Why is Languedoc a Popular Choice for Organic, Biodynamic, and Natural Winemaking?

Natalie MacLean
Aug6th

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Introduction

How does your perspective change when you start looking at life one vintage at a time, divided into seasons? What does it look like when wine is so deeply connected to a region that it shapes work, landscape, community, and what a culture values most? Why is Languedoc becoming a popular choice for organic, biodynamic, and natural winemaking? What makes a “bon moment” and why is it worth taking seriously?

In this episode of the Unreserved Wine Talk podcast, I’m chatting with Steve Hoffman, who has written an award-winning memoir called A Season for That: Lost and Found in the Other Southern France.

You can find the wines we discussed here.

 

Giveaway

Three of you are going to win a copy of Steve Hoffman’s terrific new book, A Season for That: Lost and Found in the Other Southern France.

 

How to Win

To qualify, all you have to do is email me at [email protected] and let me know that you’ve posted a review of the podcast.

It takes less than 30 seconds: On your phone, scroll to the bottom here, where the reviews are, and click on “Tap to Rate.”

After that, scroll down a tiny bit more and click on “Write a Review.” That’s it!

I’ll choose three people randomly from those who contact me.

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Highlights

  • What was Steve’s favourite aperitif discovery in France?
  • How did a funny mispronunciation lead to an embarrassing introduction?
  • Which lesson about life and the passage of time did Steve learn in his time living in a French village?
  • How did stuffed cuttlefish challenge Steve’s ideas about strong flavours and aromas in food?
  • How does the historical connection between wine and work show up in French culture today?
  • Why has the Languedoc remained in the shadow of Bordeaux and Burgundy, despite having the largest vineyard area in the world?
  • What makes the Languedoc a great region for young winemakers to experiment with organic and natural wines?
  • What surprised Steve the most about the process of blending wine?
  • Why does the latitude of a vineyard matter when learning about tasting wine?
  • How can you have the best experience while visiting the Languedoc?
  • What is a “bon moment” and why is it so important?

 

Key Takeaways

  • How does your perspective change when you start looking at life one vintage at a time, divided into seasons?
    • You start thinking about the unfolding year as not months and days, but as seasons, and you look forward to the next season. And you participate fully, and then you let that season be done, and don’t mourn it, because you know it’s going to come around again. That was a really powerful lesson that I think we learned by living there. There’s something very refreshing about the attitude about life that comes when you live in a place where years are thought of as vintages. And when you’re in wine country, years are vintages, and there are good vintages and bad vintages. And I think there’s a Western, sort of American idea that time is this upward graph line, right? You’re going to have some ups and downs, but it still represents something like progress toward a big goal or that things are good. It was a really refreshing disruption of that idea, to be in a place where there are good and bad vintages, but it’s never always going to get generally better. you don’t ever live with the illusion that things can keep getting better. It forces you to be present in the moment, because it’s not like, if I just wait long enough, things are going to get better. I need to make the best of this year, because this is what this year has given me in terms of climate and circumstances and life events. And in the end, I loved thinking about the unfolding of time that way.
  • What does it look like when wine is so deeply connected to a region that it shapes work, landscape, community, and what a culture values most?
    • In wine country wine is not just a pleasant accompaniment to life, it literally forms everything. People will take the entire month of September off from their regular jobs just to work picking grapes and working in wineries of their friends. It’s a true seasonal moment that we’ve lost touch with the land and with agriculture. The vines themselves actually form the landscape. I think it’s equivalent almost to New York skyscrapers. New York skyscrapers tell you in this place what’s valued is business and commerce and finance. And then the wine itself, the beverage, just becomes a part of everything. It’s work, it’s what creates revenue that the village can survive, but then it’s also something that you have with almost every meal. It’s going to be the wine that somebody you know probably made. And it’s just this beautiful, integrated experience.
  • Why is Languedoc becoming a popular choice for organic, biodynamic, and natural winemaking?
    • Peasants weren’t able to export so they ended up making wine to be distilled into brandy. And what that emphasized was growing for volume, for tonnage, but that didn’t make high quality wine. What’s changing is that it’s still an affordable place to buy a hectare of vines, and so young winemakers can come in and they can afford to experiment with organic, natural or biodynamic winemaking. It’s a Mediterranean climate, it’s very dry. A lot of the chemicals to avoid spoilage – the Languedoc naturally doesn’t have much of that. It is like organic gardening, a return to a very old way of making wine, that is natural to this place.
  • What makes a “bon moment” and why is it worth taking seriously?
    • There’s a French concept called a bon moment. It’s translated as a good moment, but in France, it has all kinds of other connotations. I think everybody who’s listening will recognize one of those moments where you’re sitting with people that you care about, where there’s good wine and there’s good food. That’s the centerpiece, that’s the excuse to be together. But then the moment unfolds into something greater than itself. The conversation becomes meaningful, and you start finding interest in the people around you, and you’re laughing and time sort of disappears, and you can be there for hours and not notice it. I think in North America, we undersell the sheer pleasure of a moment like that. A bon moment is a time when life is at its best.

 

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Working in vineyards and wineries taught me about how hard that work is physically. - Steve Hoffman Steve Hoffman Click to tweet

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Every appellation is trying to sell you on the virtues of where it’s grown and how those wines are made. - Steve Hoffman Steve Hoffman Click to tweet

 

About Steve Hoffman

Steve Hoffman is a Minnesota tax preparer and food writer. His writing has won multiple national awards, including the 2019 James Beard M.F.K. Fisher Distinguished Writing Award. He has been published in Food & Wine, The Washington Post, and The Minneapolis Star Tribune, among other publications. He shares one acre on Turtle Lake, in Shoreview, Minnesota, with his wife, Mary Jo, their elderly and entitled puggle, and roughly 80,000 honeybees.

 

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  • The new audio edition of Red, White and Drunk All Over: A Wine-Soaked Journey from Grape to Glass is now available on Amazon.ca, Amazon.com and other country-specific Amazon sites; iTunes.ca, iTunes.com and other country-specific iTunes sites; Audible.ca and Audible.com.

