
part
5: an
audience with Nicolas Joly

What
better way to try to catch the flavour of the underlying philosophy
of biodynamics than to attend a Nicolas Joly seminar? Joly, who owns
Coulée de la Serrant in the Savennières region of France’s Loire
Valley, is probably the leading proponent of biodynamic viticulture.
He regularly conducts seminars for winegrowers, which are in high
demand. Indeed, the roll-call of attendees at an average Joly
seminar reads like a who’s who of old-world winegrowers. His
seminars usually last for a few days, but we were treated to the
abridged version – not enough to answer all our questions, but
sufficient to provide an overview of his philosophy.
‘I
was trained to be a banker, but I turned out to be a winegrower’,
he says. Joly had a career in finance, which involved spells working
in the UK and USA. When he returned to his family’s estate in the
Loire in 1977, he decided that he wanted to make wines that
expressed the ‘spot’ of Coulée de Serrant. Early on, he was
visited by an official from the chamber of agriculture. ‘They told
me that my mother had been running the estate well, but in an old
fashioned way, and it was now time for some modernity. I was told
that if I started using weedkillers, I’d save 14 000 Francs.’
Joly took this advice, but soon regretted it. ‘Within two years I
realized that the colour of the soil was changing; insects like
ladybirds were no longer there; all the partridge had gone.’ Joly
likened the state of the vineyards to a perpetual winter, devoid of
life even in the summer.
Then
fate intervened. Joly read a book on biodynamics. ‘I wasn’t
attracted to the green movement, but this book fascinated me, and I
had the crazy idea of trying to practice this concept’. As a
result, Coulée
de Serrant has been run along biodynamic lines since the early
1980s. Joly emphasizes that this has been a learning experience, and
his practice now is quite different to what it was then.
Joly’s
prime emphasis is on living forces, and the correct timing of
viticultural interventions. ‘The soil has to be alive. Organic
manure is from different animals. Each animal produces very
different manure. Some animals are dominated by heat, like a horse.
If you force a cow against its will it will go down – the earth
forces dominate. Wild boar and pigs feed on roots, so their manure
will work on the roots. All these different fertilities are
essential.’
He
continues, ‘Spring is good for us. For a vine, spring is the
victory of sun forces over earth forces. In autumn, the law of death
comes into force: the law of gravitation comes into force and leaves
begin falling. Look how tired we get in the evening. On the first
day of spring the days are a bit longer than the nights. The sun
attraction is stronger than gravitation.’
‘The
vine is one of the few fruit trees strictly linked to the season.
The vine is dominated by the earth forces. It goes downwards so it
has immense strength in its roots and only goes up a little bit. It
couldn’t flower in the spring like the cherry or the apple. The
more a plant leaves its gravitational forces, the more it can
develop its flowers.’
Natural
timing and the rhythms of nature seem to be key here. ‘The vine is
waiting for sun to land on earth. This is what happens at the summer
solstice. It withholds its flowering process for the time when the
sun lands on earth. The summer solstice is a very important day for
a vine. If you taste wines where they flower too early, they have a
very good first mouth but a bad second mouthful. The vines flowering
closest to the solstice produce the best wines.’ Clearly, this is
bad news for winegrowers in hot regions!
So
what is the difference between biodynamics and organics? ‘In
biodynamie we are connecting the vine to the frequencies it
needs—like tuning a radio, we are tuning the plant to the
frequencies that bring it life. Organics permits nature to do its
job; biodynamie permits it to do its job more. It is very simple.’
What
does Joly make of inorganic fertilizers? ‘Fertilizer is a salt. It
takes more water to compensate salt. You are forcing growth through
water: the plant has to over-drink, so it grows, and carries on
growing after the solstice. The process of growth ends up
conflicting with the plant’s act of retiring to seed and fruit.
The result of this is rot, so you need to counter this with lots of
chemicals.’
And
disease? ‘Disease is a process of constrictive forces and
contractive forces. Disease itself doesn’t exist. The living
agents that bring diseases are just doing their duty. There is no
point in fighting hundreds of new diseases. ‘
Joly’s
biodynamic philosophy extends to winemaking, too. ‘The more you
help the vine to do its job, by means of a live soil, proper vine
selection, and avoiding poisonous treatments, the more harmony there
is. If the wine catches this harmony well you have nothing to do in
the cellar: potentially it is all there.’ He chooses to use
natural yeast, rather than inoculating with yeast cultures:
‘Re-yeasting is absurd. Natural yeast is marked by all the
subtleties of the year. If you have been dumb enough to kill your
yeast you have lost something from that year. ‘
Very
quickly, I realised that Joly is taking an approach to agriculture
that is at odds with my training as a scientist. He is using an
altogether different way of describing natural processes – a
‘picture’ language that jars alarmingly with the western
rationalistic worldview. This is more the language of religion than
that of scientifically based viticulture. Yet at the same time I
have immense respect for the vision of viticulture he is expounding.
It has a life and vitality of its own, which exposes the
intellectual and environmental bankruptcy of chemical-dependent
conventional viticultural regimes. Above all, he is making profound,
interesting wines.
Other
ideas that Joly expanded on included terroir and grape varieties.
‘Different artists paint the same landscapes in different ways. It
is the same with vines expressing terroir. This is why it is absurd
to have created clones: the repetition of one specific vine a
million times. Clones are a lie to the diversity that each specific
vine expresses. Taking the “best” clone and producing millions
of samples is absurd. This understanding of the “best” is
absurd.’ In Savennières, Chenin Blanc is the only permitted
grape. What does he think about it? ‘Chenin Blanc is like a
difficult child: they will go on to be either a genius or a
terrorist. Too often we see the terrorist version of Chenin.’
One
interesting piece of information is that Joly is beginning to
experiment with using clay amphorae. These are currently being used
by Josko Gravner, in Friuli, who has just taken delivery of some.
Apparently they are hand made in Georgia. ‘I am experimenting with
replacing wood by clay. Clay can cure; it is strongly linked to the
sun. Amphorae can be an alternative to oak barrels,’ says Joly. He
still likes barrels, though. ‘There is an enormous wisdom in the
shape of a barrel. Ask your dog. Put a barrel beside the kennel and
in 12 hours the dog will have chosen to sleep in the barrel. The
barrel is in the shape of an egg, and has the shape of life
forces.’
See
also: a vertical
tasting of Nicolas Joly's wines
Other topics in
this series
-
part
1, introduction
-
part
2, what is biodynamics?
-
part
3, who is doing it?
-
part
4, are you certifiable?
-
part
5, an audience with Nicolas Joly
-
part
6, Alvaro Espinoza, biodynamics in the new world
-
part
7, biodynamics in action - a visit with James Millton
-
part
8, the consultants
-
part
9, bringing together biodynamics and mainstream science
-
part
10, interview with Monty Waldin
Back
to top
|