The Big Interview: Nicolas Joly
After years of being ignored, Loire winegrower Nicolas Joly continues to preach the gospel of biodynamics – even to the converted, writes Roger Morris.
After 25 years of preaching the winemaking philosophy of “return to terroir”, Loire Valley winegrower Nicolas Joly, the pied piper of biodynamics, has lost none of his passion. “For 40 years, I’ve been saying the same thing,” says Joly, who turns 80 this month. “Today, some people may be listening.”
It is difficult for them not to. Whenever the biodynamics guru ventures into the vineyards of conversation, he does not carry his pruning shears with him. Each sentence leads unimpeded into another and another, each thought explored coming with a story attached, often leading to another denunciation of modern winemaking. Yet there is good humour there – Joly is mostly a smiling warrior for biodynamics.
At the turn of this century, when Joly began his return to terroir outreach, few people in the wine community knew much about biodynamics. Most who did considered it a cult lurking on the fringes. The reliance of biodynamics upon astronomy in the skies and buried cow horns in the earth smacked of voodooism, and some within the then small number of organic winegrowers worried that biodynamics would give the organic movement a bad name.
Today, hundreds, perhaps thousands, of growers, many quite famous with highly rated wines, advertise their biodynamic certification from organisations such as the Biodynamic Federation – Demeter International. Dozens more employ some “biodynamic principles”. In the traditional wine-producing countries of Europe, being certified bio is considered a badge of honour.
PLOUGHING THE GROUND
In truth, Joly personally has little to do with certifications. But to use the obvious biodynamic analogy, more than anyone, it has been Joly who has ploughed the ground for the movement, primarily by founding in 2001 a group of winegrowers who were practising biodynamics. He called his movement “Return to Terroir” or “Renaissance des Appellations”, and in 2004 he took his show on the road, notably to New York City, where wine merchants, restaurateurs and – most importantly – wine writers tasted bio wines and listened to the gospel according to Joly. In fact, the first exposure many journalists, restaurateurs and sommeliers had to biodynamics came from Joly and his roadshow.
Joly himself took a few years to embrace the benefits of bio. Although it is difficult today to picture Joly as a corporate suit, he received an MBA degree in 1970 from Columbia University and embarked on a career in banking with JP Morgan. However, following a job transfer to the firm’s London office, Joly decided in 1977 to return to his roots at his family’s wine estate Château de la Roche aux Moines in Savennières, purchased in 1960 by his parents.
Unlike many young scions of wine families returning to the farm in their late 20s or early 30s, Joly did not want to innovate forwards, but to look backwards. He soon fell under the influence of the writings of Rudolf Steiner, a scholar and occultist who turned his interest to agriculture in 1924, giving a series of lectures and writings on the topic.
Although Steiner’s practices had been employed on other agricultural crops, Joly was one of the few to apply them to wine grapes, making his first biodynamic wine with the 1981 harvest.
Like many true believers experiencing a philosophical conversion, Joly was eager to spread the word, at first informally. But just after the turn of the century, he formed Return to Terroir as a gathering place for biodynamic producers who met the criteria for membership.
Joly also saw it as a proselytising group, staging tastings and seminars. Today, it has 175 members – a fraction of the total bio community – based in 13 countries, mostly European.
RETURN TO NYC
In April, Joly and his Return to Terroir entourage came back to New York for seminars and a walk-around tasting, with 60 member wineries pouring for press and trade. Neither age nor the intervening 20 years since his last and first visits to the US has done anything to tame Joly’s fervour. With a broad smile, owlish eyeglasses and a swept-back mane of grey hair, Joly launches into every conversation on the offence against the forces of evil.
