You're listening to another episode of Barrel to Bottle, The Binny's Podcast. In the room with me today, we have... I'm Greg, I do communications at Binny's. And I'm Chris, I do wine. We are thrilled to have Robert Eden with us, live from France, the south of France, to be specific here, and he is the winemaker at chateau Maris. Robert, thank you so much for joining us. A pleasure, thank you. Robert, you don't sound that French. That is correct, because I'm not French. I'm not French. No, I'm English. I was born in England. Yes, I've been living in France since 1984. Now, due to the new Brexit laws, I am finally going to have to become a French citizen in order to stay here. Oh my. In order to do that, it's a very special thing. You have to go, so they don't mind if you've been paying tax for the last 25, 30 years. They don't mind if you actually own a house and been paying property tax for the last 30 years. None of that really is important when it comes down to citizenship in France. What is really important is, do you know how to speak French? Do you know the name of the French president? Unbelievable. You have to go and take an all-morning test with these people that question you on French culture and French language. This is not a metaphor about American immigration policy. No, no, no. I am very pleased to say that I got my results the other day and I passed. Congratulations. Thank you. Yes, I can now become an French citizen. On that same note, Robert, I did want to ask you about something as we break into your story here. We'll start tasting wine in a moment. But with every winemaker, we're always interested to hear how they got into wine. Normally, we get a pretty fun story and I hear yours actually starts with you getting kicked out of school. Who told you that? Absolute nonsense. So I want to go back in time, Robert, and find out what you did. Well, yeah, it was one of those things. I don't know whether you remember, but back in those days, which obviously wasn't that long ago, but a few years ago, there were these home brewing beer kits which you could buy actually in the chemist, a chain of chemists called Boots in the UK. because I was underage, I wasn't allowed to buy beer. So I thought this was quite a good way of actually getting to drink beer without having to buy it, was buy the brewing kit. I always remember the lady at the checkout counter saying to me, excuse me, young man, this is alcohol, you're not really meant to be buying. I said, this is for my dad's birthday. Come on, please, can I buy it for my dad's birthday? All right, yes, go ahead. So there I was at aged 15 and a half, nearly 16, buying a home brew kit. And I really got into this thing of home brewing. And I must admit, I overexpanded a little quickly and brewed a very bad batch. And in doing so, got one of the boys that I sold some beer to, who was in the top form in the school, in the top end of the school, and he got sick. And then the matron asked him, why are you so sick? And he said, Eden, Eden sold me some beer. And that was it. That was it. Out gone. And my career in wine started very shortly after that. I can't believe the dad's birthday trick actually worked. I know. Yeah, it did work. Unbelievable. I agree with you. You couldn't do it today, though. They would ask you for an ID or something today. But back in those days, it worked. And then my father wasn't very happy about all this situation. And really made me feel unwanted. And so I decided to go to Australia and get into the wine business in Australia. I didn't know how or where or what at the time. I had Hugh Johnson's World Wine Atlas. I'd had it since I was about 14. And I really loved that book. It's a beautiful travel book. You know, the labels and the pictures of the vineyards and everything, and the stories which go with it. Really quite wonderful. Anyway, Australia seemed like a good place to start. It was the other side of the world, and they spoke English. I feel like your offense was probably the mildest misdemeanor that ever sent anyone to Australia. Yeah, to get you deported. Thank you for that. Thank you for that, Chris. Yeah. You're dead right. It's extremely unjust is what you're trying to say. Yeah, I agree. Quite right. So Robert, how long were you in Australia, and whereabouts in Australia were you, and kind of what happened to make you, perhaps encourage you rather that wine was going to be your thing? I was in Australia for 18 months in total. You could get a year visa and then you could extend it for six months, which is what I did for a working visa. I traveled the whole way around Australia, hitchhiked the whole way around and sort of camped and knocked on doors and stuff, and got different various different jobs. One of the first jobs I got was in the Barossa Valley, where I was lucky enough to start pruning some vineyards there. I didn't know really anything about pruning vineyards, so it was quite a strong task. But I did know a little bit about holding a pair of secateurs, and I sort of understood the basic concept behind pruning. I was lucky enough to have this elder gentleman