Jacky Rigaux, author, expert in geosensory tasting and connoisseur of Burgundy, recently published The world of wine today (Earth in Views editions). The duty Joined him to talk about this essential work for those who want to take the current pulse of wine, based on a personal, documented and well-felt analysis. Interview by our collaborator Jean Aubry.
First of all, could you define the practice to which your title of expert in geosensory tasting relates?
The geosensory tasting is the return to tasting of the gourmets of yesteryear, responsible for ensuring that the wines whose provenance was written on the barrel were sincere, clearly expressing the taste message of their place of birth. They were geosensoriality experts! Gourmets were professional tasters who established themselves in the 12the century, when the wine trade became as important as it was during Antiquity. They were organized in powerful corporations until the French Revolution.
Like all corporations, that of “brokers, gourmets, wine pickers” was abolished. They were forgotten in the XIXe century, but fortunately Jules Lavalle kept the memory in his book written in 1855. To put it more succinctly, by the geosensory tasting, the taster seeks the original signature of the place by paying attention to the consistency, to the flexibility (flexibility of consistency), liveliness, viscosity, texture, aromatic persistence. All of this generates a form of wine, a signature of its terroir. It is the quest for origin more than for typicity and quality. Of course, if the wine does not feel good, we will wonder about the cause, which relates to the way it was made (problem of vinification, aging, bottling, etc.).
Is the world of wine today more interesting, more diverse, more qualitative than that of yesterday or was it better before?
The world of wine today is much larger than that of yesterday, with the massive arrival of so-called “New World” wines, led by California and Australia in the last quarter of the 20th century.e century. Australia proudly displayed the development of a state-supported wine industry. In September 2001, the Businessweek displayed as title ” Wine War. How American and Australian wines are stomping the French “. The world of wine could not be like the one before.
Your book seems to be timely, in a changing world, in terms of climatic upheavals or trends. The wine industry is no exception. Are you optimistic about the future?
Yes ! There are reasons to be optimistic today. The media devoted to wine have not sufficiently highlighted the importance of the classification of “climates of the vineyard of Burgundy” on the UNESCO World Heritage List, since July 4, 2015. They are the cradle and the archetype of terroir viticulture around the world. Even if the notion of terroir is contested, even denied, the viticulture of places, of “high wine-growing places”, is considered to have universal value.
Many readers or amateurs met swear by organic or plain wines. Is this your view of things? Better, should we prefer a traditional wine well made to an organic or natural wine that lacks integrity?
The greatest terroir wines come from viticulture and vinification as close as possible to nature, without chemical or biochemical inputs, except a little sulfur, if possible natural. When we asked Henri Jayer what was the secret of the greatness of his wines, he liked to say: “I let nature take its course”. This did not mean that he was doing nothing, but that he was doing work in the vineyard upstream which allowed the production of grapes at the optimum maturity of the skins and seeds. Without chemicals in the vineyard and in the winery, the grapes expressed the truth of the place!