The Grape Rebellion

What a grape can teach us about resistance--and the best new salon that you never heard about

Last year when I was in France for my extended period, Deidre Heekin (Vermont’s La Garagista) and I bundled into a vehicule utilitaire for a road trip. Purpose? Research for her book-in-progress on hybrid grapes. This voyage took us through the backroads on a mission to uncover some forgotten history. But the highlight was to see Deirdre pour her wines along with her French colleagues and fellow hybrid crusaders at the first Le Salon des Vins Hybrides, organized by Vitis Batardus Liberata. It was time for hybrids to shed their shamed history and take their place in the future. 

The place was packed. Even the Pope of Pupillin, Pierre Overnoy, was in attendance. 

Pierre sat with me behind the La Garagista table for a bit, enjoying the scene, tasting the wines with wide-eyed interest and pretending to understand my French.

It's quite something when you consider that these hybrid grapes—the cross-pollination of the hardy American native wild species and the fragile Vitis vinifera (the Pinots and Chardonnays of the world)—once considered great for jam and revolting for winemaking, so much so that they were banned, are now poised to save the wine of the future.