who was there, and he really took time in explaining me why you cut the vine in the particular place, etc., and it's going to produce this type of flower, which will produce this type of fruit, and this type of foliage, and all that. So I really got into it through the vine, actually. I was very fascinated by that, and I was really encouraged to, I wanted to go the whole process. I wanted to see when the greats harvest, would they actually grow like he said they would grow on this vine, which was pruned in the way we did it. So that was in the Barossa Valley, and I then had a magnificent experience in the Hunter Valley on a property called Rothbury Estate with a chap at the time called Len Evans, who was a particularly marvellous pioneer and a very inspiring man. That converted me. I worked with a superb wine maker who's still making great wines called David Lowe. We did everything there. It was just the sort of start of the estate. So one morning you had to be on the tractor, and the next morning you're in the cellar, and then in the afternoon you were doing another thing, et cetera. So it was a great way to learn how to make wine at that time. It was all hands on deck in a new estate with a very sort of inspiring pioneering owner. Were you largely working with Sémillon here? Yeah. There was Sémillon in Rothbury Estate. We're also working with Chardonnay a lot, obviously, and Cabernet sauvignon a lot. But there was some Sémillon, yeah. There was some sauvignon, there was some sauvignon Blanc. It was absolutely one of those estates where basically they were starting up. So they planted a lot of the major grape varieties really to be safe and see how they would come along. So, Robert, we have in front of us here, what is, well, I'll say a non-vintage in terms of the label. There is no vintage on the label. We'll get into that in a moment. But we'll go ahead and taste this wine, and maybe you can tell us a little bit on, well, varieties that's in it, kind of your method of production here. And yeah, why you chose not to put 2020 on this guy. First of all, the wine, I love making organic rosé. There's something about organic rosé which feels very good to do, and just this sort of the lightness of the rosé in its weight, and then what you can get through the flavor, particularly from the Grenache variety, which is in this wine. It's so pleasing, it's so delicate, it's so soft, it's so enticing. It's all what summer should be, lying in the long grass and skirts billowing in the wind, and hair dropping down in front of the eyes. It's all about that. You can bathe in it, you can wash your face in it, you can put a little dab of it behind your ears, and you can drink it. It's just a marvelous, yeah. It's organic, it's good for you, it's good for the Earth, it's good for the planet, and yeah, it's an enjoyable drink. So we're lucky enough down here to have weather permits. We've got very good varietals for rose in Grenache and Syrah in Sanssou. This is wonderful rose country. I think that we're going to make a lot more of this now. I've been speaking to where I actually source these grapes, and more and more organic growers are coming online to give us more and more raw material so we can make more of it, because it's actually quite difficult to find good organic grapes which can make this quality of rose. Then 2020, well, it's just what happened in 2020 for me. I'm not really rebellious at all, even though I love a little rebellion, but it felt like 2020 was so awful in the United States, and it was just so terrible. I just didn't want to have anything to do with it. I think it's fun. In wine, we have a lot of stigma. We got a lot of things which are that's the way it should be. I think we have to, in the wine world, allow ourselves a little bit of slack and say, well, you know what? It doesn't have to be like that. We can do it else, we can do it another way. Still, what's in the bottle is delicious. I didn't want to remind everybody whilst they're dreaming by the pool on a long debt chair of the horrible year that was 2020. So there we go. So very kind of you. Not a problem. So this rosé, everyone, is 13.99 on our shelf. As Robert mentioned, if you're imagining hair flowing in the wind and so forth, but he mentioned referencing the purity of the fruit. There's a softness to the mouthfeel. It's still very structured and there's plenty of density to the wine. A lot of melon and orange zest and some bright red fruits as well. Really, really refreshing. It's not as lean and crisp, but round and refreshing on the palate. I think big notes of banana. It has the South of France, rosé textbook banana character. Really pretty, Robert. You just direct press this, correct? So very, very little skin contact. It's just going right to the press after you bring it in from the vineyard. Yeah. The key is with rosé is keep the grapes very cool. So it's picking very early in the morning or it's having a facility where you can leave the grapes in a cool room for time. That's the key. Keep the grapes cool. Then the juice, actually you can be very slow about pressing. Do you see