 

Transcript

Natalie MacLean 00:00:00 How does your perspective change when you start looking at life? One vintage at a time, divided into seasons. What does it look like when wine is so deeply connected to a region that it shapes work, landscape, community, and what a culture values most? Why is the Languedoc becoming a popular choice for organic, biodynamic and natural winemaking? And what makes a boom moment a good moment worth taking seriously? In today’s episode, you’ll hear the stories and tips that answer those questions in part two of our chat with Steve Hoffman, author of the award winning new book A season for That Lost and Found in the Other Southern France. You don’t need to have listened to part one first, but if you missed it after you finish this episode, go back and take a listen. By the end of our conversation, you’ll also discover Steve’s favorite aperitif discovery in France. How a funny mispronunciation led to an embarrassing introduction. A lesson about life in the passage of time that Steve learned while living in a French village. How stuffed cuttlefish challenged Steve’s ideas about strong flavours and aromas in food.

Natalie MacLean 00:01:16 How the historical connection between wine and work shows up in French culture today. Why the Languedoc has remained in the shadow of Bordeaux and Burgundy, despite having the largest vineyard area in the world. What makes the Languedoc a great region for young winemakers to experiment with organic and natural wines? What surprised Steve most about the process of blending wine? Why the latitude of a vineyard matters when learning about tasting wine. How to have the best experience while visiting the Languedoc. And back to that bon moment. Why it’s so important. Do you have a thirst to learn about wine? Do you love stories about wonderfully obsessive people, hauntingly beautiful places, and amusingly awkward social situations? Well, that’s the blend here.

Natalie MacLean 00:02:12 On the Unreserved Wine Talk podcast. I’m your host, Natalie MacLean, and each week I share with you unfiltered conversations with celebrities in the wine world, as well as confessions from my own tipsy journey as I write my third book on this subject. I’m so glad you’re here. Now pass me that bottle, please, and let’s get started.

Natalie MacLean 00:02:41 Welcome to episode 349 on CTV Morning Live. I recently chatted about refreshing summer drinks and wines. We started with a Folonari Prosecco, a crisp, lightly sparkling Italian wine with aromas of green apple, white peach and a touch of lemon. Sunshine. This is like summer in a glass, pairing beautifully with a cheese plate or a fresh fruit platter. Folonari is one of Italy’s oldest and most respected wine producers, founded in 1825, in the Veneto region. It played a key role in popularising Prosecco internationally.

Next up, let’s create a cocktail, the Paloma mimosa. This cocktail combines the fizz of a mimosa and the citrusy zing of a Paloma. Ingredients. And I do note all of this in the show notes, by the way. Natalie MacLean 349 ingredients three ounces of Stirrings Paloma Cocktail Mix, a ready-to-serve Canadian cocktail mixer so there’s no need for multiple ingredients. No muddle, no trouble. 4 to 5 oz of sparkling wine, and the garnish is a lemon slice in a champagne flute. Add the Paloma mix.

Natalie MacLean 00:03:55 Top it off with Prosecco.

Now let’s make it into a mocktail by swapping out the sparkling wine with St. Regis alcohol-free sparkling Sauvignon Blanc. It’s bubbly and sensational. Of course, you can also enjoy the alcohol-free Saint Regis bubbly on its own, especially now that it comes in a summer-friendly format of a can. Ideal for the deck, dock or camping. Both Saint Regis and Stirrings are all available on Amazon and other online retailers.

Next, I have the latest Sauvignon Blanc from Chile. This is like someone bottled a perfect day at the beach, bursting with lime zest, passion fruit and a salty sea breeze finish. It’s a dream of ceviche, grilled shrimp tacos or anything citrusy and fresh. Leyda is the coastal cradle of Sauvignon Blanc in Chile, with vineyards just 12 km from the Pacific Ocean. The cool Humboldt Current gives the wine a zippy acidity and intense aromatics. Leyda has helped redefine Chilean white wines as vibrant and world-class. It’s so coastal. It practically comes with its own seashell and tiny umbrella.

Natalie MacLean 00:05:02 Waka waka. Anyway, the Leyda Valley was designated a D.O. Denomination of Origin in 2002, making it one of the country’s youngest but most exciting wine regions.

Now let’s create a zesty cocktail — a Mint Margarita Blanca. This is what happens when Margarita decides to get a European passport and study abroad. Ingredients: three ounces of white wine, two ounces of Stirrings Margarita Cocktail Mix. Again, to simplify your life and the ingredients. It’s made from real juice and no artificial preservatives, with a coarse sea salt. And garnish with fresh mint. So in a short glass you’re going to add ice. Then the wine, the mix, and the lime juice. Stir gently. And again, garnish with fresh mint. It’s crisp, dry and tangy. Pair it with corn and poblano quesadillas, mango salsa, grilled chicken or an extra-large bag of tortilla chips. I’m not judging anyone’s life choices. Not when I know my own eating habits. The mocktail version: Use Saint Regis alcohol-free sparkling rosé instead of the wine for a sunset-pink bubbly treat.

Natalie MacLean 00:06:14 And let’s finish with something bold and unexpected. The Lamole di Lamole Chianti Classico is a Tuscan treasure with notes of black cherry, dried herbs and earthy richness. Pair it with grilled lamb, fennel, salami or a hearty eggplant lasagna. This winery sits at one of the highest elevations in Chianti Classico, about 550 m above sea level, where the altitude creates cool nights and intense aromatics in the wine. The vineyards date back to Roman times, and the stone terraces were rebuilt by hand to preserve the historical farming methods. La moglie refers to the ancient Etruscan word for blade, describing the shape of the hills where the vineyards cut into the landscape. Their wines are often described as Chianti with lift, thanks to the rare Gilstrap and Alberici soils that bring elegance and minerality.

Now let’s make a cocktail. Ingredients: two ounces of red wine, three ounces of The Great Gentleman’s Spicy Cola — a new mixer from Montreal that delivers a true spicy kick to the drink. By the way, this is available on Amazon as well. Orange peel, expressed or twisted, and diced.

Natalie MacLean 00:07:28 So you’re going to fill a rocks glass with ice. Add the red wine and spicy cola. Stir lightly. Garnish with orange peel. This savoury, spicy, fizzy drink looks like a cocktail-aperitivo walked into a hip Montreal wine bar. Pair it with spicy sausage pizza or grilled eggplant skewers. Got eggplant on the mind? Obviously.

Today for the mocktail version, let’s use The Great Gentleman’s Spicy Cola on its own with fresh orange juice for a bold, booze-free aperitif. You can find all of these drinks and wines online.

