Sainte-Lizaigne, Indre
This october 21st there was a small wine event that could get bigger in the following years : The Salon des Cépages Rares is a small
wine fair which was first launched in 2019 and
is centered around the wines
made from rare varieties. As you may know there were many more grape varieties grown in France in the 19th century when wine was made locally in all the French regions, then, with the replanting after the Phylloxera and above all after the ill-thought decision of the Appellation administrations to restrict the authorized varieties in the different wine regions to a handful of fashionable varieties, we saw the planted surface of many little-known varieties dwindle or even disappear. The contempt of the "modernist" wine authorities for tradition and authenticity carried in itself the germs of a future reactionary backlash and we all owe to visionary vigneron at Domaine Plageoles for example the quasi resurrection of the many indigenous Gaillac varieties. And of course on the front to give back these rare varieties their deserved place and surface, the natural-wine producers play a central role, because (beyond their attachment to authenticity) they are not shy of making wines out of the limitative Appellation-system boundaries; when you bottle as table wine/vin de France you're free to make the blends/choose the varieties you like, and we as wine amateurs are in return rewarded by what we can drink... Just thyink of the healthy comeback of Pineau d'Aunis or Grolleau for example, if it had been up to the administration only, they would have disappeared long time ago.
The fact that this wine event takes place in Sainte-Lizaigne in a corner of the Indre département is also a reminder that every region even the ones at a good distance of famous wine regions had producing vineyards including often from now-neglected varieties. There were just a few vignerons taking part, including Thierry Puzelat but he actually just came in the morning for a conference but didn't stay for the public event this afternoon.
Recent Comments