what I mean? So it's actually in your direct pressing, you've actually created some contact if you see what I mean. You can do it very slowly through that when the grapes are cool. Then also the juice which comes off is cool going into the tank. You don't want to go through quick, super high heat. You want to just let the fermentation happen very steadily. That to me, I'm not into drinking thin water with acid. You see what I mean? I like flavor. I like things which if we're drinking something, there's going to be some flavor in the palate. I really do think it's got a very pleasant, soft, enticing flavor to it. I had the misfortune of dropping my bottle of rosé on the floor about half an hour ago. Oh, no. Well, you're really missing out. I'm not tasting it. Yeah, I feel bad about it. But number one, you mentioned since the grape variety, perhaps most responsible for the vast quantities of wine that has historically come out of the Languedoc. You're obviously treating this varietal with respect and you like it. Senso is a wonderful variety. It just needs to be in the right land. It's like everything. Everybody can understand this. When you plant something, the climate can be right, but if the soil composition is not right, then the plant is not going to produce healthy quality fruit or beautiful flowers or whatever it's meant to produce. Senso is very much like that. There are certain areas which are good for it and where it grows very well. It's not diluted, but it's not over concentrated. It's absolutely perfect variety for rose. You got some very good pHs in Senso. They're really quite low pHs, so get quite a good natural acidity, even when it's very ripe. We don't have enough of it inorganic to actually do 100 percent Senso, so it's always a question of just adding a little bit of it in the end, which is a very good composition. Salt and pepper add if you like. Greg mentioned you have that prototypical ester-y rosé profile. Are you using just natural yeast in this wine? Is that required inorganic or are you pitching a yeast to get that real ester-y? The yeast is natural, but it's cultivated from our area. So I'm not a big believer in fermenting, well, especially rosé with yeast, which is just coming on the vine. Yeah, there's a lot of reasons for that. I think the best thing is natural yeast is not an additive. Right. It's not a chemical additive. You're not putting anything into the product. Do you see what I mean? Yeah, I totally agree with you. I was just wondering if you were relying totally on just the ambient yeast and the yeast that's growing on the grapes. But with Rose, I think you're right. You have to pitch a yeast that's going to give you that estuary profile with all that fruitiness. Yeah, yeah. Robert, so I do want to get back to your story a little bit and get us to the south of France and why you chose the estate that you did, what was attractive to you about this area of Minervois, and then we'll get into a little bit of what the culture was like there, because you are known as the grandfather of biodynamics down in the Languedoc, and I would love to hear when you first arrived, what were some of the common wine making and vineyard practices? What were you walking into? The discovery of La Livignere came through literally a mass of tastings. Before I moved down here, I was working in Burgundy and traveled down here to actually look for some Chardonnay for an American customer at the time. And I fell in love with the region when I visited that time. And then I started buying wines and started just having them shipped up and doing weekend tastings and getting to understand and know the Languedoc in that way. One of the areas that kept on coming up, and I did this blind, one of the areas that kept on coming up very high on the list were La Livignere wines. That intrigued me. I mean, there were other very good wines from other areas in the Languedoc, but La Livignere wines were really the ones which attracted me because of their style, predominantly Syrah, very silky, very seductive, velvety, voluptuous wines. That's exactly what I wanted to make myself. So I was really attracted to this place by the wines that they were then producing and tasting them regularly. So yeah, then we managed to purchase chateau Maris. chateau Maris is a village domain, so it means that the house is in the village and the vines are dotted all around the village. And so that didn't appeal to the tourist buyers at the time who wanted a beautiful house with lovely vines surrounding it, a swimming pool and a Labrador and a Volvo and all that kind of thing. So it didn't appeal to that buyer. And therefore, economically, it was quite an attractive purchase from that point of view. The thing that I didn't do was study enough the health of the vineyards and the health of the soil. And it sounds ridiculous to say, and I'm hearing myself saying it today, but back then, which is 1997, I didn't consider enough how important the health of the soil was to the quality of the grape. I just thought, hey, the vine is growing. I mean, they've been growing down here for more than