I’m on Instagram at Natalie MacLean wine and of course my website Natalie MacLean. Com I’ve posted all of them in the show notes at Natalie MacLean 349. Back to today’s episode. So three of you are going to win a copy of Steve’s terrific new book, A season for That Lost and found in the other southern France. I still have one copy left now of decanter magazine’s new book, The Ultimate Travel Guide for Wine Lovers. If you’d like to win a copy, please email me and let me know that you’d like to win.

Natalie MacLean 00:08:36 It doesn’t matter where you live, I’ll choose four winners randomly from those who contact me at Natalie at Natalie MacLean. And in other bookish news, if you’re reading the paperback or e-book or listening to the audiobook of my memoir, Wine Witch on Fire Rising from the Ashes of Divorce, defamation, and Drinking Too Much, a national bestseller and one of Amazon’s best books of the year. I’d love to hear from you at Natalie and Natalie MacLean. Com. I’d be happy to send you beautifully designed, personally signed bookplates for the copies you buy or give us gifts. I’ll put a link in the show notes to all retailers worldwide. Okay, on with the show. While we’re in the café, kind of a frame of mind here, you mentioned the importance of aperitifs in French culture. What was your favorite aperitif? Discovery.

Steve Hoffman 00:09:30 There’s a French vermouth called NY Prat. Noi Prat that is actually made in the long dock. It’s made in a city called Marseille, which is near the sea. See. So we actually took a tour of where they actually make that.

Steve Hoffman 00:09:43 It’s called a vermouth. And one of my very favorite aperitif by the time we left was just simply a little bit of vermouth with a little spritz of lemon and a twist of lemon peel. Most Americans drink vermouth as a mixer, not as its own beverage. And so discovering that as a sort of beautifully dry, refreshing, very aromatic opener to a meal was this wonderful discovery.

Natalie MacLean 00:10:05 And you say aromatic? What did it smell of?

Steve Hoffman 00:10:08 You know, it’s one of those old formulas, kind of like the monks, you know, they use dozens and dozens of different herbs and spices when they mix it. And they have a single person who’s associated with their organization that is the ultimate tester who says, yes, this is or no, this is not yet what this should smell like. So there’s a lot of maceration, a lot of blending of different wines. I don’t know that I could describe the exact aroma, but it’s a sort of marine saline herbal aroma. And then that gets cut with the sharpness of the lemon.

Steve Hoffman 00:10:41 It’s just a beautifully, beautifully refreshing drink. The other really fun aperitif experience we had is just how much people make their own in this village, so they’ll have their little cave in the basement. The shelves are full of homemade orange, you know, orange wine, homemade sous, which is sort of a citrusy, bitter aperitif. They make walnut wine, which is made from green walnuts and red wine. So a lot of times you’ll go to somebody’s house for a meal and they will actually go down and then bring up these aperitifs, which is really fun. And we have started doing that at home as well. We started making our own aperitifs at home as well.

Natalie MacLean 00:11:16 Oh that’s great. And can you share like a story or a moment where you had a cultural misunderstanding and that led to enlightenment or even just some humor along the way?

Steve Hoffman 00:11:28 I’ll tell you, the first one that comes to mind did not happen while we were in France at this time. It was a funny moment. When I was younger, I’d been in Paris.

Steve Hoffman 00:11:34 I worked for the Little Brothers of the poor, which is an outfit that serves elderly people and tries to relieve their loneliness by offering them company and conversation. So I work for that organization in Paris, and members of the organization came to Minneapolis to visit because there was also a fraternity in Minneapolis. And I was up introducing. You know, this is Steve, very proud of his French. You know, I’ve been in Paris. I could speak well. I had a good accent. I was all proud of myself. And I got up to introduce the president of the Little Brothers of the poor, the Pope. And I just heard a phrase in a book that I’d been listening to in French in my earphones, and I was very proud of it. And it’s which, if you know, a little bit of French, sounds like it means right. Lifting our heart. Right. Love is love means to lift. And so and so I said, you know, please let me warmly introduce this gentleman who knew who lifts up all of our hearts.

Steve Hoffman 00:12:27 But actually in French is an idiom that means to vomit.

Natalie MacLean 00:12:32 Yes.

Steve Hoffman 00:12:35 So very formally, very proud of myself. In front of the lectern, I invited everybody to look at this man and to please vomit.

Natalie MacLean 00:12:45 I love it. How did he respond, or did.

Natalie MacLean 00:12:50 He just say everybody was very polite? And then somebody.

Steve Hoffman 00:12:53 Came up to me and whispered in my ear afterwards, and I’ve never lived it down. I still have nightmares about that moment.

Natalie MacLean 00:13:00 That’s great.

Natalie MacLean 00:13:01 And you described the rural rhythm of life or the rhythm of life in rural France. Of course, that would have been different from the United States. Very busy. Was there anything else about the rhythm in France you talked about really deeply understanding the seasons, because, you know, there’s a time to pick grapes and there’s a time to whatever. And if you don’t, you miss the next season’s work or whatever.

Steve Hoffman 00:13:23 Certainly. Yes. That was part of it. Coming to the point where you start thinking about the unfolding year as not months and days, but as seasons, and you look forward to the next season and you participate fully, and then you let that season be done.

Steve Hoffman 00:13:35 And don’t mourn it because you know it’s going to come around again. That was a really powerful lesson that I think we learned by living there. The other thing that I talk about in the book that I really believe is true is there’s something very refreshing about the attitude about life that comes when you live in a place where years are thought of as vintages, when you’re in wine country. Years are vintages, and there are good vintages and bad vintages. And I think, you know, there’s a Western sort of American idea that time is this upward graph line. Right? You’re going to have some ups and downs, but it still represents something like progress toward a big goal. Or if they don’t get better every year, they’re gradually getting better all the time. And it was a really refreshing sort of disruption of that idea to be in a place where there are good and bad vintages, but it’s never always going to get generally better. There are going to be very good years, and then there are going to be mediocre years, and there are going to be bad years, and you deal with them the best you can as a winemaker and as a participant in that process.

Steve Hoffman 00:14:35 But you don’t ever live with the illusion that things can keep getting better. It forces you to be present in the moment, because it’s not like if I just wait long enough, things are going to get better. That’s never the case. It’s I need to make the best of this year, because this is what this year has given me in terms of climate and circumstances and life events. And I just loved in the end, I loved thinking about the unfolding of time that way.

