FRENCH TWIST
IN THE DIM, cool cellar, three dozen giant clay urns of different shapes and sizes cluster like an intergenerational family. Some are taller than I am and slope from the shoulders, tapering elegantly to the floor. Others have pronounced bulges at the midriff and lids like drumskins. The smallest hunker close to the ground, alien eggs ready to hatch. All are waiting, patient and enigmatic.
The air hums with music. Ethereal voices are singing to the clay pots—an unaccompanied church chorale from a speaker by the wall. The music mingles with the heady, tangy aroma of overripe fruit, and the stone-walled room seems to pulse with embryonic life. Winemaker Fred Niger stands among the urns and takes a deep breath. “Some people cry when they come in here,” he says quietly.
Making wine in amphoras is an 8,000-year-old tradition that has only recently been revived in France—in this case by Fred at his winery, Domaine de l’Ecu, east of Nantes, one of the larger cities on the Loire River. Perhaps it’s the sense of ancient gravitas that gives the place such a spiritual feel. Or maybe it’s something else. The largest of the earthenware containers is painted with symbols that look pure Elvish to me. “They’re runes,” Fred says. “Vikings used to have these characters on their boat, for protection. I put them here to protect the wine.”
Fred is no Viking. He used to be a lawyer before he turned to what he calls “the dark side”: the exhilarating, exhausting, and often heartbreaking world of wine. But he does believe in symbolism, as well as the spiritual power of connecting with the land—and the fruit it produces. Some people bury their amphoras underground, but Fred