a thousand years. And we're in France, for goodness sake. This is some of the best terroir in the world. This has got to produce great tasting stuff. But I didn't realize at the time that the health of the plant is intrinsically linked to the health of the soil, where 50% of it lives below ground. And all the nutrients which it gets to survive comes from below ground. I'm ashamed to say that I wasn't as connected as I should have been in understanding that. And when I tasted the grapes of chateau Maris in 1997 and 1998, I realized that I'd bought a lot of very sick vines, which were living in rather dead soil. That needed to be changed if I was ever going to make anything decent. And that's where I discovered the whole world of biodynamics eventually came to me through that necessity, is that I had to rejuvenate life, regenerate life back into the soil. It's been a marvelous, wonderful journey. It's been amazing because one of the most amazing things is suddenly you realize you can bring something back from the dead. That's already quite a fabulous first step. I didn't know we could do that. And then the methods of doing that get you into life all around you. It gets you into understanding how decaying matter is actually still live matter, providing an essential source for more life to breed and develop. And all that helps create a very healthy environment for your plant to grow in and for your plant to feed off. And therefore, that is linked to growing quality fruit. Yeah, that's what I walked into. You walked into a pre-existing estate that had been conventionally farmed for decades. Chemical fertilizers, chemical pesticides, completely denuded soils, dead soils. Correct. And you set out to revivify it through organics and biodynamics. How do you say that process is going and is it ever complete? I mean, when did you think that the soil was sufficiently revivified? Or do you think it's still a work in progress? Absolutely, it's still a work in progress. From my experience of what we did here, which is going to be different to everybody else's everywhere, but from my experience here, it's seven years. Seven years. Seven years, you start to really have a harmony in the production. You really start to see, wow, it's not just the vine at the top of the hill, but it's also the vine at the bottom of the hill where the grapes are tasting great, and it's also the one over there, and it's also the one in the middle. So, wow, the whole field is tasting great, and that's when you know, okay, now the soil's alive, now there's connections going on, now there's things happening underground where everybody's talking to each other and everybody's sharing out the food We're gonna now go into the chateau Maris Rouge. Also from the pay dock, we have the 2019 Vintage, and those kind of tasting along here, this is also $13.99 on our shelf. Want to tell us about this one, Robert? I think this is Merlot and Seurat, if I'm not mistaken. Yeah, this is a very important wine, because it's what I drink for lunch every day. It's nighttime now, I don't have a bottle of it with me. This for me must evoke character, it must evoke life, it must be vibrant. It mustn't be too serious. I want to be able to drink it and not have to overthink it. I wanted to be representative of where it comes from, but in a simple way. This is a Southern French bread, and if you're eating a cheese sandwich, you can have a glass of it. If you're eating fish and chips, you can have a glass of it. If you're eating a cucumber with anchovy paste, you can have a glass of it, right? If you're not eating anything at all, you can have a glass of it. That's for me what it should be, and I think we need wines like this to me, which are obviously organic again, but we need simple, pretty, vibrant. There's definitely character and life in it. That we need as well. I'm not looking for this perfection of the right amount of fruit on the first palette, the finish which goes on and on. You're not looking for that in this. This is something which you open the cork and put the cork back in, and maybe you'll have another glass in the evening, maybe you won't, maybe you'll have another glass the next day. Who knows? It's not a problem. It's an essential wine for our everyday lives. I think you've absolutely nailed the style. This is like the perfect lunch wine. It does have very vibrant acidity, bright red fruits. It's just super soft. It's medium bodied. Everything about it is ultimately drinkable. because of that acidity, I think, as you said, super versatile with whatever you want to eat. Yeah, more or less. It's good. It's peppery. I'd say it punches above its weight class in terms of heft, which is pretty cool to see. If you're comparing it to something like from the Southern Rome, it seems to have more guts than something that probably cost more on the shelf. Yeah. Let's not take Robert's word of simple and fun to reflect even just the winemaking here. It's a really well-made, high-quality wine, and yet still very accessible for so many. To your point, Robert, yeah, we don't need to all contemplate wine for hours every