Lou Wine Shop

Folks often ask what makes a red wine a suitable candidate for the refrigerator, and truly there is no recipe or algorithm for that other than, “search for wines that are low-ish in alcohol and tannin, made in an infused rather than extracted style.” The irony is not lost on me that a fresh, light-bodied red wine, served with a chill, is a drink that is revitalizing in a way that even water, cool, clear water, cannot be, and a pleasure that’s become increasingly fraught due to global warming. I feel a little guilty viewing the tragedy of global warming through the lens of wine, and of all the things to obsessively fret about with regards to the fate of our planet, the fate of winegrowing is hardly something of universal concern. Yet the fate of wine is something that I fret about and think about quite a lot, without supposing that anyone outside of the trade cares at all about any of it. Wine is something that is central to my soul, to my heart, and brain, as it is to those who make, import, distribute, and drink it. And what I hear from the winegrowers I speak with is a deep, unsolicited anxiety about the viability of their profession, or at least the viability of continuing as they have, sometimes for centuries, millennia, in certain regions of the world. When Rhône winegrowers Eric and Laurence Texier were in town recently, they spoke plaintively about the fate of a beloved plot of roussanne in which the vines have inexplicably shut down and no longer produce fruit; they hypothesize, a function of climate change. This week we met with an OG natural wine grower, Michelle Aubery-Laurent of Domaine Gramenon, and again the conversation quickly turned to the climate and choices made some twenty years ago that have aged poorly due to global warming: they planted viognier but should have planted more bourboulenc, a grape that give fresh acidity even in warmer vintages. Michelle mentioned cinsault, a grape that’s mostly called upon to add perfume and delicacy to a red wine that would otherwise be a beast. She would not be the first vigneron to mention cinsault (I had to gift her a bottle of very old vine cinsault from Lodi which Randall Grahm discovered over two decades ago—in France, cinsault is mostly a workhorse grape, and it is rare to find very old vine patches of it). In France’s Jura region, a succession of disastrous or at best tremendously challenging vintages, beset by killing late frosts and mudslides have meant some growers having zero to show for their work, or in the best cases severely reduced yields. I feel fortunate that we have a few thimblefuls of precious poulsard from these miserly vintages to pour for our customers tonight, an increasingly rare wine made from a delicate grape that, if you are susceptible to its charms, will haunt you.