Virgile's Vineyard Read online

  The chalked legend above the peeling double doors opposite Le Pressoir is still there: ‘Virgile Joly – Cave Particulière – Depuis 2000’. However, the tiny cave that lies behind is now used only for the storage of bottles that are ready for sale. The wines are currently made and matured in a large agricultural building on the edge of the neighbouring village of Arboras. ‘Large’ but not nearly large enough, as you’ll find an almost equally large canvas extension parked alongside it, and almost every square metre of both packed with concrete and fibre-glass cuves, wooden barrels and all manner of sophisticated machinery.

  The state-of-the-art equipment reflects a kind of partnership with another domaine, Cinq Vents, in Montpeyroux and owned by a former London solicitor (another!), Christopher Johnson-Gilbert. When they first started working together in 2008, it was probably fair to say that Virgile had more time and expertise than money, and Christopher rather the opposite; and their continuing sharing of labour and materials offers Virgile both valuable economies of scale and access to gadgetry that he might never have afforded on his own.

  He now farms 14 hectares of vines, comprising Grenache Blanc and Rouge, Roussanne, Syrah, Carignan, Cinsault and some young Mourvèdre, all tended organically. Of these he owns a third and rents the remainder, partly from locals and partly from ‘investor friends’, who are fans of the domaine and enjoy this degree of involvement in the business. But remarkably, not one of the vines is the same as those he was using in 2000. The gradual ‘regrouping’ over the years has been partly a matter of seeking the best possible sites (he thinks he has one of only four or five parcelles in the area that is suited to Mourvèdre), but also one of sheer practicality. Where once he had 21 parcelles scattered up to 30 kilometres apart, now he has 12 with a maximum distance of 6 kilometres between them. Sadly, this means that the wonderful, almost port-like, sweet Cinsault made from the Nébian grapes in 2001 and sold in limited quantities as Carmen No.1 will never be repeated.

  The ‘mainstream’ production now consists of three whites and three reds, plus his beloved Carthagène, with an annual production of around 80,000 bottles in total. Alongside the prestige cuvées, these now include an easy-drinking, early-drinking ‘Le Joly Blanc’ and ‘Le Joly Rouge’, to which Virgile – ever ready to adapt – originally gave screw-top capsules, until his more traditional French customers complained. Needless to say, from the bottom to the top of the range, all of Virgile’s wines are produced with the same perfectionism and the same overarching concern for the customer’s enjoyment. ‘I’ve never made wines to impress’, Virgile insists. ‘For me, it’s all about elegance, freshness and pleasure.’

  He loves getting feedback from all his customers, especially those who make the trip to Saint Saturnin, and often organises special events there for small groups. But some reactions are especially treasured. He tells me, for instance, with understandable pride how the head sommelier at the illustrious Paris restaurant, Guy Savoy, once telephoned him out of the blue to tell him that a tasting of the Virgile Joly wines had finally ‘reconciled him to the wines of the Languedoc’. The Domaine Joly wines have been on their list ever since. They can also now be found in wine shops and other restaurants throughout much of Europe and as far afield as China, Japan and the United States.

  As certificates in his untidy office above the old cave attest, many of the individual wines have won prizes and medals, but he’s particularly proud to have won a national award given by the Ministry of Agriculture for the best ‘young’ agricultural (not just viticultural) enterprise in the country in 2007.

  Virgile has come a very long way since I first knocked on his door in January 2001, when this book was written.

  But not content with all this, he is also active in numerous national and regional associations and committees, especially those concerned with organic farming, and some of these he finds time to chair. He has even been working closely with the Saint Saturnin co-operative (yes, times have changed!) in an effort to win a separate appellation for the village’s wines, of which there are now eight producers, including the co-op. ‘He’s got a talent for getting people who wouldn’t normally sit in the same room to work together,’ Magda emphasises loyally. So, diplomatic skills on top of all the others...