Water under the bridge: Joly has had spats with AOC authorities in the Loire Valley
Like any good prophet, Joly needed a nemesis, and modern farming, modern winemaking, modern fertilisers and modern pesticides became the targeted forces of evil. An oft-repeated Joly line begins with: “Modern wineries are like hospitals when they should be nurseries” – that is, he paints pictures of the unconverted in their cellars, trying to fix or manipulate what the vineyard gives them, rather than gently birthing a wine. While Joly generally does not attack allied winemaking practices with philosophies that partially overlap those of biodynamics, he nevertheless views them with a somewhat suspicious eye. Natural winemaking? “The problem is that anyone can make a wine and call it ‘natural.’ In many respects, it’s just a flag for them to wave.”
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‘The problem is that anyone can make a wine and call it “natural”. In many respects, it’s just a flag for them to wave’
He’s slightly less caustic about regenerative agriculture, with its resistance to ploughing, which has been a mainstay of Joly’s biodynamic approach. “With regenerative, it means different things to different people in terms of what is or isn’t allowed,” he answers, declining to address that particular issue, but instead launching another attack on the evils of pesticides. Organic winemaking? While Joly often indicates that he sees organic and biodynamic working in tandem – as do many winegrowers – he says, somewhat sadly: “Organic can respect nature, but it may not be strong enough.” Joly has recently expressed deep concern that the networks of satellites circling above the Earth are interfering with the “sun and its life sources on earth.” Biodynamics is still strong [in addressing this deficit], “but the question is, for how long?”
As for French AOCs and their membership requirements, “they have a lot of legal stupidity,” Joly says. “They talk about yields, and this and that, but in the cellar you can still add fats and flavoured yeasts, and all sorts of other tastes.” Joly has had spats with his own AOCs in the Loire Valley over their requirements and membership dues. “I’m not saying that all biodynamic wines are good ones,” he says, “but I do say that they are worth trying.” In spite of his commitment to bio standards, Joly doesn’t suggest that consumers first check a wine’s label credentials before tasting it. “When I taste a wine,” Joly says, “the first thing I look for is emotion. Does this wine go to my heart?”
Lunar power: Joly has remained true to Steiner’s biodynamic principles
He also has a simple test for what makes a good wine: “I just ask people to open a wine and try it for a few days or even weeks. What is its capacity to resist oxygenation? In most cases, the life sources are not there.”
DEEPER UNDERSTANDING
When it comes to his own winemaking, Joly maintains that over his 40-plus years of practice he has not had to rewrite scripture or reinterpret Steiner. “We have made no changes in the way we make wine,” he maintains.
“What we have gotten is a deeper understanding of biodynamics and its secret actions. The musical acoustics keep changing. [Joly loves musical analogies.] There is the capacity to resist disease. You don’t have to always be doing something to act in the cellar, but you do need to follow the course of the wines.”
These days, Joly works in tandem with his daughter, Virginie, who is increasingly taking over more duties with Famille Joly winemaking and with Return to Terroir. The family seat remains Château de la Roche aux Moines, and the family owns the seven hectares (17 acres) of Savennières’ most exclusive enclave, Coulée de Serrant, a monopole AOC similar in rarity to Romanée-Conti, La Tâche and Château-Grillet. The Jolys also make wines from a number of other Loire appellations.
The membership of Return to Terroir remains small in spite of the growth of biodynamics, and they are almost exclusively European. Nevertheless, Joly says: “We have perhaps 15 to 20 people wanting to join each year, and we may take seven to nine. These are mainly small winemakers with limited budgets – after all, biodynamic is less profitable than commercial winemaking.”
But, Joly does reveal a sneaky sense of humour regarding his group’s members. In addition to having to adhere to certain practices, members also have to have their wines approved by a tasting panel of their peers, including Joly.
“The one thing we are lacking,” he says, chuckling, “is how to exclude people [whose wines are judged sub-standard]. We’ve only had a few, but if their wine isn’t good, we just ask them to keep resubmitting. It gets a bit embarrassing, but usually they get the message.”
Joly insists that, through the decades of his preaching the importance of terroir and the role of biodynamic winemaking in expressing that terroir, his message and his goal remain quite simple. “My aim,” he says, “is to bring knowledge so that people can capture the intangibles of a place with all its nuances.”
And, like any good evangelist, Joly will never quit searching for converts.
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