I do know what was lacking: that elusive and indefinable terroir element.

These are fashionable, modern wines, meant to be drunk young. The best of the vin de pays wines of this region are like the traditional century-old mas farmhouses that you see in the vineyards of southern France, with solid stone foundations and walls and an earthiness that makes them part of the surroundings. They are hunkered down to avoid the mistral and their narrow windows protect them against the heat of summer and the cold of winter.

By contrast, the Sainte Rose reds were like modern, modular homes, constructed to fit a market need and engineered for maximum consumer appeal. Now, one of the major problems with much of French wine marketing is that it comes off as arrogant and pretentious and nearly impossible to understand (particularly the AOC system). So it may be that some elements of the Domaine de Sainte Rose experience (the emphasis on quality, well thought out branding and packaging, etc.) can serve as a template to French vignerons who want to embrace some change.

My difficulty, however, is that if terroir is best described as “somewhereness,” the Domaine de Sainte Rose seems to be indicating “somewhereelseness.” They need, in my opinion, to get more of that weathered-stone-mas authenticity into their wine. Their intelligence and dedication to make Domaine de Sainte Rose world-class make me think that they will get there.

Tagged as: Languedoc