Natalie MacLean 00:14:59 The circular seasons, the cyclical nature, rather than, as you say, the linear upward progression or. Yeah, absolutely. Great. So your description of my French is not as good as yours. I didn’t continue it much, even though we are supposed to study it in Canadian schools. But it’s your description of Farsi. Yes, it’s very vivid. Maybe you could share that description with us, like what you remember of it and the wine pairing.

Steve Hoffman 00:15:28 It’s actually quite common to stuff shellfish in in southern France, in Mediterranean France.

Steve Hoffman 00:15:33 So they do a lot of stuffed mussels where you actually open up mussels, put like sausage meat in and then close it back up and then cook it. Sesh is French for cuttlefish and Farsi means stuffed. And so one of our first in that in that opening scene in the cafe where I’m realizing that this is going to be much more challenging than I thought, I didn’t actually recognize three of the four items on the menu, one of which was squeezy. So a cuttlefish looks a little bit like a kind of a truncated round squid, and the waiter basically brings a plate from another diner saying, here’s what you’re asking for. And it looked, you know, like the stomach of a freshwater fish stuffed with sausage. It smelled like aromatics, it smelled like garlic and onion and sausage. But then it had this sort of marine, kind of oceanic kind of I call it saltwater pier. You know, it smells like what it would smell like if you’re near the ocean. So it was terribly ugly physically, but very beautiful in the sort of complexity of the aromas that were arising off of it.

Steve Hoffman 00:16:35 And it was, again, a first introduction into what we would learn about what it meant to eat here, which is, you know, we’re from Minnesota, Upper Midwest, a lot of sort of German, Scandinavian and Eastern European influence on our cuisine. And we think of smelly food as food that has gone bad, that food that’s off. And an initial introduction into the fact that food here is actually strongly flavored and strongly smelling. That’s considered, in many cases, an advantage, not a disadvantage. Then we would learn to cook with garlic, and we would learn to love anchovies, and we would learn to eat blood sausage, and we would learn to like lamb, you know, more than beef to some extent. And and we learned to love strong fish like mackerel. It was very much an experience of accepting that there are strong flavors and strong smells in food that are a positive virtue, instead of our fear of them that I experience growing up as a kid in the Midwest.

Natalie MacLean 00:17:25 And what would you pair with that fast?

Steve Hoffman 00:17:29 It’s a cliche, but what grows together goes together, right? It’s not a fine dining kind of dish.

Steve Hoffman 00:17:33 It’s much more peasant food. So there’s a wine from that region that probably looks out over the sea, where that cuttlefish had been swimming called pine. It’s a very acidic, very tart, dry white wine from a half an hour drive from where I was sitting at the time. And it’s more of a casual wine. There aren’t, like great vintages of people to pine. It’s meant to be drunk, young and fresh, usually with seafood. So that would be my choice.

Natalie MacLean 00:17:58 That sounds great. What are a couple of other memorable dishes you had there? Whether you prepared them yourself or had them in a local cafe? Maybe tell us about those. And of course, the wine pairings.

Steve Hoffman 00:18:09 I would say we’re in the appellation, which is sort of a small but well respected appellation in the region. And there is a southern French red wine stew called dobe. And we encountered it early, before I really knew what it was. And then by the end of the story, I’m actually making my own Dobe.

Steve Hoffman 00:18:30 And it’s kind of fun that it’s traditionally actually made in what’s called Adobe Air, which is a earthenware vessel that’s completely sealed. And so all of the juices and all of the steam sort of recirculate inside that vessel to cook the meal. And it’s red wine with beef, lamb or any other sort of slow braising meat and then some vegetables and aromatics. So cooking my own dobe and then learning the little trick that you can make some dough out of flour and roll it around the outside of your Dutch oven, and that will actually seal it in a way that recreates the original Adobe Air that some shepherd in the hills invented however many hundreds of years ago. Having that and using the local wine, the Foggia wine, which is a strong sort of earthy, herby, powerful wine in the stew, and then drinking that same wine as our pairing. Memorable in my mouth is watering as I’m talking about it.

Natalie MacLean 00:19:25 That sounds great. And that.

Natalie MacLean 00:19:26 Was.

Natalie MacLean 00:19:27 A local red wine?

Steve Hoffman 00:19:28 Yes, correct. That was the wine that was made in our village.

Steve Hoffman 00:19:31 Oh, okay. Yeah. So not just local, but literally. I knew the winemaker who had made that wine. He was a friend. Yeah. Yeah.

Natalie MacLean 00:19:37 Sounds wonderful. And you also talk about the importance of bread in French culture? Maybe. Was there an experience of related to bread or baking bread during your stay?

Steve Hoffman 00:19:48 Yeah. You know, the baguette is a subsidized thing in France. And so, you know, even many villages that can’t afford their own grocery store and butcher will usually have a boulangerie or a baker. So bread and baguette specifically became a part of everyday life. But there is a fun bread that my daughter, after resisting me for most of this trip and resisting the food that I’m trying to put in front of her and trying to expand her palate very effectively. Resist me for for most of the story. By the end of the book, she has started to teach herself baking. She’s going to cook, but she’s going to do it her own way, and she’s not going to use what you know, she’s not going to cook the way dad cooks.

Steve Hoffman 00:20:24 And she ended up making something called a Fugazi for gas. And it’s basically a southern French Provencal version of focaccia. And you can see the resemblance in the two words and a fugazi. Usually it has a kind of light airiness of a focaccia, but they will usually shape it. They’ll roll it out and then make cuts in it that shape it like a big leaf. And so watching Eva make a Fugazi, which is both a repudiation of me because she was cooking what she wanted her way, but also like an acceptance of me because she was not cooking American banana bread. She was cooking a real, true southern French delicacy was kind of a beautiful moment, a moment where I was like, okay, yeah, I did actually get through a little bit.

Natalie MacLean 00:21:08 I love that connection.

Natalie MacLean 00:21:10 Yeah.

Natalie MacLean 00:21:11 So back to the wine of the Languedoc. Of course, one of the more intriguing cultural notes in your book is how vineyard workers were once paid with daily rations of wine, considered a necessary part of their nutrition.

Natalie MacLean 00:21:23 How does that deep rooted connection between wine and work show up in French culture today? If it still does?

