Clochette, a fluffy one-year-old St Bernard bounds enthusiastically upthe rough grass path at Domaine les Maisons Rouges, her owner Benoît Jardin close at her heels. Tucked behind the village of Ruillé-sur-Loir in the LoirValley (not to be confused with the Loire Valley further south), this year the domaine has used only biodynamic methods across the six hectares of rolling fields. “No insecticides are used in the cultivation, and no synthetic products are added during fermentation,” Benoît explains.

Lifestyle shift

An artisan winemaker invariably has a story to tell, and Benoît doesn’t disappoint. Disillusioned with the office toil routine in Telecoms, he initially swapped it for the more alluring world of horse breeding. But with anultimate dream to make good quality wine, and more specifically, to produce Jasnieres, the lure of the Ruillé fields won out and he finally bought the small wine farm he now runs with his wife, Elisabeth. Produced since the Middle Ages beside the River Loir, Jasnieres and Coteaux du Loir white wines are from the Chenin grape, with the domaine’s reds produced mostly from Pineau d’Aunis.

Preservation of the vineyard’s ecosystem is all-important here. “I never plough the same ground without allowing a small amount of natural grass to grow again, so that flora and fauna is preserved in its natural state”, Benoît explains. I use organic-friendly equipment and techniques like Reflex Belhomme and Actisol BI-B2. And when young vines are too productive [the yield needs to be kept down in order to keep quality high], I use mulch to limit the growth of the vines”. He is a totally organic producer, certified by Ecocert SA, which is an international control and certification organisation.

Bottles bearing the Domainedes Maisons Rouges label appear on tables in up-market restaurants as far awayas Bermuda and New York, but with such limited production capacity, they are virtually unknown in Australia.

Today, the sun is shining,the setting is idyllic and the lifestyle seems like an extended fantasy. But doubtless it doesn’t always appear that way. This part of France gets cold in winter, and I can’t help thinking that at 7am on a bone-chilling November morning, when the vines are in danger of freezing and the vats are on the blink, Benoît has fleeting moments when he wishes he was safely ensconced in an office in Paris.

Still, with Clochette barking excitedly outside the airy studio lined with paintings, and the smell of wood emanating from the barriques next door, I’m convinced it’s worth riding out the more dreary days of the year.

 Experimentalist

Some 500km south, close to Bergerac in the Dordogne, Welsh-born Charles Martin employs truly unusual wine making methods at Château La Colline. Askedif he’s ‘a biodynamic’, he pauses before admitting that he calls himself  ‘a bio-experimentalist’.

“There’s a lot of hypocrisy in the bio movement” he admits. “I think most people do it as a commercial argument and I don’t want to do that. I want to do something because I believe in it 100 per cent. If the viticulture is bio and then the wines aren’t, there’s something wrong. We want our system to be complete. Rather than using copper sulphate and sulphur, which are, incidentally, synthesized products which all the bio guys use, we want to use plant extracts and some elements of metal. Also, instead of using insecticides, we’ll use nicotine and caffeine”.

In an effort to produce less tannic and softer reds, Charles has been known to macerate his merlot grapes in inflatable swimming pools on the 19-hectare property. He has also taken advantage of inert gases to protect his wines from oxidation.

As if life wasn’t experimental enough at La Colline, the grapes are named rather than coded. When each batch arrives in from the vines, someone does a blind tasting to come up with a title. Bob Marley would have been proud to know he has bunches of fruit named in his honour.

Madness in the method

Having graced the shores of Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and California, and gaining experience in farming and the New World wine trade, Charles arrived in the Dordogne in 1987. He opened La Colline in 1994 and is constantly innovating to meet changing circumstances. In 2008, due to low crop yields, most of the Cabernet Sauvignon crop went into the vineyard’s Rosé.

“We picked these at optimum ripeness and, yes, we did the same trick as previous years by pressing through the skins of some ‘odd white grape’ to keep it light-coloured, fairy-like and funky” he says. “Even though the colour looks synthetic, it is not. The lifted varietal flavour with intensity is amazing”.

Overall, Charles is pragmatic in his approach, particularly when it comes to the bio versus non-biofarming debate. “Solutions don’t appear obvious to me. I believe that neither camp has the monopoly of reason at present, and we have to work together to find solutions before the destruction is irreversible”.

But he also aims high. “I’ma real perfectionist and I can’t stand the thought that my fruit would have imperfections in it – perfect fruit makes great fruit-style wines. The bio system expects a certain percentage of loss. They accept non-perfection, but I don’t. It’s a different way of looking at it, but it’s my way. When you make wines from perfect grapes it tastes like it - the energy comes through”.

Sold all over Europe and as far away as Japan, wines from Chateaux La Colline haven’t hit  Australia yet. But for those who get to the vineyard – don’t miss the Carminé 2005.

 www.maisonsrouges.com

www.la-colline.com