A fictional Q+A with myself about magnums (in my head)

You bottled aQuEuX-dEux (22) entirely in magnum, why?

I made the same wine in 21 and filled 10 magnums for myself and it wasn’t enough. It’s the perfect share-it-around wine, a small bottle was too small. So I wanted to fix my mistake. And how chic is whole cuvée in mag!?

Certainly from someone who spends a lot of time and wasted (?) energy collecting and cleaning magnums after parties to re-use them...

Don't forget to mention the waste of water!

How big is this cuvée then?

800 odd litres. Which I took as a sign because it’s exactly a pallet of magnums — plus 99 bottles. I like signs.

And you weren’t, aren’t afraid that your clients won't buy the same amount of mags as bottles?

Honestly it didn’t occur to me until I sent out my mail in Feb saying ‘hey guys so uh I have only two spring releases this year and one is in magnum…'

Which isn’t true, because in that mail you were actually offering three wines for the spring release

You’re right. There was also dALuM, my barbera from 21. Until I sent out another awkward mail to say that actually I was pulling it.

Why?

Because I bottled it with sugar to get a bit of a sprtzzz but the sprtzzz has not spritzed so it just has too much sugar. 

You added sugar to wine???

No, I bottled it with residual sugar. But it’s also like 14% and from Italy so maybe that was stupid. Plus, apart from my piquettes which are all very successfully fizzy, I’ve never managed to make a fizzy wine. So it was for sure stupid.

Pretty shit the wine you name after an idol is shit.

Yeah, it’s pretty shit. I wanted to send him some.

So now you’ve decided not to sell it, what will you do?

I told everyone that had tasted it they could still take it if they really wanted to. So a couple clients have, but under my caveat emptor protection. Then I also had to cancel the orders from the zine I’d sent out literally two days earlier… Like how many times can you ask people to bear with you? What I’ll actually do with the wine I’m not sure exactly. Harry told me to ‘leave it in a hot place’ so I thought that during harvest I could re-pile the pallet outside and leave it in the sun a bit. If that doesn’t work I’ll probably come back crying to those of my clients who very nicely offered to buy it from me and wait for it themselves…

Because its painted and labelled and boxed, right? And you’ve already moved it twice, like two trips x 80km plus loading and unloading and gas and so then ALSO opening and cleaning 500 bottles isn’t really an option right?

Can I not answer that question?

Back to the mags. You bottled the wine in the bottle you thought was best for it without thinking about what was best for sales —

— which I guess is a selling point in itself, right?

— like you semi-selling your wines via this fictional conversation?

I once applied to an intern programme at one of those very cool advertising agencies in Amsterdam but didn’t get a placement. Weird huh?

If aQuEuX-dEux (22) is anything like aQuEuX 21… well is it?

It is! How pro am I that that I managed to make the same wine twice??

So its’s also like zero degrees alcohol

10, yeah.

And you’re marketing it as a plousard.

Not marketing but I’ve remarked that this is… Is it cool if I quote myself?

I mean we’re in your head anyway

Ok so in my zine I wrote “I’m only 1/2 joking when I call this my poor man’s plousard. Poor, because cinsault from the Herault doesn’t have the caché of actual plousard from the Jura, and only 1/2 a joke because it half tastes like it does” — end quote.

Isn’t the usual wisdom that you put wines in mag for long-keeping and not fast drinking?

aQuEuX 21 aged well! I’ve just re-released 3 carton via the zine and it’s tasting great. And not that I want to quote myself again but I wrote that — can I? —

Go on.

That "it's floral and fluid and fluo-pink but with enough of a vegetable backbone that makes me, a definite non-expert with time, believe it will do well with time". 

Yeah but if I understood you the idea of putting it in bigger format was because it’s the kind of wine you’d bring to a party. For the sharing element.

