The wines of Domaine Henry, an invitation to travel...
When you arrive at the Domaine Henry, at Saint Georges d’Orques on the outskirts of Montpellier, you feel as though you are entering the history of the wines of the Languedoc.
Indeed, studies carried out in collaboration with the National Institute for Agricultural Research (INRA) in Montpellier have revealed that the vineyard of Saint Georges d’Orques has been producing celebrated wines since the Middle Ages. By the eighteenth century, their fame was on a par with the wines of Burgundy and had spread as far afield as Russia and Scandinavia. The arrival of the deadly phylloxera marked the start of the decline.
The Henry family is first and foremost a family of wine-growers, passing the business on from father to son through more than twelve generations. But it’s also very much a family.
When you visit the property, all the family are there. Father, the heir to the domain, mother, who keeps everything running smoothly, and two sons, the first of whom works on the estate and who, on this January morning, is out in the sunshine with his mother, putting the finishing touches to his latest blends.
Then there’s the younger son, his parents’ second pride and joy, who is a chef de rang in a large restaurant in Tokyo, back home for a few months. Everyone comes over to say hello.
If you ask Monsieur Henry what motivates him and on what principles he bases his work, the passion and desire always to learn more are obvious from his first words: “My work has always been driven by the desire to learn how to do something I didn’t know before. But it’s the wine itself which made me want to be a winemaker, or more precisely a Château Latour 1974 which I tasted at the end of the 1980s. To start with I was simply selling the family wine without really knowing anything about it. And then, thanks to questions from customers, I began to teach myself and started buying wine, lots of wine, to get to know it, to learn about it, and to find out the answers to the questions. That's how my passion for wine began. […] I think that the distinctiveness of my wines is my way of branding my estate, a means of expressing my personality in the wine-making process down in the darkness of the cellar. It’s nothing deliberate but simply a desire to enjoy my work, and to give pleasure to those who drink my wine. I make wine in order to bring pleasure to others and for me the worst punishment of all is indifference. Of course, I can imagine that some people may not like my wine, even if that doesn’t exactly make me happy. My wines do have a distinctive personality, so they won’t be to everyone’s taste. That I can understand. But indifference affects me like a blow. "
Then comes the long-awaited moment, the visit to the “cave”. No fancy frills here, no traditional underground cellar. A hangar, some PVC vats brought back specially from Italy after many attempts and tests of the interaction between the vat and the precious nectar.
Monsieur Henry hands us each a tasting glass, eyes sparkling and obviously impatient to start talking about his wines, his other children. Thus begins a journey back in time, a kind of rite of passage through the history of the local terroir of Saint Georges d’Orques. A visit which starts with tasting the estate’s white wine, followed by the rosé and then various reds and ending in a blaze of glory with the Passerille.
We have chosen to talk about three of what we consider to be the most outstanding of the estate's wines, leaving Monsieur Henry to tell the extraordinary story of the Mailhol.
ROSÉ SAINT GEORGES D'ORQUES
If you haven’t tasted this, then you’ve never drunk rosé! Forget those pale and uninteresting wines, all with a similar insipid taste...
This is a “saignée” rosé, in other words it has been produced exclusively from the pressing of grapes matured in the vat. The wine is so intense and full-bodied that it’s a strong bet any blind tasting would place it among the red wines. And the nose?! An explosion of fragrance in which everyone will identify different flavours, here a hint of rose, there a taste of blackcurrant or red berries.
RED LE MAILHOL
The philosophy and project at the origin of this wine are both fascinating and exciting. An incentive to travel… back in time.
In bygone days, in the Languedoc, the young vine or “plantier” was called a “Mailhol”.
The “Mailhol” produced on the Henry estate is a recreation of the wine made at St Georges d’Orques in the eighteenth century, made from the grape varieties of the period. A seemingly impossible task!
So let’s allow Monsieur Henry the honour of telling us about this extraordinary time-defying challenge.
“As I said, I have always had a passion for history in general, and for the history of the terroir of Saint Georges in particular. I like to learn about history because I believe that without our roots we are nothing. Everything I do comes from my own experience, and from what my grandfather taught me. When I decided to buy another estate, during my initial searches in the early nineties, Saint Georges rapidly emerged as one of the obvious choices of terroir in the Languedoc as it’s the only one that’s always mentioned in all the historic literature. And because I was curious and wanted to know more, I read other works to find out what made it so special. My research took me to the regional archives and then to the library at ENSAM (International Centre for Higher Education in Agricultural Sciences) in Montpellier, where I discovered that in the first modern census of the vineyards of France, Saint Georges appeared on the same level as Pomerol and Saint-Emilion. My first surprise was to discover the ‘marque à feu’ or branding mark we still use on our bottles and corks, which certifies the wine’s origin. The next amazing thing was to find no modern grape variety listed among those used at the time (varieties such as ‘oeillades’, etc.). It was truly a leap in the dark and I have to admit that without the help, support and patience of my wife Laurence, it would probably all have come to nothing. Because she had to want to accompany me in the pursuit of this iconoclastic idea. […]
So I contacted Monsieur Boursiquot, who is a world authority on the classification of wine varieties and director of the vineyard genetic resources department (BRG) at INRA in Montpellier. He was very enthusiastic and immediately agreed to help me in this rather crazy project. In May 1997, using 3 or 4 stocks of each grape variety, we began to plant a vineyard on the plot, a stage which lasted for two years, with plantings between 1998 and 2000. We have followed the crowded planting style that was used in the past, we harvest the whole grape without doing any blending afterwards, and we’ve adopted the same type of vinification process.... The only concession made to the production procedure has been in the organization of the crowded planting, as we plant the same variety over several rows. With the benefit of experience we are now able to control the process much better, in particular the much later ripening of the grape, although this hasn’t prevented a certain number of failures over the years, or even the lack of any vintage at all, as in 2006.”