Steve Hoffman 00:21:30 Well, certainly in the EU, workers are no longer allowed to be given two liters of wine as part of their wages. I would say, though, that working in vines and wineries certainly taught me about how hard that work is physically. And I would also say that there is an extent to which in wine country, and this is something that I loved. Wine is not just a pleasant accompaniment to life. It literally forms everything. And there’s a sort of pervasiveness about it that’s really beautiful. People will take the entire month of September off from their regular jobs just to pick and grapes and work in wineries of their friends, like it’s a true seasonal moment that we’ve lost. I think in a lot of settings where we don’t do things like this anymore, where we’ve lost touch with the land and with agriculture. And then even to some extent, I think the vines themselves actually form the landscape.

Steve Hoffman 00:22:25 I mean, you look around and there’s some patches of scrubland here and there and there are hills, but mostly what you’re looking out over is vines. And the vines have actually dictated what the landscape looks like. I think of it as equivalent to this is going to sound funny, but I think it’s equivalent almost to New York skyscrapers, right? In the sense that New York skyscrapers tell you what is valued in this place, right? And in this place, what’s valued is business and commerce and finance. And if you look out over the landscape of the southern, the what you see is vines. And that’s the landscape. Having interacted with humans, but also telling you this is what is valued here, this is wine. And then the wine itself, the beverage just becomes a part of everything. It’s work. It’s what creates enough revenue that the village can survive. But then it’s also something that you have with almost every meal. And often it’s going to be wine. It’s not going to be fancy wine from Bordeaux or Burgundy.

Steve Hoffman 00:23:16 It’s going to be the wine that somebody you know probably made. And it’s just this really beautiful integrated experience.

Natalie MacLean 00:23:22 Lovely.

Natalie MacLean 00:23:23 And why do you think the Languedoc.

Natalie MacLean 00:23:25 Has.

Natalie MacLean 00:23:25 Still remained in the shadow of Bordeaux and Burgundy, northern regions of France, despite the fact it is the largest vineyard area in the world? I know things are changing. You know, technology improves and so on. But why do you think it still remains in the shadow?

Steve Hoffman 00:23:43 There’s a simple fact of economics. It’s been a poor region for a long time, and wine is a capital and money intensive endeavor. Like, you can make better wine if you have more money to throw at the various problems that arise in the fields and in the vineyards over the course of the year. However, in the longer doc, there’s actually a very specific reason, I think, which is that there was a treaty back however many years ago, centuries ago, but very early, Where basically France and Britain agreed that any wine being shipped out of the port of Bordeaux had to be Bordeaux.

Steve Hoffman 00:24:19 So other regions that surrounded it could eventually ship their wines, but only after all of the Bordeaux had been sold. And so the Languedoc had nowhere to ship its wine. The Bordeaux winemakers could ship to the northern. The very lucrative northern markets of Britain and northern France and Germany and Languedoc had to wait in line, and often there was no place to send that wine. And so that was a handicap. So then Bordeaux was sending this very expensive wine and getting paid for it and then creating chateaux. And then that becomes a self-fulfilling sort of generational wealth issue that the doctors never had a chance to benefit from.

Natalie MacLean 00:24:55 Oh that’s fascinating. I’d never heard of that. And for a long time, of course, then Languedoc has been known as the lake of wine. It’s so big, but also producing mass market, inexpensive wines, even serving as rations for the French army. So what is changing? Is there anything like. I mean, lots of wine regions around the world that were previously viewed as average are improving technology, understanding of their climate and their soils and exchanging information with other winemakers around the world? Is there anything in particular that’s changing in the longer doc that’s unique to that area?

Steve Hoffman 00:25:30 Definitely.

Steve Hoffman 00:25:31 I mean, part of the reason for the Lake of Wine thing is that, again, these were peasants who are growing grapes. These are not winemakers. And so when they weren’t able to export quite often, what they ended up making, it was actually wine to be distilled into brandy because they could actually ship brandy out of Bordeaux. They just couldn’t ship wine out of Bordeaux. And what that emphasized was growing for volume, for tonnage. And so they would use types of vines that generated lots and lots of grapes, but that didn’t make high quality wine. What’s changing is that it’s still actually an affordable place to buy a hectare of vines, and so young winemakers can come in and they can afford to experiment. And what they’re experimenting with quite often is organic, natural or biodynamic winemaking. And the reason that you can get away with that now in the longer doc, is that it’s not a northern climate with lots of moisture in the air. It’s still a mediterranean climate. It’s very dry. And so, I mean, a lot of the chemicals that you end up putting on grapes when you’re using chemicals to avoid spoilage are chemicals that combat mildew and moisture.

Steve Hoffman 00:26:34 And the longer Doc naturally doesn’t have much of that. It’s a place that you can plausibly experiment with natural wine, because the land you’re sitting on is not so incredibly expensive that you have to make a great wine every year. And then additionally, the climate itself makes it actually quite amenable to natural and biodynamic wine, which is a really dynamic, growing sector of the wine world and is in some sense in this case, you know, it’s like organic gardening, a return to a very old way of making wine that is natural to this place, this historic in this place.

Natalie MacLean 00:27:03 Okay.

Natalie MacLean 00:27:04 And was there a particularly memorable encounter that you had with a winemaker.

Steve Hoffman 00:27:09 Well, I ended up working, as I said, in The Vines and then working in a village winery that housed two winemakers, one renting from the other, who became very good friends of mine and remain friends. There’s a sort of celebration that happens at the end of the harvest. In long enough. They call it a day. It’s called other things in other parts of the country.

Steve Hoffman 00:27:26 So we were invited as part of the picking crew, and we had worked with a gentleman named Cherry Rodriguez who was making very, very ambitious wine. And we had felt that we were learning so much that we, like, owed these people a lot, like we owed them this whole experience because for some reason been willing to take us in and teach us and welcome us into their world. And there’s a moment near the end of that event where we’re eating actually stuffed mussels. And I take a sip of Terry’s highest end wine, which is a beautiful wine that resembles a sort of southern Rhone wine. It’s the first time I’ve had it. It’s sort of his pride and joy. And I take a sip of that wine, and as I’m doing so, I look across the room at him, and I see that he’s watching me drink his wine and seeing how much I’m loving it. And Mary Joe and I sort of have a silent conversation about it, and I see that he’s actually moved. He’s actually, like, moved to tears watching me love what he’s made.

