We’re in Paris, on the last leg of a foodie tour through the Marais district. Our next stop will be at a wine shop. Wine is food, no? Well, in Paris, it is. The proprietor of the shop we’re going to visit has a special interest in “natural” wine.
Le Marché Couvert des Enfants Rouges
We were on our way to the wine shop when our guide, Deniz, made a detour into a passageway that looked like it didn’t go anywhere. If we had looked up as we followed her in, we’d have seen an arched sign telling us we were entering the Marché Couvert des Enfants Rouges – The Market of the Red Children.
It’s so named because of an orphanage that used to be near here. They dressed their children in red coats. This is the oldest covered market in Paris. “Old” in Paris isn’t the same thing as “old” back home. The Marché Couvert des Enfants Rouges has been right here on this spot for the past 400 years!
They still sell veggies here, but the big draw is the assortment of mini-restaurants assembled under its roof. Some are eat-in. Some are take-out only. And this being Paris, you can guess that many of them are top-notch. There’s a wild array of cuisines to choose from, including Moroccan, Japanese, Lebanese, Italian, and more, I’m sure.
The market area is tight inside, so a good option is to get something to take away, walk a block to Square du Temple, and eat your lunch in the park. By the way, Square du Temple is the site of the aforementioned Palace du Temple, built by the Knights Templar. (Remember?)
La Cave
The wine shop, La Cave de Turenne, was just a few steps from the market. (“Cave” rhymes with “suave,” not “brave.” It means “cellar,” and in this case, “wine cellar”). When we were there, unopened cases of wine were stacked everywhere. The shop is a one-man operation – a man who has dedicated his life to wine, by the looks of it.
The man himself, was there to tell us anything we cared to know about his operation or anything about wine. He specializes in providing “natural” wines. Or was it “organically grown wines”? Or maybe “biodynamic wines”? There seems to be a lot of ambiguity about what these terms mean.
Let’s call it “natural” wine, and assume it means that the wine is made without any, (or maybe hardly any) pesticides, chemicals, or preservatives. Whatever we call it, it’s a controversial topic in the wine world.
What could possibly be controversial about natural wine? I mean, who wants to drink wine containing trace amounts of pesticides, anti-oxidants, sulfur, etc? Up until recently, almost everyone.
Unnatural Wine?
The French pioneered the way to make the wine that people enjoy today. They started picking only high-quality fruit at just the right time to make the best wine. French winemakers were the first to use technology to improve the consistency of the process. They measured acidity, sugar, and alcohol levels to better understand the process, and ultimately, to make “better” wine.
Today, winemakers everywhere use pesticides and chemical fertilizers as needed. Instead of using yeasts that occur naturally on the grapes, they substitute custom-engineered, high-tech yeasts. Sulfites, enzymes, and other chemicals are added. They don’t do all this for no reason. They do it in order to produce wine that looks good, smells good, doesn’t easily go bad, and tastes good. Better living through chemistry? It depends on who you ask.
Or Natural Wine?
Natural winemakers and enthusiasts would say “no way.” In their view, the way to make wine is to start by growing your grapes naturally without using chemical pesticides. Then pick ‘em and crush ‘em, so the naturally-occurring yeast on the skins mixes with the juice. The yeast have a field day feeding on sugars in the juice, then burp out carbon dioxide and alcohol. It’s just good old fermentation, eh?
The thing is, most of us have never tasted the result of the natural fermentation process. It’s not going to be what we’ve come to expect. The wine might be cloudy. It might have a strange smell. You might make a face when you first taste it. And it might go bad before you get the chance to open the bottle.
But natural wine enthusiasts would say that this is what real wine IS. They tell us the other stuff is just what we’ve been trained to think is good. Perhaps by marketers and mass-producers whose only real goal is to sell more product? You can see how the thinking goes, eh?
Some wine/food for thought. Very interesting!
To be continued…
