Tag Archives: languedoc

Beyond natural wines: Domaine Lisson in Languedoc. Help!

About 10 years ago I brought winemaker and blogger Iris Rutz of Domaine Lisson from the wild hills of the Languedoc to the Slow Food fair in Turin, where I presented a workshop on what I then called “wild wines” from France. It sounds better in French: vins sauvages. I wanted to convey that these were indeed natural wines, while avoiding the pitfalls of the “natural wine movement”: the sectarian connotations of this fractured movement, the frequent correlation of “natural” with “drink young”, and the strange tastes of many natural wines.

lisson

The vines of Domaine Lisson, Languedoc

Iris Rutz makes impeccably clean long aging complex wines using traditional methods in the vineyard, with sulfur and, in very difficult years, some copper. In the cellar she uses minimum sulfite levels (these are marked exactly on the labels), with no filtering or fining and 18 months of barrel aging. Another winery that works its wines with a light hand, and yet the wines age beautifully, is Dupéré Barrera in the hills of coastal Provence. They also participated in the Turin workshop.

Iris Rutz adds two other aspects to her winemaking that, in my judgment, truly qualify her for the “wild” label.

Continue reading