time we open a bottle. Sometimes you want to just open it and be able to just continue your conversation with your mate across the table from dinner and move on. So beautiful wine and definitely for everyday drinking, and the price point reflects that too. So thank you for this. Many in the wine business, many publications have named you one of the top five most environmentally friendly wineries in the world. The carbon neutral winery that you have created, you famously have a winery made out of hemp. And so before we were recording, Jacques here was telling us about the grueling labor and time that was involved with producing or making that winery, building that winery. Wait, wasn't that one of the three little pigs? Yeah. Right? They made the house out of hemp. Yeah, the Trois Petites Cochon. You talked about in the late 90s, the Vineyard du Watt was not producing good fruit and not making good wine. So you started your transition to biodynamic viticulture. When did you take that a step further to look at the big picture now including the winery and who suggested hemp? In practicing biodynamics, it's a revelation to understand that vegetable matter is alive and as sensitive and as aware and as essential as animal life on this planet. Biodynamics really helps you to connect with that. It offers you that possibility. We all here at chateau Maris, we got connected with that a lot. We got connected with the spirit of the plant and the spirit of plants in general. With this connection, then bringing the grapes into a cellar, which was made of reinforced concrete slabs with metal support going all around it inside to a massive, rather aggressive neon lighting with stainless steel tanks and, you know, huge, powerful air conditioning units. It just didn't work. What was that? You know, it was like, here we are, you know, sort of kissing our grapes in the vineyard and eating the soil and bathing in our vineyards and loving it and appreciating it and protecting it and nurturing them with other plants and with lots of vegetable life going on. And suddenly we bring it into this space, which just doesn't match all that. So we had to move away from that pretty quickly. I highly recommend to anybody in life, do not be a pioneer. Do not be the first one to do things. Copy. It's much easier. You'll be here. You'll have a much better life. Do not be the first one to do it. Anyway, we were the first ones to build, you know, a thousand square meter building out of hemp. We started probably in about 2006 and we finished in 2012. One of my friends came along and he said, this is like what it must have been like in Egypt when they built the pyramids. You know, just a few people running around with wheelbarrows. You know, crazy, crazy times. But it's still standing. It's a 100% recyclable vegetable building, which doesn't require any air conditioning units. The air quality, the acoustic quality is great. We've got very eco-sensitive lighting, which is used in it. It's a wonderful building. See, it's very simple architecturally, it really works. I'm very happy to say that our wine, which comes from grapes grown in the fields, gets processed in a vegetable building. I love that. As I say, there's no air conditioning units. There's no falsifying of the air. There's no change going on here. So to me, it's a space which is continuing to respect the process which we've started in the fields. Your tanks are vats. What are they made of? You had mentioned stainless steel. No stainless steel. Tent to use concrete and wood. That makes sense. In 2014, we started, well, 2012, actually, we started with concrete eggs because their shape allows you to use less conductive metals in their support system. And so, yeah, I'm just looking for a neutral space. The energy for me is in the fruit. You know, when you drink a couple of glasses and no more of a great bottle of wine, you know, you should really feel the good energy. And that comes from the fruit. And so the object in the process is to disturb that as little as possible. So you want to create a neutral space as possible so that that energy is disturbed as little as possible. And it goes into the bottle. So we just poured another one over here. The Zulu, please, Robert. So we have Grenache, Syrah and Cabernet here. The Zulu here is $15.99 on the shelf, so. Seriously? Give us a little snapshot of this wine. That is cheap for what I'm smelling in this glass. Greg's a fan, he's been. The Syrah brings in this like gamey wildness that you just didn't get on the last one. And I thought it would be twice the price. That wine was bottled at the end of January 2020, it is a zero-sulfur-added wine. So it's organic juice with no sulfur added. I picked up a little bit of sulfur on the nose and I was going to shake it, but I didn't want to be insulting. And then also we poured it a couple of minutes ago and it blew off pretty quickly. It was there initially and if that's from the grape, then that's really interesting. Well, just because there's not a sulfur addition doesn't mean that there isn't sulfur compounds or hydrogen sulfide or something in