  There came a point though, when all these ancillary activities, coming on top of the many and various administrative chores that plague all vignerons, were leaving him a little dissatisfied, feeling too cut off from the thing that really makes him tick: the making of wines to give pleasure to wine-lovers.

  Happily, a recent collaboration with a UK internet-based business called Naked Wines has played a significant role in rekindling this primary enthusiasm. Their unusual arrangement encourages customers to subscribe on a monthly basis, effectively sponsoring the making of special, limited edition cuvées, which they are then able to purchase using the investment which they have accumulated. (They call them ‘angels’, like theatrical angels.)

  Meanwhile, for Virgile, like other wine-makers, this sponsorship allows him an outlet for his creativity, which is entirely separate from his own domaine, creating wines which he would never normally be able to contemplate. While some of the wines that he has made for his angels use grapes from his own vines, the arrangement also allows him to operate effectively as a ‘flying wine-maker’ (albeit without the glamour of the flights!), producing wines with grapes that are grown and picked by other landowners, under his supervision, but using their cellar facilities.

  This has, for instance, given him the opportunity to make several wines in the Ventoux in the Rhône Valley, using partly the grapes grown on his late grandfather’s land – something he had never previously permitted himself to dream of doing. It has also allowed him to try his hand at a Merlot and a Sauvignon Blanc (taking him back to his early experiences in Chile) without the need to replant or invest in additional parcelles which offer those varieties, or indeed to commit himself to these particular wines in the long term at all. To all of these he brings the same essential values and philosophy: above all, wines made for the pleasure of drinking them. And the proof of his success must be the fact that one of his Naked Wines offers sold all of its 3,000 six-bottle cases in just three days and another exhausted a 500 case supply in a mere three hours! Small wonder that he looks so rejuvenated.

  On second thoughts, it is a wonder. I simply don’t know how he finds the time, let alone the energy.

  Not that everything is plain sailing. His biggest problem is the accommodation in Arboras. Not only is it too small, but access is difficult for larger vehicles so that only one of the various bottling companies in the region can make it up the narrow country lane – and that one lorry has to come all the way from Perpignan.

  So digging deep in his pocket, Virgile bought some land on the outskirts of the neighbouring commune of Saint Guiraud and applied to the Mairie for planning permission to build a new cave, which was promptly refused. Five years and nine court actions later, after a succession of hearings have dismissed the Mayor’s arguments, Virgile’s lawyer tells him that he finally has an implied permission to build, yet he is still being refused a connection to either the electricity network or the village water supply.

  So our hero is stoically looking into the feasibility of solar power and drilling for water. Where most of us would be having sleepless nights, Virgile seems quietly confident of winning through in some fashion or another, as he often has before.

  As he has mentioned once or twice, ‘Si tu veux, tu peux.’

  *

  Meanwhile, life for me goes on at Les Sources.

  I did plant some vines, a modest forty-five of them at first, opting in the end for conventional varieties, not the special hybrids that Virgile had suggested as a possible strategy to reduce the spraying burden while I was away. However, they were all simply table cépages, intended purely for the grape dish, definitely not for the wine bottle. I told myself, I could never make a wine that I’d be willing to drink, so why even think about
it?

  But one of my chosen cépages, a small row of Cinsault, was of course also a wine grape and it proved to be the one that first started producing grapes in significant quantities – far more than I and my friends could collectively eat. I bought a wine press and made juice, filling my freezer with plastic bottles to preserve the surplus. And every time I drank it, I couldn’t help thinking it had some of the qualities that might make an attractive wine. So, without really knowing why, I planted some more. And I added some Syrah, Grenache and a handful of Carignans.

  When these started producing grapes, I had an even bigger problem. I couldn’t cope with extra juice, but I still didn’t want to drink something worse than I was used to. So I made a Carthagène, foregoing the partial fermentation of the authentic process and simply adding pure, flavourless eau de vie (sold in the supermarkets for bottling fruits) to the freshly pressed grape juice in sufficient quantity to end up with sixteen degrees of alcohol, thus precluding any fermentation. All I had to do then was wait a few months for the particles in the juice to settle and ‘rack’ it off a few times before bottling. And friends seemed to like it, sometimes as an apéritif, sometimes in lieu of a dessert wine.

