»Es brutal !« – Romain Cole’s foreword

11 April, 2022

Tomorrow, I will be interviewing Romain Cole. He is, amongst many other things, a fellow writer. It was Thomas who showed me Cole’s book »Es brutal !«, published by Éditions Cambourakis in Paris last year. There is a photo of its cover in my blog already. I loved flicking through the book! It consists of interviews with winemakers from Catalonia (the French and the Spanish part, to cut a long and complicated story short), »Catalonia through its natural winegrowers« reads its sub-line, and features interviews that are very well conducted and transcribed. I somehow found it relatively easy reading it. I mean, I would only understand 30%, maybe, but still! It looked good and the photos were superb and quite often surprising, too. I knew two vigneronnes featured in the book: Manuel di Vecchi (mentioned elsewhere in my blog) and Bruno Duchêne – both friends of Thomas! And I knew one of their wines as well! The sweet wine from di Vecchi I wrote about in the blog entry referenced above. From Duchêne I know a cuvée named »Inès« – named after a woman called Inès who I got to know and like during my first stay with Thomas in 2020. She is the niece of Duchêne who named the cuvée after her because, as a child, I think, I hope I’m not mistaken, it was only her who could climb into the amphorae he was using to make his wine in and to clean it from the inside. (I’m still in touch with Inès.)

I had had the same idea, producing a book like this, in 2021 and had mentioned it to Anne-Cécile Jadaud and Thomas in June of that year – a book of interviews with »vigneron:nes« (that’s the spelling Romain uses in his book, just like the German »Winzer:innen«, making sure all gender are reflected) from the Loire (I might do it, actually).

As mentioned before my French is, sadly, not in good shape. I learned it at school, from 1991 until 1995 only. I enjoyed speaking it and was quite good at it, too, but I haven’t used it much since. But whenever I’m in France I realize that not all is lost and that my brain has stored more French than I thought. Still, I needed outside help to prepare myself for tomorrow’s interview. Recently, I found out that the iPhone is able to scan a text. Cool! So I scanned Cole’s foreword and then put it into Google Translate. So, here goes the translation, edited (corrected and shortened) by me, with a few comments in {brackets}.

»So much money spent on bottles daily. Some explain it by alcoholism, me by writing a book…  People {in the world of natural wine} appeared to me rather fulfilled, earning their living without compromise… They live in the open air, in beautiful landscapes, eat well, drink abundantly… A spirit of collegiality reigns, a certain morality, too… Obviously that’s only partially true, but {this} is what writing a book {like this one} allows you to discover… To spend time with {winemakers} I needed to find a pretext, a publisher and a place of action. Catalonia imposed itself. Firstly, because the first natural wines I drank… came from there, near Banyuls… {And secondly, Romain had been a regular at Coinstot Vino, a restaurant in Paris, where he had met the winemaker Alain Castex whose wine ›Powder d’escampette‹ he had first drunk at Christmas, in 2012 or 2013, and which had left an everlasting impression on him}… He {Alain} is the secret soul secret of this book, the reason for all this, the one to whom I return… the land {in Catalonia} remains very accessible in price, which has enabled many young winegrowers to settle. Obviously their language is different, their way of making wine also. They are the first generation… I am writing this foreword in Sicily, where my wife, our children and I are taking over a small orchard filled with vines and fruit trees on the slopes of Etna. All my diplomas disappeared in the glass… we can also read this book as a little guide to the neo-winemaker of which I would be the first beneficiary. Like an ethnologist, minus the scientific rigor, my initial intention was to identify, listen, record, film and photograph as many ›natural‹ winegrowers as possible. To find out what they look like, what they think, how they do it. And to see if I recognized myself a little in there as well. An impossible encyclopedic goal, a mosaic of words and thoughts, a first cobblestone, brutal out of necessity. Romain Cole«