Hannah Fuellenkemper: Tasting Earth with Didier Barral (Wine Zine 03)
Tasting Earth with Didier Barral
Originally Published September 2019
I remember the day I first saw earth. It was the year 2017 and we were planting rootstock, necks born naked to the sun as we laid the sticks to rest in the crazy fray of terrestrial life. Technically this was a Mediterranean vineyard of sandy loam over ancient alluvial deposits which, through other-worldly heat and pressure >>> schist, but spiritually it was closer to cake crumbs. I was struck by how death and decay could be so rich.
2017 was when I left for France with a bag and two-point plan: 1. Get an internship and 2. See if vine work was for me; see if I could. My previous experience could be summed up as, “Have worked in a bar,” but back then “terroir” was just something for filling silences in humid cellars; a talking point I hoped made me sound clever. Fast forward a year and a half later and (normally I wouldn’t believe myself either) now it’s something that fills diary pages and SD cards with photographs.
“In February, damp in bed in a cave in the Loire, I wrote, ‘Today it clicked. I want to work with horses.’”
My diary is how I know on April 5th in Banyuls, France, I found planting vines in chemical soil more like digging graves than raising life. Then how on April 10th it was back to zen, my hand-axe shaping fudge-soft chocolate into Neolithic mounds. In February damp in bed in a cave in the Loire I wrote, “Today it clicked. I want to work with horses.” How they, the plough, the earth and man move in sync; described the flow, the furrows—how harmonious.
Then this June: Tasting chez Didier Barral, Faugères, Languedoc, just before noon. Since 93 a winemaker, 35 hectares. Revolutionary thinker, tinkerer, biodynamist turned polyculturalist. 13th gen. vine grower. Basically grows worms.
The entry continues:
Earthworms are important allies. Disco under cow patties. Happiest under grass. Can exceed in right conditions 2.5 million worms a hectare = 3000 kg/ha in mass!!
Grass roots and insects also matter: former fix nitrates, latter loosens soil structure. Both ↑ soil permeability = key for wine’s acidity. Roots need earth-pores w/ O2 to go deep, will come back up if too compact to breathe.
For 15 years Didier hasn’t ploughed. Instead he uses cows! Tractor = heavy = compacts soil. Plus plough too deep = kill the worms! (other microbial life + their tunnels also disturbed). Cows munch their winters through the vines turning soil gently while patties fertilize.
No plough also helps with drought (topical! this is what life in south is all about.) So what instead? Mow? No, just rolls. Grass >> carpet >> breaks down to mulch.
Another problem here is fashion: farmers grow on trellises for ease of tractors but when you plough in one direction → water run-off and erosion. Goblet vines are much better, bush makes shade and (points to neighbour): see the grapes? How they’re scorched and burned? This is the south: when will we learn?
I never thought I’d be into soil, but that’s the thing with wine, that liquid crossroad between all things. Like an iceberg you think you know a thing or two. But then you learn: as above, so beneath.