the wine. Yeah, it's less than 10 parts per million. That's for sure. And in my mind, it definitely needs like every wine, when you open and you drink it straight away, especially red, you're going to give all wines a little time to connect with oxygen to find their space, particularly from a bouquet point of view. But the key point with this wine is that it isn't oxidized. So you're tasting a zero sulfur wine, which is over one and a half years in bottle. And hopefully, I'm not tasting it there with you now, but hopefully, you haven't got anything which is showing that it's actually gone off or that it's actually undrinkable. No, it smells great. It tastes great. It seems very fresh and has that kind of signature, vibrant acidity that you seem to bring to your wines. Yep. It's very vivacious and alive feeling. I think it's delicious. I was just wondering, would you test bottles over time to see if they're starting to skew in some direction? Sure. We still have 2016 of this vintage. I haven't had it for a while, but I probably had it at the beginning of this year, and it was absolutely delicious. The key to know sulfur is tannins. What sulfur does is it comes in and it stops the tannin molecules performing their process. There is no greater preserver for wine than tannins, and that is what you need to work with when making a no-sulfur wine. You've got to extract the tannins properly, and they will act therefore as your preserver. You've got to use cultured natural yeast, right? So, your fermentation process goes well. You've got to have good temperature control in the tank, so that you're not relying on fluctuating temperatures, but you can really control the temperature, so you can control the fermentation process properly. And then you have to make sure that every part of your process is super squeaky clean, and you don't want anything to be chance to chance, left to chance. You have to concentrate on making sure that throughout the whole process, going right the way through to bottling, and you must filter before bottling, right? Even if it is 100% organic, no sulfur added, it's a natural wine. It's a natural wine which has had an earth filtration as well. I don't want anything reacting in the bottle afterwards, because that allows us to be discussing in August 2021 a 2019 zero sulfur wine in Chicago. It's great news. Yeah. We have definitely tasted some natural wines that have gone horrendously wrong in the bottle, and that's not happening here. You are making these responsibly and artistically. Yeah. It's really quite remarkable. That being said, I'm wondering if you're interested in jumping in to the Yvonne Metteux Natur that is just approved for natural wines. I don't want another certification, to be honest. I'm already confused myself, and therefore, poor consumers and poor wine retailers and wine writers don't want to get even more confused on that front. We must be careful with generalizations of labels, label or certifications or whatever. Everything is so specific in what we do, to where we are, to how we do it, is really our specific recipe method, etc. I'm making actually, I just tasted it earlier today, an orange wine. I'm pretty certain nobody's using the techniques which I'm using to make this orange wine. I don't want to be classified in a whole category in a sense. I don't mind entering in the category as such, but I think we have to understand wine is, and that's the beauty of it. This is why, and I don't want this to be misunderstood, but this is why to me wine is a luxury. Wine is not a luxury because it's expensive. It's not a luxury. It's a luxury because it's individual. It's a luxury because it's very, from its, it's artisanal. That is why it's a luxury. And I think that's what creates the difficulty because that's why we have so many different labels and so many different people, et cetera. And I understand that. That's why we need great people like yourselves in order to be able to guide people and tell them which wines to drink, at what times to drink it. But this is a luxury. It's a beautiful luxury. May I ask, is it for those reasons that this is Vendee France, you don't want to be hemmed in by appellation laws or more specific appellation laws here? Or what is the reasoning? Yeah. I never want to be hemmed in by any law, Chris. And... Says the gentleman who claimed not to be rebellious. Exactly. I mean, I live in the Languedoc. Remember, the Languedoc is where some of the biggest rebellions happened in the Middle Ages. Yeah. I think the appellation laws are ill-adapted and they served a purpose and we must understand and we must respect all of us in life that things change. And we have to adapt to that change and we have to allow things to evolve. We have to accept that things evolve. And one of the things which hasn't evolved in France is appellation laws. And that's a great shame. Vande France is because, yeah, it's a great appellation status because you can do whatever you want, whenever you want, however you want. Yeah. And that's the way it should be. So then in choosing to go with the biodynamic label, are you agreeing