Ode to Kermit Lynch

Kermit Lynch is one of the most well-known and respected wine importers in the world. I recently read his book, "Adventures on the Wine Route: A Wine Buyer's Tour of France" and was swept up in his passionate enthusiasm for what he calls "natural" winemaking. I have known him by reputation for several years now and have almost always had success when buying wines with his import label attached. He travels the world, France in particular, seeking out winemakers who take a non-interventionist approach to wine: no fining or filtering (which he believes dilutes the rich flavors and unique character of the wine), organic or biodynamic cultivation, and gravity-flow processing (because violently pumping the wine can also strip its flavors).

Entrance Sign at Domaine Tempier

One of Lynch's favorite wines, and also the house red wine at Alice Water's spectacular restaurant Chez Panisse in Berkeley, is Domaine Tempier Bandol Rouge, a rustic red wine grown near the coast of the Mediterranean Sea in southern France. I love this wine with roast chicken and rosemary potatoes (my favorite meal), so when I was in southern France on my birthday in 2009, I took a day-trip to Domaine Tempier in Bandol. Unfortunately the winery was closed (it was a Sunday), but I loved seeing where the wine comes from.

Lynch ends his book with elegant prose about what wine can and should be, and why he is passionate about it. Here is my favorite quote, along with some photos of the Domaine Tempier vineyards and some ripe Mourvedre grapes hanging on the vine on that day I visited in 2009.

Mourvedre on the vine, Bandol France 2009

Collete wrote that "wine makes the true savor of the earth intelligible to man." An Nikos Kazantzakis wrote: "When you drank it, you felt as if you were in communion with the blood of the earth itself."

Real wine is more than an alcoholic beverage. When you taste one from a noble terroir that is well made, that is intact and alive, you think here is a gift of nature, the fruit of the vine eked out of our earth, ripened by our sun, fashioned by man.

Once I took an afternoon off from wine tasting in Tuscany to visit a little museum in Florence where two recently discovered Greek statues were on display. The larger-than-life statues had a manlike shape and a heart-stopping, godlike presence. How had man created something so powerfully exquisite? Wine can produce the same creations, but unlike music, literature, or visual arts, a great wine does not require a creative genius. A farmer working his piece of earth can produce something inspiring and profound. 

 

There is so much contained in a glass of good wine. It is a gift of nature that tastes of man's foibles, his sense of the beautiful, his idealism and virtuosity. 

Domaine Tempier Vineyards, Bandol, France 2009