The result of this extraordinary project is a dark, garnet-coloured wine with an astonishing range of flavours. Light and atypical, this vintage will definitely seduce the palettes of those in search of a new experience.
RED PASSERILLE
Whenever you see an exceptional fireworks display, you always wonder what on earth the crowning piece is going to be. And it’s rather the same when tasting the different Domaine Henry wines at the estate. By the time the last wine is announced, you think your taste buds have become so saturated that no further surprise is possible. What a mistake! This time the fireworks display is in your mouth, and the crowning piece is an ‘extraordinary’ wine in the literal sense of the word.
According to the owner of the estate himself, it is the “first non-fortified sweet red wine in France”. Produced like a Sauternes, its extraordinary characteristics include unbelievably low yields, which are in the region of just one glass per plant!
Indeed, it is almost impossible to describe or express what you feel on your first contact with this wine. Its colour is such a dark red it borders on black. You do not drink this wine, you experience it, like an emotion.
To find out more and discover other Domaine Henry wines, visit http://www.domaine-henry.com/default.htm.
Italian wine: Negramaro in 3/81
Lu mejiu amicu è lu cantinieri
Me llea de capu tutti i pinzieri2
As dusk gathers over the South East of Italy, the resinous scent of pine trees spreads in the streets and squares of town centres. People young and old move about aimlessly, dawdling the evening away, some chatting in clusters. The worries of the day evaporate and friends meet for a drink or two. Busy under the stony vaults of one of the many wine bars, Lu Pieru, pouring pitch-black wine for his customers comes in handy to start the evening on a redolent note. Lu Pieru, my very best friend!
Cu menzu quinto me sentu già mbrillu,
cu menzu litru su nu cardillu.
Strong, they can be strong. Wines from the South Italian regions can really go steep on alcohol. Years ago, you would see the grape harvest take the route to the North. It was sold for cutting other wines, to strengthen better known Chianti, Barolo, Bordeaux, you name them. I believe it still happens today, to a lesser extent.
In the Messapian area, Primitivo can go as high as 16%; in Sicily, Nero d'Avola gets to 17%, sometimes 18%. In Salento, Negramaro remains comfortably between 12-14%. You just need an extra glass, call it mezzo litro, to make you sing like a goldfinch3.
Quanti bicchieri de mieru me biu
Tanti pinzieri de capu me lleu.
Tumbler, Flute, Burgundy or Bordeaux glass, Coupe, Paris goblet, Chianti Glass, ISO glass.
The seventies were a fabulous and fabled age for wine bars, usually a popular hangout for locals, where you could meet friends, eat meatballs in fresh tomato sauce, moscardini4 in olive oil and, need I say it?, drink the local products from earthenware carafes. At that time, wine glasses were small and humble. Sometimes they were sturdy, faceted tumblers, decisively staining wooden plank tables. They were never wider than your palm. When you got your mezzo litro in, you could still hold the glass firmly in your hands, with ease. Since then, wine glasses have changed to let you have the fullest of the wine experience: oxygenation, swirling, fragrance and colour. Tables have become smaller and glasses are sometimes oversized, fragile goblets. Aged wine needs some theatre: off with a larger goblet, a larger decanter. Everybody's a connoisseur! Try the swirling experience as you are gaily reaching out to your second mezzo litro.
Mieru pe' tie me vinnu la camisa,
no' mme ne curu ca vau nudu a casa.
L'Appia dei vini, they call it. Appia is an ancient road connecting Rome to Brindisi. Right and left of the road, abundant vineyards speckle its landscape. As you get close to Salento, the landscape darkens to a matt red and vineyards coexist with olive groves.
Sussumaniello, Primitivo, Negramaro, Malvasia bianca e nera are the grapes you come across, although more recently you can also find Sangiovese, Chardonnay, Sauvignon.
In ancient times, wines from this region were very well regarded. They travelled far. Herod the Great, reportedly, drank wine produced in Salento.
Se la fatica se chiama cucuzza,
Mamma ce puzza, mamma ce puzza.