Steve Hoffman 00:28:19 And it was a turning point in my whole relationship with him and again with our neighbors, where I suddenly had the idea, oh, wait a minute, we’re actually giving something back here. Our love of this place, our curiosity, our interest in this place, our embrace of wine as a sort of way of life like this is a two way street. We haven’t just only taken, we have given back. And there was very clearly there a turning point at that very moment, as I’m holding up that glass of wine and watching him be moved by the fact that what he has made has had an effect on me.

Natalie MacLean 00:28:47 Oh, that’s beautiful. Now, another poetic moment in the book is your description of a winemaker blending 27 wines in a lab, adjusting for color, structure, mouthfeel, like an artist mixing paints. What surprised you most about this blending process?

Steve Hoffman 00:29:03 Well, I would say just the sheer stamina of what it takes to taste wine, which you talk about in your book as well.

Steve Hoffman 00:29:09 You know, you taste 20 or 50 or 100 wines in an afternoon, and it’s physically grueling because you’re standing most of the time. It takes a huge toll on your mouth, like your mouth is sort of ruined for the rest of the day, if not several days. But primarily it’s it’s intellectually grueling. It feels like trying to solve a physics or a calculus problem. You have these 27 bottles, each one is a different grape, and each one is from a different parcel. And some of them may have been aged in oak and some in stainless steel, and some use traditional fermentation and some used carbonic maceration, and the times that they’ve been macerated is longer or shorter. I mean, it’s this incredible puzzle that you’re putting together, and the winemaker and the apologists are doing this in their head and somehow managing to remember the elements of all these different wines that would go together to make a great vintage that is not only great in itself, but that also then resembles the vintages from prior years, and will resemble the vintages in the future so that customers can rely on if they buy this wine.

Steve Hoffman 00:30:10 This wine is going to be what they fell in love with during the last year that they bought it. I just felt like the intellectual and just of the brain power and concentration involved in tasting wine was beyond anything I could have ever imagined.

Natalie MacLean 00:30:23 Great. And the winemakers you met also seem to have very strong opinions on rosé. Of course, Provence is famous for rosé. One of them said it should look happy to see you. The wine should look happy. I love that and criticizing the pale, bony rosés of Provence. What did they mean by pale bony rosé? That sounds personal.

Steve Hoffman 00:30:44 It does. I think what he meant is that there’s a certain style of Provence rosé, which is kind of a very pale kind of onion skin color. And the idea behind it is that it’s a sipping wine. It’s not full flavored. And again going back to our having fallen in love in some sense with flavorful food and almost smelly food. There’s an extent to which, in this part of the world, wine is respected for its ability to contend with flavorful food.

Steve Hoffman 00:31:12 And I think if I had to interpret what he was saying, it was that that kind of wine, that sort of very pale, not very aromatic, not very flavorful, not full in your mouth, kind of rosé is sort of a betrayal of what wine should be in this part of the world, because what we want is wine that will be paired, and it will kind of war amicably with the flavorful food that we also serve in this part of the world. And so, you know, a rosé should have a blush, it should have rosy cheeks, and it should be full fleshed, and it should be ready to be ready to contend with good, flavorful food.

Natalie MacLean 00:31:45 I love the way you put that. That’s great. Okay. Wow. Time’s flying. All right, let’s see now. Oh, I have to ask you about this, because there’s a striking passage in your book where you describe how you stop thinking of wine in terms of old World and new World regions, and started categorizing it according to latitude.

Natalie MacLean 00:32:01 Can you expand on that?

Steve Hoffman 00:32:04 That’s, I think, maybe one of the biggest insights I got from living here, which was understanding the nature of the wine that was made there, which, you know, the sun bakes a lot of sugar into the grapes. There’s high alcohol, there’s a lot of sugar that turns into a high alcohol wine that leads to something called sort of roundness or voluptuousness. And I realized at some point that, oh, this happens because there’s so much sun that’s falling onto this parcel of land. This is where grapes were meant to grow is the Mediterranean, and to some extent, the winemakers from more northern regions, you know, Bordeaux to some extent. But champagne, the Loire and Burgundy are all dealing with the problem of underwrite grapes. And it just sort of rewired my brain in terms of how do I approach a glass of wine if I’ve never had it before? I used to try to ask myself, well, is this new world or old world? Or does this come from, you know, Chile or Italy or France.

Steve Hoffman 00:32:56 And now I ask myself basically as my first sort of sorting mechanism, does this feel round and alcoholic, or does this feel sort of tense and acidic? And I decide how much I love wine based on those gradations, and came to a point where at some point, these longer Doc wines were kind of like my home team, and I love them because of my emotional connection to them. But I also love them because I fell in love with wine by drinking them.

Natalie MacLean 00:33:23 Yeah. And stylistically, they are more New World or what we traditionally think of as New World, like the big Australian wines or whatever. Like, I mean, they have their own signature, but still they’re far more in common with them than, say, a Bordeaux.

Steve Hoffman 00:33:36 And part of what that comes from is that this is actually a place where grapes get ripe. And so, you know, a lot of the new world over ripening to make big wines that, you know, Robert Parker would like are really an imitation of what Mediterranean wines do all by themselves.

Steve Hoffman 00:33:50 But there are grapes that are meant to grow in that kind of heat. And so they retain a certain structure and elegance despite the fact that they are very, very ripe.

Natalie MacLean 00:33:57 Yeah. Cool. And then a couple of winemakers spoke about roasted stone aromas and a kind of agreeable bitterness from schist soil. Maybe just touch on those two because I found those fascinating.

Steve Hoffman 00:34:11 I think, yeah. The soil underneath the Appalachian, which is where we’re living, is schist soil. And it becomes a marketing term to some extent. Every Appalachian is trying to sell you on the virtues of where it’s grown and how those wines are made. So that was an attempt by one of the winemakers I was tasting with to describe what the effects are of schist soil in the final wine. What I would say, and you know, if we want to get real for a minute, I think you probably agree with me is that there’s quite a lot of bullshit when you’re talking about wine. Yeah, there’s a certain amount of pretending, right? Like pretending you know what you’re talking about and saying something that’s very subjective, as if it were the truth.

Steve Hoffman 00:34:51 And at some point, the more you talk about wine, there comes a point where you just feel comfortable giving it your best and trying to say something that makes some sense, and it may or may not be accurate. And yes, there are experts who are very good at being very specific and sort of almost scientific about the flavors in wine. But there’s also an element of talking about wine that’s just kind of fun, and you’re kind of bullshitting with your buddies and you try something and so does it taste like roasted stone? I don’t really know. Honestly, would I probably say that because it sounds smart, I probably would.

