Yet, Lynch’s Francophilic world is in crisis. The French appellation system is in free fall, enough so that producers in the Loire’s famous Sancerre have threatened to abandon the official system.
France’s notorious bureaucracy has, Lynch insists, “perverted the entire idea” - barring, for instance, use of the Rhone grape Marsanne in the Bandol area of Provence while permitting Sauvignon Blanc. “It’s gotten so bad now that it’s meaningless,” he says.
He sees this as an echo of the fall of food culture in France. While the work of Lynch’s influential friends, notably Alice Waters of Chez Panisse and author Richard Olney, helped birth an American reverence for the fresh and local, Lynch sees far less interest in such things in France, even near his Provencal home.
“They’ve regressed,” he says. “They’re at what we had, the supermarket stage, even at village markets.”
You should come up to Berkeley for a winery crawl - Eno, DAG,Broc et. al; then we walk over to Kermit’s and check out his stuff. All this a couple of blocks apart.
Thanks for the link, Mike. Good interview.
I’ve always liked Kermit’s quote:“Blind tastings are to wine what strip poker is to love”.
Tom
Paul - no question that Berkeley is one of the great wine/food cities anywhere!
Kermit’s house in Bandol was two villages over from our place in Cassis.
I agree that French wines have been in a state of flux for the last 15-20 years.
But, all this will pass and we will again see a return to … And I hate to use this word … "Balanced " cuvée much like what we see happening in California.
Kermit’s wines are really excellent. But, not at all cheap.
Just got around to reading this today. Very good article - thanks for the link, Mike.
Thought this part was interesting:
It amuses Lynch that, for instance, he has been pegged as a proponent of so-called natural wines. In his new epilogue, he suggests that such wines’ proponents “in their zeal leave their palates behind.”
“People don’t realize that I made it a point not to have a philosophy, but to first consider the wine in the glass,” he says. “To sit around, arguing it like religion, doesn’t interest me at all.”
I suppose I didn’t realize that he’d been lumped into the natural wine camp by some, or that he has such an issue with some of those wines’ proponents. I have an older edition of Lynch’s book, so I don’t know the full context of his statement.
I have the older edition too and recently just re-read it. He was (and still is?) a strong proponent for adding sulfites, but NOT filtering. He was also against machine harvesting. Beyond that, I don’t recall much of a bias either way…
I’ve read his Wine Route book, and I’ve liked a lot of the wines he imports. But every time I read an article on him, they act like he created the market for European wines in America. Was he really that influential?
"The Rhone Valley, to say nothing of Beaujolais and the Loire, were, at best, engines of simple wine for Parisians. In this way, he presaged the boldness of some modern-day sommeliers. "
I just got the new edition of his Wine Route book (signed to boot!) and will start re-reading it soon. However I never equated him with natural wines, but more with small-grower wineries.
Frankly, his approach was one of the inspirations for me starting my own importing company, something many other small importers will probably say.
Bordeaux and negotiant Burgundy were certainly well established. But there was not much of a market for the smaller producers in Burgundy and, apart from the big producer/negotiants like Jaboulet, Guigal and Chapoutier, there was very little Northern Rhone in the US or UK before the late 80s or 90s. Most Cornas was sold in bulk locally in the 70s. Kermit was selling Clape Cornas for $6 or $8 a bottle even in the mid-80s – that’s how little interest there was. When I moved from San Francisco to New York in 1993, that was still the story on the East Coast. There were essentially no small-producer Northern Rhones on the shelves, except at Crossroads on 14th Street. The Bay Area was blessed.
Kermit showcased Clape, Gentaz and Rostaing in Cote Rotie, Chevillon in Nuits St. George, Dom. Tempier, Mas de Daumas de Gassac and people like that. He wasn’t alone. Martine Saunier, also in the Bay Area, was also importing first-rate small producers. They don’t get all the credit, but they deserve a lot of it for developing the market for these small guys and previously unrecognized appellations like Bandol and Cornas. And Parker helped by touting those wines and writing features in the Wine Advocate about Kermit and Martine back in the 80s.
If you hear of some really good places to eat, let me know…
It’s amazing how symbiotic the gravy train becomes in the wine biz.
Lalime’s
Flora
Two that haven’t let me down.