  ‘So what does Virgile think?’ they kept asking.

  I remembered his ruthless appraisal of wines made by many illustrious local names. ‘I see all its qualities and all its faults,’ he said of one such. But eventually I risked it, apologising for the cutting of the corner on the partial fermentation. He took a thoughtful sip.

  ‘If I were you, I wouldn’t change the “recipe”,’ he said in the closest I was likely to get to praise. So I continued making Carthagène for a couple of years. But the wine-like taste in the fruit juice continued to bug me. Maybe, if I just drank it in secret, without exposing myself to ridicule?...

  In 2011 I finally took the plunge and bought myself a minute thirty-litre fermentation tank. I selected my best bunches with infinite care, de-stemmed them all by hand and fermented them whole in the closest I could get to a macération carbonique. For days, I behaved like a first-time parent, slipping anxiously into my cave in fear of a ‘cot death’. But the first fermentation worked and the malolactic followed. And finally it was ready for racking and bottling – just twenty-five precious bottles by the time the lees had been discarded.

  I waited a few months. I invited some wine-loving friends. No one too abrasive, too likely to choke on their glass. And they liked it. I made another equally small millésime in 2012 and again friends were complimentary. Some of them even asked for more, but I told them that, on this scale of production, it was strictly one bottle per evening.

  ‘So what does Virgile think?’ they all wanted to know.

  ‘Ah...’ A long pause... ‘Well, I haven’t... as it were... actually told him about this.’

  The Languedoc,

  July 2013

  Author’s Note

  As a writer more famous than I can ever hope to be told me, when I first embarked on this second career, ‘You’re not in a court of law any longer. You’re writing a book, not an affidavit.’

  So, in the hope of protecting both the innocent and the guilty, I have ‘juggled’ with a number of the places and personalities in this book, particularly those closest to home. (To have done otherwise might have shortened my life expectancy.) Nonetheless, improbable as it may seem, all the incidents and characters described are inspired by real experience.

  The imminent publication of my third book What else is there for a boy like me? also prompts an explanation of a further small adjustment made in Virgile’s Vineyard. Although this latest work was written after the France-focussed ones, it deals with events that took place earlier, during a winter spent in Rajasthan immediately after I ended my career as a London lawyer. By the time of my subsequent adventures in the Languedoc, I had in fact already left the legal profession and my year spent ‘shadowing’ Virgile was therefore not, strictly-speaking, a ‘sabbatical’. (As the Indian book explains, if I’d been granted the luxury of a sabbatical, I might never have quit the law at all!)

  However, the year of Virgile’s Vineyard did feel oddly like a sabbatical. It was very much an experiment to see how far I could sever my ties and commitments in England to live a full-time life in the Languedoc – something that I still haven’t managed cent pour cent, but the vines and the olive trees and the sheer beauty of the house and surrounding landscape continue to draw me back there for every possible moment.

  Acknowledgements

  There are many thanks now due and some that are overdue:

  to Robin Baird-Smith, Emma Bradford, Mandy Little, Jill Lloyd-Davis, Julian Mannering, Neil Philip, Gail Pirkis, Philip Pullman and Lynne Suo, who have all helped to counsel, encourage and steer me in finding my way in the unfamiliar territory of a second career;

  to all my friends and family who suspended, or at least concealed, their disbelief along the way;

  to Adrienne Fryer for her joyous image of the Languedoc vineyards;

  to Gareth Vaughan who first inspired my passion for wine;

  to Liz and Mike Berry who first persuaded me that the Languedoc was the world’s most exciting vineyard;

  to Bridget and David Pugh, whose matchless restaurant, Le Mimosa (now sadly closed on their retirement) made many before and after me fall in love with the region and whose introductions to local wine-makers were invaluable;

  to all of the wine-makers featured in this book for making the wines that they make and for welcoming me with so much courtesy and patience – I hope that I have done something near justice to their achievements and philosophies;

  to Virgile Joly, in particular, for sharing a year so generously and for being the real ‘héro de l’Hérault’;

  to Michelle Willemin who created the closest place in the Languedoc (or probably anywhere) to paradise;

  and most especially to Andrew McKenzie, without whom this book would have been, in so many ways, impossible.

