What is fascinating to me about this particular (still entrenched in punk-ism) winemaker-- other than my joke that I never grew out of my bad boy phase?
Because the story behind drive is compelling. This man from Prague read Baudelaire and ended up in the south of France. He fell in love, drank Bordeaux left and came back, went to enoschool, met a few men who had a natural sensibility Andrea didn't know he shared.
His brush with the band in Morgon changed his attitude about wine and wine life. Which lead him to farming, winemaking, growing slowly (his first vintage was 2007) and being very closed about his winemaking techniques.
Calek, too, gives me the, "It's not me, it's the terroir," bullshit. But he knows he's giving bullshit, and that makes it charming. Perhaps it's what comes of growing up in Communism, you learn to be secret, but not without a fierce sense of irony.
He has something else. Talent. Spirit. The touch. So far at least. He is a thinker and he doesn't need someone else's opinion. When talk about technique he admits to carbonic--no pigeage, no remontage. Just wine.
Why? I ask.
I'm lazy, he says.
You don't use sulfur?
As a rule, no. But if a wine needs it, I use it.
He claims to pray, but he doesn't believe in dogma, even with sulfur. He won't go to hell, he knows that for sure. The Sulfatata won't come and knock on his door. I ask his definition of natural wine, he shrugs, he says in his edged Czeched english, 'nothing added, nothing taken away."
Hmm..has he been reading my blog? Is he playing to me --but no, I think, he means it. He goes on, it's an ideal, a philosophy, it's not always attainable. There was one year he should have added sulfur, a teensie bit would have saved the cuve from the dumpster.
I take a break and go to the toilet.
The prettiest w/c I've used in a long time.
After having my moment with guilt-- how horrible it was to leave my tissue behind-- I mean, I was traveling with one pair of jeans for three weeks --and there was no way I was going to risk a dribble. Saved by pragmatism, (Pragmatism, in William James' eyes, was that the truth of an idea needed to be tested to prove its validity. ) I buried it next to a gorgeous blue flower and then returned to the plastic table, and tasted some wines.
(no tasting note)
Chatons de Gardes. It's syrah, puppy breath, sappy with ligaments with threads of patchouli. I like it.
Punk Czech: this is his homage to Domaine Peyra--it's an early wine, red wine released less than a year after harvest and it is just that--vin de soig and made from syrah and blue portuguese and...grenache? This is more like Pfifferling meets Perya, very fruit forward, cinnamon.
The 2007 Blonde? He didn't think it would have any fizz left, but it did. "That vintage was a mistake," he said. But when 2008 came around, he made sure the bubbles were on purpose.
We passed by the pile of beer 
and headed to dinner.
The prettiest w/c I've used in a long time.
After having my moment with guilt-- how horrible it was to leave my tissue behind-- I mean, I was traveling with one pair of jeans for three weeks --and there was no way I was going to risk a dribble. Saved by pragmatism, (Pragmatism, in William James' eyes, was that the truth of an idea needed to be tested to prove its validity. ) I buried it next to a gorgeous blue flower and then returned to the plastic table, and tasted some wines.
(no tasting note)
Chatons de Gardes. It's syrah, puppy breath, sappy with ligaments with threads of patchouli. I like it.
Punk Czech: this is his homage to Domaine Peyra--it's an early wine, red wine released less than a year after harvest and it is just that--vin de soig and made from syrah and blue portuguese and...grenache? This is more like Pfifferling meets Perya, very fruit forward, cinnamon.
The 2007 Blonde? He didn't think it would have any fizz left, but it did. "That vintage was a mistake," he said. But when 2008 came around, he made sure the bubbles were on purpose.
We passed by the pile of beer 
and headed to dinner.
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