I was thinking of when I was really young, five to ten years old, at primary school, [of posters that were] just to explain to us the cycle of a tree, or a flower... I wanted to take that kind of academic way of presentation to explain carbonic maceration to people. - Mathieu Lapierre
Mathieu Lapierre is the co-manager, along with his sister Camille, of famed Morgon estate Domaine Marcel Lapierre, which he has overseen since the passing of his father in 2010. Initially a chef by training, Mathieu Lapierre joined the family estate in 2004 after viticultural studies in Beaune. Few who have met him in his two decades at the estate fail to remark the breadth of his interests, which also include the piano, archaeology, and Legos.
The occasion for our chat in early January was the completion of a pet project he first mentioned to me several years ago: an educational poster about the process of carbonic maceration. I may just be the target audience for this sort of thing, but I suspect Lapierre’s finished poster has an impressive potential to improve the global wine conversation, which remains rife with inaccuracies and mistaken impressions where it concerns carbonic maceration.
It is a situation that persists simply because questions about carbonic maceration most often arise in wine shops, wine bars, and restaurants, where informed staff are often too hurried to effectively explain the process. In such a way, Lapierre’s new poster is an inspired marriage between message and medium: it offers, in the form of a handsome poster illustrated with watercolors by French cartoonist GAB, information that is helpful on the wall of a wine establishment. Check out the podcast for a history of carbonic maceration; the sociopolitical values embedded in its practice; and the link between carbonic maceration and aged meat.
FURTHER READING & LISTENING
Eloi Gros: An Homage to Vanishing Beaujolais-Villages
BOOK REVIEW: Jacques Néauport, Le Dilettante
Podcast Series III: Les Emigré(e)s - Expat Natural Winemakers in France, Part I
Podcast Series III: Les Emigré(e)s - Expat Natural Winemakers in France, Part II
Podcast Series II: Contemporary Paris Natural Wine, Part I
Podcast Series II: Contemporary Paris Natural Wine, Part II
Podcast Series I: Paris Natural Wine Lifers, Part I
Podcast Series I: Paris Natural Wine Lifers, Part II
Ep. 23: Mathieu Lapierre of Domaine Lapierre