with every single individual facet and requirement of that? Are you following kind of biodynamic practices kind of to the book or have you kind of created your own interpretations along the way? If we follow to the book, the biodynamic book says that this is a farm which feeds itself, right? The whole farm is one system, and that system is a system which feeds itself. We cannot do that in a monoculture. We can do that in a monoculture if we have a lot of other fields where we are, where we have animals, if we have a lot of other fields where we are actually growing different plants and etc. With vineyards, for the majority of us, the majority of us, there are very few in the world which are really practicing the biodynamic method of culture, growing grapes to make wine on a farm, which is an holistic self-supporting structure. Right. But we're not doing that. So in that case, I think what we're doing is we're respecting a, especially by, I'm not sure whether this has been noted, but especially by a certification which is called Biodevin, which is a certification produced particularly for biodynamic winemaking. We are respecting that to the letter and taking that in any which way we can, or one step further. Basically, to me, what it is, is taking the biodynamic information and adapting it to our farm in the best possible way, understanding that we are a monoculture. Okay. When it comes to preparations, aging them in horns, do you have the animals that are making the horns? Are you purchasing horns? We get the horn manure from a farm, which is not so far away from us actually. Okay. I tell you, one of the most difficult things about making horn manure is finding enough horns. Right. If you've got a significantly big vineyard, how do you do it? Yeah. I mean, it really is. When you're talking about, because horns, they do in certain ways decay, and in certain ways, they're not adapted totally to be refilled year in and year out. See, you are renewing horns. You know, most people are cutting horns very early on these days on their cattle. There's very few people that are actually sending cattle to slaughter or having cattle which die of natural causes which have got horns on. Right. You need to start sourcing Texas Longhorns steer horns. Yeah, right. In the 1920s, that seems like it was a convenient container, but is it time to maybe pick something else that is equally effective these days that's not somewhat arbitrary? Yeah, I agree with that as well. I agree that we no longer need the bladder of a deer. I totally agree with what you just said. It's exactly what I was saying. We've got to be able to evolve practices. We've got to be able to understand why things were done at a certain time, and appreciate and understand that and evolve that. I absolutely agree. Yeah, I think there are the- It's pretty great that you're not- Many different ways of doing it. You're not finding with pieces of fish, and you're not finding with eggs. It would be difficult for a vegetarian or a vegan to pick up a biodynamic bottle, knowing the other animal products involved. And if there were a way to take the lessons learned and extend into a little more reason to, all of the amazing stewardship of the land that biodynamics brings to the table, without some of the seemingly outdated arbitrary stuff too, that would be Yeah, I think I totally agree with that as well. I think it's essential that. And I think that that's part of one of the reasons why. And I think it's also good to have names for certain methods, names for certain ways we do things. It indicates to us. And I think it's good that we indicate to ourselves and others what we're doing. But that mustn't be restrictive. Right. It mustn't be restrictive. We must be allowed to progress and to evolve. And look, you know, gosh, if there's ever a time to evolve, it's right now because we're having climate climatic conditions, which are just, you know, never been seen before. So, so, you know, we have to we have to react. And and and and it's it's it's a shame that we're that's we're we we have a yeah, a society which is quite a lot of fear to react and evolve and accept change. I agree. Speaking of Biodynamics, we cut ahead and started pouring this wine, and it says Biodynamic right on the front label. It says Biodynamic Sur Agrinage, and it's fantastic. Excellent. As we're tasting this, this is definitely the weightiest. I think it's the most savory. There's this meatiness to it. Intestine, cocoa. Yeah, there's a lot here, tons of concentration, just a little more kind of power than the previous wine. So walk us through this one and give us a little bit on the label too, because it's a departure from the previous three wines. First of all, this one's got to be like 45 bucks, right? This is $18.99. Okay. You good? Yeah. Well done. The wine itself is two different plots. The predominant plot is a is a Syrah plot in La Livinière, but just on what is known as the terraces. And Syrah really likes to drain. The Syrah roots, you know, like a drained environment. And this is a really good southeast-facing slope. Super high-quality