  Also by Patrick Moon

  ARRAZAT’S AUBERGINES

  Inside a Languedoc Kitchen

  In his sequel to Virgile’s Vineyard, Patrick Moon explores the world of Languedoc food and cuisine.

  Returning to his challenging home, he could easily have filled the days, protecting infant vines from marauding wild boar and hiding baby truffle oaks from unscrupulous neighbours. However, the local campsite café is now an ambitious new restaurant and the determination of its talented young chef to achieve perfection on a shoestring is intriguing. Patrick soon finds himself with sleeves rolled up, pitching in to share for a year the triumphs, disasters and sheer hard work of life in a serious kitchen. But will the VIP diners guess that he has never made mayonnaise before? Or that he put the wrong sauce on the starter?...

  A wider exploration of the region’s finest produce for the table distracts him further. From season to season, Patrick’s quest uncovers the secrets of olive oil and salt production, the mysteries of Ricard and the Roquefort caves, the miracle of the sparkling Perrier spring. From mighty household names to eccentric peasant smallholdings, his expeditions encompass an extraordinary cast of characters and a rich vein of humour.

  But always there are the vines and olives, not to mention aubergines, demanding attention at home.

  Arrazat’s Aubergines is a great read for any Francophile or food-lover and, for fans of Virgile’s Vineyard, it continues Patrick’s adventures with Manu and other familiar characters, whilst also following the continuing progress of Virgile himself.

  *

  ‘The perfect food-based sequel to his wine book’ Restaurant Magazine

  *

  ‘Enough erudition and warmth to make it as rewarding as one of the sensational local Roqueforts... Moon finds himself immersed in the back-breaking but romantic business of Languedoc cuisine, and leads us on a mouth-watering odyssey through snails, crayfish, foie gras – and aubergines. The humour is gentle but this is a thoughtful – and by no means misty-eyed – paean to the people and food
of the region.’ Daily Mail

  *

  ‘The buffet of colourful characters and food adventures will please Francophiles, foodies and anyone who wants to experience la vie rustique – without the hassles of actually living it.’ Publishers Weekly

  *

  ‘His drive, affection and enthusiasm for his subject matter shine through’ In-House Lawyer

  *

  ‘Cleverly combines the slog of Hell’s Kitchen with all the familiar, friendly elements of foreign fantasy.’ The Times

  *

  WHAT ELSE IS THERE FOR A BOY LIKE ME?

  A successful City solicitor, in his mid-forties, Patrick Moon finds himself disenchanted with the law but enchanted with India. A decision to abandon the one gives him the freedom to return to the other, as he tries to come to terms with the opportunity he has created for himself, the chance to reinvent his life. How much of his old self and his old view of the world will survive this watershed? How should he best “fill in the blank sheet of paper” in front of him?

  But there is also another reason for returning to India. He is going back to see Mohamd, a talented young Indian from a primitive village in the Rajasthan desert. Patrick hopes to help him overcome the twin obstacles of poverty and caste. He wants to try to reinvent another life.

  But he underestimates how much of the weight of Indian society will be stacked against him, how difficult it will be to pluck an individual out of India’s crowd. Neither of these twin efforts to change a life works out as Patrick expected. But, while one can be counted a success, the other ends profoundly unhappily.

  It’s a tale as rich in comedy and affection for India as it is full of sadness, love and regret.

  *

  Visit www.patrickmoon.co.uk