“I call them ‘human wines’, not ‘natural wines’,” says renowned winemaker Salvo Foti as we stand in the remote Vigna Bosco, a half-hectare vineyard that, at 1,200m, is the highest on Mount Etna in Sicily. “They link us directly to the landscape and the people here, in the future as well as way back in the past.”
Foti, of the I Vigneri winery, stumbled across this ancient vineyard when he was out stalking wild pigs. The vines are about 150 years old, their trunks as thick and gnarled as the arms of the countless generations who tended and cultivated them, built the dry-stone walls of its terraces and made wine using techniques unchanged for centuries. But, as young people turn their back on this heritage and head to the cities, those ancient skills, as well as the vines themselves, are under threat. In Sicily, as in so many wine-producing regions, rural depopulation and the rise of bulk wine production has led to the decline of small, hard-to-farm vineyards, some of them centuries old; many, like Vigna Bosco, have been abandoned altogether.
But Foti is one of a growing number of winemakers who are rediscovering and nurturing incredibly old vines and making extraordinary wines from them. “The sites are too small, too remote and too much like hard work,” says Katie Jones, an English winemaker in Languedoc. “Which is exactly the way I like them.” She makes wine from pockets of old vines, some of them more than a century old, that she has saved from being uprooted, and uses an innovative “Adopt an old vine” scheme to support and promote them.
Although the term “vieilles vignes” and its equivalents are widely bandied around on bottle labels, there is, in fact, no legal definition of an old vine. For obvious commercial reasons, most vines are grubbed up and replaced at around 30 years old, when their yields start declining, so 35 is generally considered to be the minimum age to qualify, though many are much, much older. Some survived the ravages of phylloxera that swept through the winemaking world in the 19th century; some, in Chile and Argentina, grow in vineyards established by the conquistadors; and in Lebanon’s Bekaa valley, Faouzi Issa of Domaine des Tourelles harvests wild 150-year-old merweh grapes. California’s vineyards, meanwhile, were mostly abandoned during prohibition era, while Australia has vines that date from the 1840s.
So what makes old vine wines so compelling? For one thing, they certainly smack of romance, because many grow in unspoilt landscapes that are rich in biodiversity and the history of human endeavour. The wines they produce also have an energetic quality that makes them very seductive. Old vines produce much lower yields than younger plants, so their flavours are more concentrated, and this intensity of fruit is held in fine balance with a sensation of the terroir. Their roots reach many metres into the rocks below in search of moisture, so they’re better able to cope with the stress of drought, say, than their younger relations, and are also more resistant to pests and diseases. While minerals are not soluble, so cannot transfer from rocks to roots, these vines somehow vividly, viscerally reflect the landscapes to which they’ve become so well adapted and the wines they produce can be really thrilling. If only we could all age with such grace and dignity, and give such pleasure as we do so.
As for the oldest vine in the world, it’s still bearing grapes 400 years on. This Slovenian vine has survived invasion, fire, pestilence and bombing – though, sadly, its wines are not on the market.
Five old vine wines that are worth the waitDomaine Jones Vieilles Vignes Fitou 2022 £14.50 The Wine Society, 14.5%. Powerful, spicy fruit lifted with a herbaceous, savoury freshness. Great value.
Definition Old Vine Chenin Blanc £16.99 (£14.99 on mix six) Majestic, 13.5%. Barrel-fermentation gives gentle structure and toastiness while allowing the tropical and zesty notes to shine.
Thistledown Summer Road Old Vine Grenache £7.49 (on offer down from £9.49 until September 25) Waitrose, 14.5%. From 60-plus-year-old vines – juicy with scents of strawberries and white pepper, plus a lick of flinty minerality. Serve slightly chilled.
Domaine des Tourelles ‘Skin’ £21.59 Connolly’s, 13.5%. Skin-contact white fermented in traditional clay jars. Structured, nutty and utterly mesmerising.
Clos de Luz Agreste Pais 2022 £21.95 Jeroboams, 11.5%. Hundred-plus-year-old pais blended with a little moscatel. Crunchy cherry fruit, floral aromatics and a little friendly grunt.