grapes. Very happy, very happy space this. It's a beautiful vineyard where the Syrah grows. We don't add any wood to this. This is this is purely. The Syrah is actually fermented in some rather large wooden cone-shaped tanks. Then afterwards, the Grenache and the Syrah will be blended together and aged in a concrete tank before being put in a bottle. No fining. I tell you the really big secret to this is the quality of the place where the grapes grow. It's as simple as that. It's as simple as that. And what you're tasting, you just described it. All the different flavors in them should be others and get other things. You're really describing the energy which is coming out of it. And that really is coming from the vineyards. And to me, I always say that this is a great example of a classic biodynamic wine. because there's no specific aging to it, because there's been no sort of any added gimmickry, it's a very natural biodynamic wine coming from two very good vineyards. I'm not sure it's allowed in this thing, technically, but I would love to introduce Jack into describing the label, you know, the meaning of life. But because it's a special label, which really has a lot to do with Jack, actually. He's the inspiration behind this label in order to make it happen. But he's only the inspiration because he drank the wine like you guys. He said, wow, this is it. So are you allowed to say anything, Jack, on it? I know you're somewhere there, hidden away. I was inspired and exhausted by listening to Robert. Well, it's a label that was created by a friend of mine. I wanted to think it's Winston Churchill that said, if you have a point to make, don't be subtle about it. Hammer it and hammer it and hammer it again. And so there's so much communication on organic and biodynamic. And I asked a friend of mine, can you make me a label that really spells out what this wine is about? And you just send me a graph from an encyclopedia from 1848, and that's Charles Darwin, The Tree of Life, and that became the label. It was supposed to actually be gray, but we print all the labels on reclaimed paper, and it absorbs the paint in a way that wasn't anticipated. So it turns Christmas green every time. It's cool. So we tried to fix it for like two, we tried to fix it for two or three vintages, and we're like, okay, it wants to be green, let it be green. It's not hemp though, right? That one's not hemp. That would not be legal. Well, this wine is superb, and the label is eye catching. It's cool. Then it has a deeper meaning, it's pretty amazing. And you're marrying, I gotta hate the stupid cliche, but you're marrying the science and the art at the same time. And that's what this bottle is. And I hate that tacky cliche, it's so dumb. Yeah, but it's totally apt. I mean, the one thing that biodynamics needs, in my opinion, is more rational thought brought to it. I've said this a million times, but the one thing that biodynamics does other than create a healthy living environment, is it totally focuses the people tending the vineyard and making the wine on the vineyard. So if it does nothing else, it provides that absolute focus through the prescribed duties. So do this on this day, do that on that day, create this preparation. Whether those preparations do anything, you're paying attention to the vine. Moving forward, it's great. You combine rational science-based thinking with some of these classic techniques, and you have a winning combination. Yep. Very good. Yes. As we have tasted with these four wines, and Robert, we want to thank you for your time today, and thank you for sharing these vines with Binny's. Absolutely delicious. So great story. Yeah. All from getting kicked out of school. Yep. From home brewing at 15. Well, thank you. I'm glad you're all enjoying the wines, and I think the actions actually in the end are the result, and the result is in the bottle. And so that's what we want to concentrate on, and yes, we can always do better, and we will always strive to do better. And I think that cultivating with biodynamics, you're correct. It increases your concentration on what you're doing. It also increases your awareness in what is going on around you and how that affects you and the others that are living and working with you. It's a great way of doing things. We're learning a lot every single day. And it's great to be able to make wine and share it with people around the world. So, yeah, very happy and looking forward to time when we can travel again and come and do this type of thing in person, where I can be tasting the wines directly with you. But much enjoyed speaking to you and thank you very much. Yeah, for sure. You know, we started this with poolside breezy hair in the eyes. And we ended with the stewardship of the earth moving forward. So, yeah, we covered a lot of ground. Gentlemen, thank you so much. Appreciate it. Thanks for listening to another episode of Barrel to Bottle, The Binny's Podcast. We'll be back in your feed next week with something succinct. Until next time, I'm Greg. I'm Alicia. I'm the loquacious Chris. And I'm Robert Eden. Keep tasting.