California Winemaker’s Arrival Plants Discord in Rural France

His jaw taut, his eyes narrowed for telescopic sight, Aime Guibert surveys his vineyards, small parcels of sweet, thick-skinned grapes discreetly tucked in the folds of an untamed Mediterranean hill.

“Here, you’re in a museum,” he says with the force of fact. “Here, time stops.”

A thousand years ago, monks from the Aniane abbey worked the rough slopes where Guibert’s domain is nestled, 20 miles north of the southern French city of Montpellier, making wine, growing wheat and raising sheep.

Today a newcomer--the American vintner Robert Mondavi--is laying claim to a swath of land on the crest of the hill above the 8th century village of Aniane, thrusting this ancient land into fast-forward and sowing enmity that is tainting this year’s harvest.

“It’s a pretty bold project . . . the first time a California wine grower has come over and created a domain,” said David Pearson, vice president and general manager of Mondavi’s operation in Aniane.

Opponents have variously portrayed Mondavi as the ugly American with dubious intentions, or the ravenous multinational come to deface the hills, ruin the hunting and destroy the social fabric of a community knitted together over generations.

Supporters--apparently the vast majority here--see Mondavi’s presence as a way to catapult the Languedoc-Roussillon region, known mainly for bulk wines, to respectability in the increasingly competitive world wine market.

The tension over Mondavi’s arrival is but the latest echo of deep uneasiness in a fast-changing France that, in ways large and small, is shedding some of the cultural, linguistic and gastronomic purity that has been its pride.

But not without a fight.

Guibert is an ardent supporter of Jose Bove, the militant sheep farmer who wrecked a McDonald’s restaurant just north of here to protest U.S. sanctions on Roquefort cheese and other luxury goods over Europe’s refusal to import hormone-treated beef. Many Europeans also oppose letting in genetically modified crops.

“Progress is a religion,” grumbled Guibert, who at 75 is almost twice the age of Pearson, 38.

Guibert has built a reputation for his Daumas Gassac wines, in part by eschewing chemicals while hand-harvesting grapes and refusing to clone his vines, whose origins he traces from Palestine to the Pyrenees wine used for the baptism of Henry IV.

Fear and mistrust settled upon the Upper Gassac Valley last spring when it was announced that Mondavi, America’s fifth-largest wine producer, intends to plant on top of the Massif de l’Arboussas, rugged hills scented with thyme and lavender and thick with live oaks. The land is owned by the Aniane community.

Tales of political machinations and rumors of plots now sweep like the night wind through the garrigue, the Mediterranean bush covering the Arboussas.

“To build an empire, you first need a flag,” said Guibert. “I think this may be the flag.”

Andre Ruiz, the mayor of Aniane, called Mondavi’s arrival a “historic opportunity” to give Languedoc wines world recognition.

“You must know if you want to develop economically or remain a preserve . . . ,” Ruiz said. “I think Mondavi can help us with this revolution.”

Languedoc is coming out of a wine crisis. In 1992, vines were pulled up to reduce production in a flooded market. This summer, local winemakers held sometimes rowdy demonstrations to protest cheap Spanish and Italian wines that they claim are edging out their own.

People like Aniane’s mayor want the region to carve itself a niche as a producer of quality wine.

On July 25, the Aniane town council voted 15-2 to allow Mondavi to develop 123 acres of vineyards under a long-term lease that may extend up to 99 years. The vote cleared the way for Mondavi to seek authorization to clear the land, plant and produce--a deal Ruiz assures is all but done.

To encourage local backing, the council also voted to allot an additional 62 acres on the mount to Aniane winemakers.

The Mondavi family anticipated “that integration was fundamental to this project,” said Pearson, standing atop a crest of the 990-foot massif. “We never wanted a Mondavi citadel.”

With an investment of $7.3 million, Mondavi plans to produce a top-quality wine, with the first planting in spring 2002 and the first bottles on the market--at $70 each--in 2009 or 2010.

The company also launched a partnership with several French vintners at the local wine cooperative to jointly make a second wine. That project got underway with the fall harvest.

What drew Mondavi to the massif is what Guibert discovered in the 1970s when he started his vineyard--a unique combination of soil and climate capable of producing a fine wine in a region better known for table wine.

The Massif de l’Arboussas is hit with hot sun by day and caressed by a cool wind at night, creating a microclimate perfect for growing wine grapes. Precious Lutecian limestone drains the clay soil.

“We got here and for academic reasons, aesthetic reasons, visceral reasons, we knew . . . ,” Pearson said. “The challenge is nestling a few hectares of vines among this massif and retaining this feeling.”

Guibert has laid out his vineyards in small islands hidden on the slopes below, and that is what Pearson said Mondavi will do on the upper plateau. He says there will be “nothing but vines” on the hill, to be harvested by hand like Guibert’s, with the grapes brought down by tractor to Aniane.

“He’s hiding something,” said Marcel Poujet, president of the Assn. for the Defense of the Arboussas and a “pure blood native son.”

Poujet lays out a scenario in which he foresees the American vintner, sooner or later, taking over the wine cooperative, gobbling up more land and, in the bargain, frightening off the wild boars prized by local hunters.

“I’m not anti-American. I’m anti-globalization,” Poujet said. “We’re capable of making wine in France and don’t need Mondavi to show us how.”

It is hard to measure the real weight of the opposition. Only 30 people demonstrated during the municipal council vote.

Poujet claims to have gathered 1,000 signatures on a petition--not yet made public. For now, he says, he is “working in the shadows.”

“But who’s to say that one day there won’t be someone who does something,” he added cryptically.

Roger Borreda, one of the two town council members who voted against the Mondavi vineyard, said he simply does not want an American company on Aniane’s land. But for Borreda, who has worked for IBM in Montpellier for 30 years, “the deal is done.”

Not so for Guibert. He waged a legal battle from 1988 to 1995 to keep quarries off the massif and promises to do the same against Mondavi.

“Mine is an absolute position, but if I don’t take it, one day there will be a tarred road running through the forest,” he said.

Pearson acknowledges the opposition has been “heartfelt,” but dismisses it as minimal and promises the project will not blight the land.

“It seems like great wines are born in beautiful places . . . ,” Pearson said. “The [only] debate is whether beautiful vines will ruin a beautiful site.”

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On the Net:

Robert Mondavi Winery:

https://www.robertmondavi.com

Daumas Gassac winery:

https://store.cge.net/cgi-bin/cdf.storefront/view/Catalog/1009

Via Compesina, international arm of Jose Bove’s Farmer’s Confederation:

https://www.viacompesina.org