The Story:

“In the old days, when you grew up round here, they said, ‘If you aren’t good at school, you’ll end up in the vineyard.’ That’s not true any more; nowadays, educated people choose it. They have changed the Languedoc wine scene.”

Aymeric Amiel is talking in general, but he could be talking about himself. Immensely articulate, he grew up in Montblanc, and his family owned a small vineyard. His grandfather was of the generation that used chemicals in the vineyards, persuaded in the Fifties that it was the best way forward, saving time and labour in the vineyard. Like many others, he died in his sixties, having been exposed to astonishing amounts of chemicals; his son, Aymeric’s father, was essentially a teacher, but he organised his job, so that he was only three days a week at school, so that he could tend the vineyard for the rest of the time. Retiring from teaching in 2010, he spent two years, moving the vineyard to being totally organic from 2012; still, he sold his grapes to the Cave Cooperative. At this point, Aymeric and his brother Jordan enter the story.

They decided to make a go of it, by bottling their own wine, from the vineyard land tended by their father and grandfather. Domaine des Amiels was born. But it was not to be any old wine; they would make natural wine.

Aymeric may be young, but he has seen a lot of the wine world. In his early years, he spent time in South Africa and he also did harvests in California and Chile. Not only did he learn from other countries’ methods, but returning from there, he was all the more certain that his own family’s terroir, here in the Languedoc, was a special one, capable of great wine.

He was never going to be a traditionalist, however. And when you taste his wines, you taste something you’ve never tasted before. It’s partly his methods; even today, natural wines are not so common; but it’s also his choice of grapes. His white wine ‘Quitcha Quitchous’ (Price Band C) for example (from the Languedoc term, to be squished together) comes from a blend of tiny amounts of clairette rose, grenache blanc, carignan blanc, roussanne and bourboulenc, from recently grafted vines. It’s a funky, gooseberry hit of a wine, though under 11%. I’ve never tasted anything like it.

Then there’s his wonderful “Tous les Chemins menent a Rolle” ( Price Band C – the name a pun on the French for ‘all roads lead to Rome’, but Rolle, in this case, is the Languedoc word for Vermentino and this has vermentino in the blend. But more than that, it’s mostly chenin blanc (hence ‘chemins’ in the title’), a grape he fell in love with when in South Africa. It has a beautiful roundness at the start and then goes a little crazy in your mouth as the acidity of the vermentino kicks in.

The range goes on and on. As with most natural wine producers, there are hits and misses. But among the hits, for me, were the two described above and then an orange wine – Sous La Manteau – Orange (Price Band D), a blend of grenache and vermentino left on the skin for a fortnight, and A Peissou, a big red wine, aged in foudres (Price Band D) made from a traditional Languedoc blend of syrah and grenache, but with a bit of a kick on the finish.

For Aymeric, winemaking is like tight rope walking. Traditional winemakers put in a series of nets, in case things go wrong, adding chemical treatments along the way that aren’t particularly necessary, but ensure the wine comes out nicely if the winemaker makes an error; natural winemakers like him walk the tight rope but without the nets. And sometimes, you will fall and you have to give up on a wine (or wait and wait for its natural yeast to lead its fermentation moment to kick in); but most times, if you pay attention to the grapes in the vineyard and the fermentation in the cellar, you can get the wine the way you want it, without the safety net.

To achieve it, you have to be a small winery, and des Amiels is one of the only successful domaines I know that’s looking to get smaller. He’s anticipating reducing his personal vineyard area to just seven hectares next year, though he may also buy in grapes from elsewhere if he is confident in their quality. Still, overall production will go down, but that’s in order that quality will go up.

If you go for Aymeric’s wines, you’re taking a walk on the wild side. The choices of blend are unique and the vinification is full of risks. But the rewards are great too.