Natalie MacLean 00:35:22 Oh, you’ve come a long way, Steve. Look at you.

Natalie MacLean 00:35:25 We’re so proud of you. Exactly.

Steve Hoffman 00:35:27 See, I’m getting over myself.

Natalie MacLean 00:35:31 Oh, my goodness.

Natalie MacLean 00:35:32 This is wonderful. As I say, the time is flying. So let us wrap up with a few things. What would be a tip or two if someone’s visiting the Languedoc? I guess maybe on the one hand, if they only do have a few weeks versus someone who is going to plant themselves there for six months, which is probably not the case for most people.

Steve Hoffman 00:35:52 Yeah, the one thing I would say is that in the upper Midwest, because we’re sort of cattle country, we think of as like the most reliable food you can eat as beef or hamburgers because it’s always there. It’s always relatively fresh. Everybody uses it. And what you’ll find in the South is that seafood and fish is the equivalent of that. So I would not be afraid to go to popular places that aren’t necessarily Michelin starred, but somewhere near or on water, eating the shellfish or the fish that has been caught within sight of where you are. The wines are going to be local. They’re going to automatically go with what you’re eating. It’s going to be simple preparations. And actually the hamburgers are quite suspect, but the shellfish is going to be beautifully fresh. And that experience of just sort of sitting in a village looking out over water with good seafood in front of you and a glass of rosé or a glass of good white wine is, I think, what that place is about.

Natalie MacLean 00:36:46 Love that.

Natalie MacLean 00:36:47 All right. Well there’s so many more I didn’t get to. But where can we find you and your books online.

Steve Hoffman 00:36:54 I’m pretty findable online but social media wise I’m most active on Instagram. And if you think of just SJ Hoffman as in Stephen John Raymond Hoffman, that’s where you can find me in most contexts. So my website is Hoffman. My email is Steve at Hoffman. My Instagram handle is at Hoffman. Other than that, in North America, my book is available in most major bookstores. It can be found on Amazon. The one other thing I would say is that I was also the narrator of the audiobook.

Natalie MacLean 00:37:25 Yes, you did a great job. That’s what I listened to. Yeah.

Steve Hoffman 00:37:29 Thank you. I’m very proud of it. You know, most people think that they’re going to hate their voice recording, you know, their own voice on tape. And in the end, I was very proud of how that book turned out. And there is also quite a lot of French and a quite a lot of sort of French inflected English and conversation in the book that I feel got conveyed by my narrating it.

Steve Hoffman 00:37:47 That is maybe harder to be conveyed when you’re reading the book. If you don’t have a French background. So that’s the only other thing I would say is that I think the audiobook turned out beautifully.

Natalie MacLean 00:37:54 Absolutely. And especially for a memoir. I think the author must read it unless they really don’t want to. Or there’s some other reason. But no, you really infused it with that sense of being there. And yes, your beautiful French.

Steve Hoffman 00:38:09 I’ll take.

Natalie MacLean 00:38:10 It. Yeah. Still cling on to that. Is there anything that you wanted to mention that we haven’t said or covered before we wrap up?

Steve Hoffman 00:38:19 Well, this answer might take more time than you want.

Natalie MacLean 00:38:21 No, no. Go for it. Go for it. We’re not in a rush here. I’m just trying to, like. I know it drills you down for more than an hour and a half.

Steve Hoffman 00:38:29 I’ve written about this outside the book. But there is one thing I feel like we learned here. There’s a French concept called a moment.

Steve Hoffman 00:38:36 Bon moment. So it means it’s translated directly is a good moment. But in France it has all kinds of other connotations. A boom moment is one of those moments. And I think everybody who’s listening will recognize one of those moments. I’m sure you will, where you’re you’re sitting with people that you care about, where there’s good wine and there’s good food. That is the centerpiece. That’s the excuse to be together. But then the moment unfolds into something greater than itself. The conversation becomes meaningful, and you start finding interest in the people around you, and you’re laughing and time sort of disappears, and you can be there for hours and not notice it. And I think in America, we undersell just the sheer pleasure of a moment like that. And that was one of the things that I learned that I really feel like I’ve taken with me. And I think everybody can think about it as something to take seriously. There are these moments in life. And often the best of them happen with good food that you’ve prepared or that somebody you love is prepared, and wine or some other good beverage.

Steve Hoffman 00:39:39 And taking that seriously as something that makes life worth all of the hassle is something I took away from that extended experience in France, and that I’ve tried to keep in mind ever since. I really think a moment is a time when life is at its best.

Natalie MacLean 00:39:53 Oh lovely. I’m going to look for a mall this weekend.

Steve Hoffman 00:39:57 There you go.

Natalie MacLean 00:39:57 Cultivate that little.

Steve Hoffman 00:39:59 And sometimes you can’t make it happen. And it’s also recognizing when it does. Yes. Right. When you didn’t expect it. Yes. And then. Oh, no, wait a minute. This is blossoming. Like this moment is blossoming. And instead of trying to hurry through it, or imagine when you get to get back to your phone to sort of sink into that moment because really, this is what life is about.

Natalie MacLean 00:40:18 Oh my goodness. That’s where we will end. Thank you so much, Steve. This has been so enjoyable. I could have gone for another 2 or 3 hours, but I.

Steve Hoffman 00:40:26 Think you would have lost your voice.

Steve Hoffman 00:40:28 No, I could have too.

Steve Hoffman 00:40:30 But thank you. Your questions are so thoughtful. Oh, thanks. You really put so much care and thought into asking these questions. They really went a lot deeper than some other interviews I’ve had, and I just appreciate.

Steve Hoffman 00:40:42 It very much.

Steve Hoffman 00:40:43 I just know you really did your research and it’s clear that you care, and that’s part of what this is about to.

Steve Hoffman 00:40:48 So thank you very much.

Natalie MacLean 00:40:49 Absolutely. All right. Well, all the best, Steve. And I look forward to the next time when we can have a glass or two in person.

Steve Hoffman 00:40:56 I’m looking forward to it too. And I’m looking forward to your next book as well.

Natalie MacLean 00:40:59 Thank you.

Steve Hoffman 00:41:00 And I’m yours.

