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Jul

The Six Million Dollar Man Is Not Biodynamic

Sean Sellers  in Red Wines, Biodynamic, Minervois , , , ,

InterWined.com is a fan of biodynamie and biodynamic wines, even more so.
For the uninitiated, which is to say, according to a recent survey conducted in the UK, most of us, biodynamie is utterly foreign. And, it is.

For starters, there’s the name: biodynamie in French, biodynamics or biodynamy in English, which makes it sound like the science that helped turn Steve Austin into The Six Million Dollar Man. It wasn’t. That was good old bionics.

Then, there’s the concept: a fascinating mix of the earthbound and celestial that essentially proposes, “what’s good for the soil is good for the soul,” and is governed by the cycles of the seasons and moon. So far, so hippie-dippy – except, it was first posited by a Austrian philosopher and writer in 1924, and only applied to viticulture by the French in the 1980s.

And, it’s been gaining ground across Europe and the Americas in recent years, hence its inclusion in the survey.

The 2004 Belle de Nuit is a case in point. Made in Minervois, in the south of France by Sylvie and Michel Escande at their 35 hectare (86 acre) estate in western Languedoc, the bottle containing the 2004 Belle de nuits does everything it can to stand out as different from the typical French wine.

The label says it all. Invisible are the often imposing French wine crest or detailed sketch of the Chateau or Domaine, as well regional identification, appellation, year, or name of grape, (though, in Minervois, it is probably Carignan, Cinasault, Grenache and/or Syrah) replaced with an impressionistic painting of a flamenco dancer, one hand firmly placed on hip, the other raised defiantly in the air and draped over her head to shade her eyes from the bright yellow moon. The moon, perhaps, the only clue, that Borie de Maruel, the name of the Escandes’ estate, is biodynamic.

At first sniff, the image makes sense; the wine has a distinctive smell of olives, while the taste is of earth, soft, and somewhat reminiscent of the pickled garlic cloves often served with bowls of Spanish olives. InterWined was promised weeks ago, by the wine sellers at Oddbins, that the 2004 Belle de nuit was worth every penny of its £13.99 price tag. And they were right: 9.0.

As is often held in the criticism of biodynamic wines, InterWined couldn’t taste the biodynamicism or the somewhat New-aged practices employed to produce it. But, nor should it have been. Biodynamie seems meant to evoke a feeling or a sense of scale, rather than place.

This definitely tasted of Andalucía as the label and the back of the bottle insisted:

Fille de la lune,
Méditerranénne, latine en diable,
Tout le sang, tout le sens
D’une nuit andalouse,
Pour une danse où rutile la dentelle,
Flamenco doux et violent.

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