Defining a natural wine has never been an easy task.
Between the supporters of “zero sulfur” and those who allow themselves to add a few grams, those who only swear by certifications and those who refuse to submit to specifications considered as poorly designed standards, finally those who strive to remain in the appellation and those who exclude themselves from it to move to Vin de France, there is enough to verge on a liver crisis.
Thus, certain bottles will proudly display their membership in the “nature” clan, while marvels will go completely unnoticed by the majority of people.
But not just any ones, and even less those of just anyone.
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A generational divide
This is particularly the case of Clos Rougeard, a legendary estate in the Loire Valley.
Formerly embodied by the charismatic Nady and Charly Foucault – the latter having died in 2015 – the property has now entered the fold of the Bouygues brothers.
If the estate has been applying biodynamic principles for a long time, it will have been at the origin of numerous vocations among the new generation of “natural” winegrowers, without ever adopting a militant approach, thus bringing together several clans of amateurs with sometimes biases. diametrically opposed.
For what ?
This is the question we asked Antoine Pétrus, sommelier and Meilleur Ouvrier de France, who counts among his faithful some of the winegrowers cited in these lines: “
Having spoken about it with some of them, the problem is that the term “nature” was not sufficiently protected at the time, and the quality of the wines claiming it…
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