Natalie MacLean 00:41:01 So we’re busy.

Steve Hoffman 00:41:02 No, I.

Steve Hoffman 00:41:03 I’ll get.

Steve Hoffman 00:41:04 To it. Okay. Cheers.

Steve Hoffman 00:41:05 All right.

Steve Hoffman 00:41:06 Take care. Bye.

Natalie MacLean 00:41:12 Well, there you have it. I hope you enjoyed our chat with Steve. Here are my takeaways. How does your perspective change when you start looking at life as one vintage at a time, divided into seasons.

Natalie MacLean 00:41:24 As Steve says, you start thinking about the unfolding year. Not as months and days, but as seasons, and you look forward to the next season. You participate fully and that you let this season be done and don’t mourn it because you know it’s going to come around again. That was really a powerful lesson he learned living there. There’s something refreshing about the attitude toward life that comes when you live in a place where years are thought of as vintages. In wine country, there are good vintages and bad ones. And yet, he says, in North America, the idea that time is more of an upward graph line. You’re going to have some ups and downs, but generally you should be going upward, progressing toward a big goal. He found it a refreshing disruption of that idea, to be in a place where there are good years and bad years, and it’s not always going to get better forever. You don’t live with that illusion. It forces you to be more present in the moment, because it’s not like if I just wait long enough, things are going to improve.

Natalie MacLean 00:42:28 It forced him to make the most of the current time because what he had was this year, this moment right now. And in the end, he loves thinking about life and time and folding in that way. What does it look like when wine becomes so deeply connected to a region that it shapes work, landscape, community, and what a culture values most in wine country? Wine is not just a pleasant accompaniment to life, it forms everything Steve says. People take the entire month of September off from their regular jobs just to help picking with the grapes, or working in the wineries of their friends. It’s a true seasonal moment that we’ve lost touch with in North America, lost touch with the land and the agriculture. The vines themselves actually form the landscape there, and he makes a really interesting comparison that it’s the equivalent to New York skyscrapers, in that they tell you what’s valued in this place is business, commerce, finance. And then there’s wine itself, the beverage that just becomes part of everything. It’s work.

Natalie MacLean 00:43:34 It’s what creates enough revenue for the village to survive. But then it’s something you have with almost every meal, and it’s going to be a wine that probably someone you know made. It’s this beautiful, integrated experience. Steve is very poetic and philosophical. Number three, why is the language of becoming a popular choice for organic, biodynamic and natural winemaking? As Steve says, peasants growing grapes weren’t able to export the wine, so they made it to be distilled into brandy. And that emphasized growing for volume tonnage, but it didn’t make for high quality wine. What’s changing today is that this is still an affordable region. To buy a hectare of vines so young winemakers can come in and experiment with organic, natural and biodynamic winemaking. They don’t have to produce fine wine to justify the cost of the land itself. It’s also got a mediterranean climate. It’s very dry. So a lot of chemicals that are used on grapes to avoid spoilage. Well, the Languedoc naturally just doesn’t need them. It’s like organic gardening and a return to a very old way of making wine.

Natalie MacLean 00:44:46 And number four, what makes a bomb moment and why is it worth taking seriously? Perhaps this is my favorite of all of Steve’s insights. There’s a French concept called a Beaumont. It’s translated into as a good moment. But in France it has lots of other connotations. Steve believes that many people recognize those moments where you’re sitting with people you care about. There’s good wine and food that’s the centerpiece. It’s the excuse to come together. But then the moment unfolds into something greater than itself. The conversation becomes more meaningful. You start finding interest in the people around you. You’re laughing and time sort of disappears and you’re there for hours, but you don’t even notice it. And I’ve been there. I love those moments, he says. Then North America, we undersell the sheer pleasure of a moment like that. A moment in time is when life is at its best. He just makes me want to renew my commitment to finding those in the show. Notes. You’ll find a full transcript of my conversation with Steve Links to his website, the video versions of these conversations on Facebook and YouTube live, and where you can order my book online now, no matter where you live.

Natalie MacLean 00:45:59 If you missed episode 332, go back and take a listen. I chat with Sally Evans, who started a winery in Bordeaux in her 50s. I’ll share a short clip with you now to whet your appetite.

Sally Evans 00:46:12 Frank has an interesting history in that it was very well known in the past in that it had the first wines that were produced that went up to the royal court of Versailles, to the French royalty, mainly thanks to the fact that Cardinal Richelieu was also the Duke of France. Also in history, Charlemagne had a folly here, so that was great. But then as time went by, an area like Saint-Émilion, which became a Unesco World Heritage Site, really overtook France in terms of notoriety. We have very similar soil, and I think that France fell behind at that time when climate was a little bit cooler as well. Some of the wines tended to be a little bit more rustic, maybe not quite as ripe or as elegant as they could be. And so it kind of fell behind in terms of notoriety.

Natalie MacLean 00:47:11 You won’t want to miss next week when we chat with Sonny Hodge, whose new book, The Cynics Guide to Wine, delves into the science of wine from soil to flavor, dispelling many wine myths. This guy is super bright. He’ll join us from his wine bar in London, England. If you liked this episode or learned even one thing from it, please tell a friend about the podcast this week. Especially someone you know who would be interested in learning more about getting the most from living abroad anywhere for an extended period. Or frankly, anyone who’s wanting to get more out of life with those moments, it’s easy to find the Unreserved Wine Talk podcast. Just tell them to search for Natalie MacLean Wine on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, their favorite podcast app, or they can listen to the show on my website at Natalie MacLean. Email me if you have a question, or if you’d like to win one of five copies of books that I have to give away. I’d also love to hear your thoughts on this episode, or if you’ve read my book or are listening to it.

Natalie MacLean 00:48:11 Email me at Natalie at Natalie MacLean. Com in the show notes, you’ll find a link to take a free online food and wine pairing class with me called the Five Wine and Food Pairing Mistakes That Can Ruin your dinner and how to fix them forever. At Natalie MacLean forward slash class. And that is all in the show notes at Natalie MacLean 349. Thank you for taking the time to join me here. I hope something great is in your glass this week. Perhaps a wine that helps you discover a bone marrow? You don’t want to miss one juicy episode of this podcast, especially the secret full bodied bonus episodes that I don’t announce on social media. So subscribe for free now at Natalie MacLean. Meet me here next week.

Natalie MacLean 00:49:08 Cheers!

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