Se la fatica se chiama cicora,
picca me 'ndora, picca me 'ndora.
Much of the proverbial laziness of people from Salento is also connected to their autochtonous drink. What do I care? is a very typical local expression, often repeated obsessively.
Nineteenth-century travel accounts amass observations of an enchanting landscape, baroque churches, tempting, transparent seas, but they also report of a strikingly idle population. Not surprisingly, in the Southern Italian dialects, the first few hours of the afternoon have they own word: "controra": the negative hour, the hour against... During lunch, before the controra strikes with its heat and a white, unsustainable light, wine drinking was made bearable by means of inserting celery or fennel leaves in bottles of red wine. Wine was sipped through the leaves. Such technique is known as "sparacina". It sent people to a good afternoon sleep under the shadow of an olive tree, lulled by invisible cicadas and their wall of sound.
Sai ce m'ha dittu na vecchia masciara,
lu focu de la paja picca dura.
Then we came out in the night air, shirtless, carefree. We felt we belonged to the night. Lu Pieru, still looking after us, was pouring more of his black wine into enormous goblets. There is something profoundly pagan in those nights in July. Every village have got their own festival; every festival their own music. Barefoot, a towering young woman sways her white skirt as she dances to a frenzy. She holds a laced handkerchief. As the pizzica5 accelerates, we get dizzy in keeping up with it. She drops the lace. An old hag mumbles incessantly "the sting, the spider". I was the one who picked the lace and held it in front of her. And then we danced like dingledodies, and I shambled after her6.
Se quanno moriu ieu vau 'n Paradisu,
Se non c'è mieru bonu non ci trasu.
Traces of the Greek civilization are common in Salento. 10 or 15 Km south from Lecce, there is a vast area where a variation of Greek is still spoken. The area is known as Grecia Salentina and the local language is called "Griko".
Calimera, Copertino, Castrignano, Martano, Melpignano, Sternatia, Zollino are some of the names you meet, but many more villages are part of this special linguistic enclave. The word for wine is "krasì".
Ce pìnnamo rìssopu 'e mmas chorèane a gònata. Quai tòssonna, dopu ìmaston gomai krasì, pìamo n'o kuturìsome mpi stin aglisia, sto mmereo atti pporteddha, ka 'ci io' ppleo skotinò. (We drank until our legs started to dance, and then, full of wine, we went for a wee behind the church, by the side door, where it's dark.)7 Negramaro, is a synthesis of two cultures: the Latin and the Greek as they met in Salento. The first half of the word derives from a Latin word: niger (black). The second half comes from the ancient Greek word for black: μαúρο. You get the idea: extra black!
Mieru mieru mieru la là
Senza lu mieru, senza lu mieru.
Mieru mieru mieru la là
Senza lu mieru no pozzu campà.
Mieru mieru mieru la là
Quanti culuri,quanti culuri.
Mieru mieru mieru la là
Quanti culuri me faci cangià.
Shirtless under the stars. Lu Pieru looks at my blackened lips. What's this questioning me? Did we dance away to the gates of Paradise?8 Yes, I saw her tucking away that lace and then she was revived, exhausted but reborn. The old hag repeating monotonously: "Straw is no good to make a lasting fire". The spider dismembered in a final convulsion. Ha! Look at your cheeks, those fast changing colours. Here! some more leaves for this bottle. Here! to the side door. Lu Pieru, sit now, where did you get this wine from, so round and ripe? You won't taste the like of it: moonstone. Lu Pieru, my best friend. Who was that got ashore on the coast of Salento?9 That was the beginning of it all. No, not the Spiders from Mars, come on! But what do you care, tonight? Maybe tomorrow.
Notes
1I bought a bottle of Negramaro not long ago. It cost 4 or 5 euros: Torreguaceto "Pietraluna" 2005, I.G.T. Negramaro del Salento. It was an excellent and unforgettable choice. I got to know later that the wine has made it into a book on best Italian wines in 2007. For a description of the wine, click here.
The wine maker advertises the wine here.
You can probably order it directly from the wine maker. Alternatively an ebay merchant sells it too - click here to buy.
We have not tested the reliability of these sites, so you buy at your own risk.
2The song is often sung to accompany (heavy) wine drinking during local festivals or parties. An amateur version can be heard on youtube. The movie shows a relatively common real-life situation. I do not know the authors or the actors of the video though.
3You can hear the sound of a goldfinch by clicking here.
4Baby octopus.
5It is a traditional dance from Salento, akin to tarantella and connected the myth of Arakne. Pizzica was danced as a cure for the bite of the spider.
6"But then they danced down the streets like dingledodies, and I shambled after as I've been doing all my life after people who interest me, because the only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everybody goes 'Awww!'"
Jack Kerouac, On The Road
7www.greciasalentina.org/L_Html/vino.htm
8Paradiso is a peripheric area in Brindisi, very close to, if not in, the Negramaro area.
9Aeneas is said by Virgil to have arrived in Porto Badisco, a small cove south of Otranto.