Well yeah. It’s very… fluid. Get it? Aqueux? (Also do you not just LOVE the name aQuEuX-dEux (22)?! Like none of the French people seem to care but it’s a rhyme and both words have eux and and and —

— and the extra glass, the extra weight: you’re not concerned that there’s a contradiction in incurring extra environmental costs as packaging for something so… disposable? 

Academically, sure. But I also ship wines to the other side of the world and drive 1000s of kms a year to bring grapes to a place I just happen to be making wine in so I don’t think this is the moment to split hairs. 

But if it were?

I did buy the lightest magnums I could…

Any regrets?

I have 123 left. No, you?

Generally?

Can we just finish this up now? Any more questions?

Yeah: why do you do write your names with the small letter, big letter, big letter weird way you do. Doesn't Aurélien do that too?

So, you're never gonna believe but I only kinda just noticed he does... I dunno. Just looks cool?

NOTFALLSPUR 2021

Or almost ‘noodfalspur’ until I thought to check the spelling and stopped, literally, the printing press when the spell check told me I was spelling it in Dutch, which I speak more of than German which I am, and which wouldn’t have made any sense because on the signs on the motorways the warning ESCAPE LANE is written in German, Italian, English and French, only — and not in Dutch, which I’m not.

But it’s actually in French that the name makes the most sense: voie de detresse but the name was taken so I took the next best and then asked its taker to make me my label, my first! which makes sense in other ways too but first I’ll explain the first part: the distress.

In twothousandtwentyone I moved cellar threedaysbeforeharvest and by ‘cellar’ I mean tenyearsoflifestablity and an actual cellar to a garage with nothing but a press. The shortest version of the story is that I called some friends who at the time weren’t really friends who the next day found me a garage, bought me a wine starter kit comprising of 2 buckets a sieve a ladder a yellow thermometer and a bug light and lent me a tank. The next-length version is that they emptied the garage and it was a chai by the time I got back from learning how to drive a truck and had picked my first tonne of grapes the following day.

(These are 228L of they).

If wine is meant to be made with good vibes then don’t buy mine because this vintage was powered by adrenaline and when I needed to generate more of it: hate. Not that it was all bad! Like the little engine that said ‘I can I can’ I learned I could — and did — despite the considerable odds: I made wine on the closing door of a breakup in a garage and the people busy buying it selling it representing it now basically tell me it’s great.

So, this Rousanne also has a bit I think of Viognier that I don’t tell anyone about and also some random planted together red and when I pressed it directly it came out on the darker side of pink and I remember posting about this on Instagram with the caption ‘white wine making going gr8’. 700 litres of it went with the Cinsault to make Day Glow and these 228 went into a barrel I bought from Aurelien who had bought it from Fred and when I went to pick it up had to drop someone off at the Emergency Room because he cut open his finger. More distress! 

Ok so what else. Well the barrel stood in the corner in a garage in Langeac for 12 months in which time it was never topped up for no particular reason between the door and my press which was, as I have written, Jérôme Saurigny's press, bound to be my second press to then became my only press, and this and the fact Jerome has a fat cat I love (and Aurélien too) and that he skates (and Aurélien too) and that he’s great (Aurélien you are too!) and that we learned we had a friend in common (guess who) thanks to a THRASHER hoodie gifted to Jérôme by you definitely know who… well in short the label is a tribute and Aurélien had to make it and he did and I love it and now you know the story I hope you do too.

Where: Hérault 

What: Direct press Rousanne and Viognier in barrel for 12 months. Bottled October 2022. 

When: 2021

293 bottles made (hence why only 4 clients got any of it) much of which has been drunk but the rest I'm saving to raise funds for life, for wine making, for grape buying, for paying for the pump I bought and haven't paid for yet and because all of this is imminent and urgent they are now for ***SALE*** at my public price. 

Put your mail here to receive my mail on how to buy or send to abracadabrawine{at}gmail.com which is apparently an unprofessional email to have but who said anything about me being a professional and no I don't accept bitcoin unless someone wants to set me up an account.

And now in pictures. Goodbye!