Meeting a Wine Legend
Today, we were lucky enough to meet a King among wine makers. And as with all great legends, the man was so much more than the myth. Let me tell you a little more about Monsieur Thierry Germain and his winery Domaine des Roches Neuves. Even if you don’t know much about wine, you might enjoy hearing about this incredible chap and the magic that happens in his vineyards.
We were more than a little nervous when we showed up to taste wine. As you will know by now, our French is almost non existent. Here we are showing up in the freezing rain to meet a French wine making hero with little more than "Bonjour." Lucky for us, Monsieur Germain wouldn’t let a little thing like language get in the way of someone experiencing the wines he’s so passionate about.
Monsieur Germain is known around the world for being one of the leaders in biodynamic wines. Now I should tell you that before we went to visit, I had heard a little about biodynamic wines. Mr T has been reading all about it as it’s something he’s very passionate about. In listening to the odd tidbit, I thought it was a bit over the top. It’s not just organic farming, it has this whole other level of mysticism about it, harvesting and bottling when the moon is at the right angle, breaking the month into fruit days, root days, leaf and flower days and so on. And as with all things (gluten free diets, Cross Fit, Beyoncé) people tend to get a little fanatical about it.
But then you meet someone like Monsieur Germain, you hear him talk about how he listens to the land that he farms, how he understands every single thing going on in his vineyard and how he captures that in a bottle, and it all makes perfect sense. Then you taste the wine and you realise he’s right, it makes all the difference. In fact we chatted for almost an hour before tasting any wines, that's how gripped we both were in learning more about his process. But there’s a little more to this story than meets the eye.
Monsieur Germain comes from generation after generation of wine makers in his family. It’s in his blood. His wines are so outstanding that after his 2012 and 2013 vintages, he was awarded a 3 star rating by La Revue de Vins du France, one of only two wines in the whole of Loire Valley. He was riding high, and then tragedy struck.
While on a trip to Japan, he suffered a life threatening lesion on his brain that resulted in a severe case of amnesia. Monsieur Germain couldn’t even recognize his own family or leave his house for fear of getting lost. Slowly, he recovered but it was a long road to making wine again. When he did get back into the vineyard, he started to question all of the theory about wine making. Because of his ongoing memory challenges, he began to make wine with his heart, or “with emotion” is how he describes it. And to hear him talk about his vineyards and the earth that he works day in day out, you can feel that emotion yourself.
We went down into the cellars, part of them date back to the 15th Century and are truly a sight to behold. The newer section that leads directly from the tasting room, Monsieur Germain build himself “with my own hands, in three weeks,” he tells us. I assume he means he did it himself with machinery but having met this man, I would half expect him to be digging into the earth with his bare hands. This is a fellow who makes his own compost and talks about it like a chef would talk about creating masterpiece dishes.
Once we emerge from the cellar, we start to learn a little more about how these incredible wines are made. Every single grape is harvested by hand and they use horses that Monsieur Germain’s daughter manages. His team is dedicated to a specific “parcellaires” and it’s a ratio of one person per two hectares. That’s crazy small. This allows his team to know everything they possibly can about the earth they are working. If they don’t come to work with a smile and good energy, he says “I send them home to take a day off.” He doesn’t dock them holiday, he just has them take the day for themselves. Their energy is just that important to the process.
And talking of the team, Monsieur Thierry picks his team like he makes his wine, with emotion. You’d expect him to have a team of the top Oenology students from around the world. Instead, one is a hairdresser, one is a butcher, another had been unemployed for four years. But they all possess a passion and an energy that fits together perfectly.
And so to the wines. We tasted everything, the reds, the whites, the wines that haven’t been bottled yet that were created especially for a wine salon that just occurred. Every single one was truly outstanding. Monsieur Germain attributes his success to “making wine on the vine.” It’s not about oak, or sugar, or yeast or the blending. The hard bit, he says, is out there in the vineyard. Once you get the fruit in, he says very humbly, “a child could make the wine.” Somehow I doubt that very much, but it is interesting that most of his effort and most of his reward is out there in the vineyard. That’s why he’s taking out some vines to plant more trees. That’s why he cultivates his own vines from cuttings in his nursery, some from stock that date back to 1904. That’s why he treats his vines with the utmost respect and love.
Should you seek out his wines at every opportunity? Yes you should. Of course don’t have to take my word for it, Google his wines and you’ll see rave review after rave review. You can find all the technical wine tasting time information out there. But all I can tell you is how the wine makes you feel. It’s the purest form of winemaking you can find. It’s a kind of magic I’ve never experienced before. And Monsieur Germain is the most compassionate and wonderful magician you could hope to meet.
