Nicolas Joly and His Loire Valley Wines Remain Outspoken

Nicolas Joly prescribes a simple test to determine whether a wine is “alive.” Leave the bottle open for weeks and taste it every few days or so. If the wine remains unchanged or even improves over time, it is a “true, alive” wine. If not, the wine will become oxidized in a day. “When a wine has received life properly in the vineyard, then oxidation has no power,” Joly says. “We can taste when a wine’s energy has been destroyed by bad farming and then someone used enology in the cellar to ‘create’ the wine.”

- BY KRISTEN BIELER

At 80 years old, the world’s longtime evangelist for biodynamic viticulture retains the zeal of a recent convert. “Biodynamic farming is the only way to catch the life force and the originality of a place and put it in a bottle,” he explains.

Widely viewed as an eccentric in the 1980s, Joly returned home after working as an investment banker abroad to take over his family’s estate in Savennières commune. He began converting their most prized jewel—La Coulée de Serrant, a Chenin Blanc vineyard planted by Cistercian monks in the 12th century—to biodynamics. He achieved full biodynamic certification in 1984, making him one of the first wine producers anywhere to do so.