Pierre Dietrich of Pépin: Fighting With The Weapons of Big Wine
Pierre Dietrich of Pépin: Fighting With The Weapons of Big Wine
An interview with Pierre Dietrich of Alsace natural wine négociant Pépin (and Domaine Achillée).
Domaine d’Achillée’s Pierre Dietrich is the founder of Pépin, an ambitious natural wine négociant agency that he runs in close collaboration with Pierre Sanchez and Xavier Couturier of influential Alsace consultancy DUO Oenologie. A self-described natural wine “start-up,” Pépin is distinguished by its unusual - and controversial - concept, which obscures the traditional information by which wine consumers make purchasing selections (region, grape variety, vintage, and the names of those who grow and vinify a wine) in favor of offering non-vintage wines marketed solely by color and a loosely-defined Pépin house style. The latter is determined by the vinification management of Sanchez and Couturier. Wines are bottled at growers’ estates before aging at Pépin’s warehouse site; while most are the work of one winegrower, Sanchez and Couturier have a free hand in blending wines from across Pépin’s grower network when necessary to achieve satisfactory results. Most wines derive from Alsace, where the project is based, but Pépin has also purchased wines from as far afield as Spain and Italy.
Dietrich’s avowed aim with Pépin is to bring natural wine to as many consumers as possible - even when this means embracing mass market distribution channels typically shunned by independent natural wine producers. In addition to producing wines labelled Pépin aimed at wine shops and restaurants, the company also produces wines released under a bevy of other proprietary labels for specific supermarkets, export markets, and private clients. Since founding Pépin in 2021, Dietrich has been forthright about soliciting further investment, making notable appearances on a French business television program and on a popular French finance podcast. Combined with the fast-growing ubiquity of Pépin’s Michel Tolmer-signed labels throughout restaurants and wines shops in metropolitan France, this avidly commercial approach has made Pépin a lightning rod for criticism among certain echelons of the natural wine scene. Does Pépin’s embrace of mass-market wine distribution methods herald natural wine’s future? Or its end?
To learn more, I joined Pierre Dietrich at Domaine Achillée in Scherwiller in mid-August for a stroll around the nearby Pépin warehouse (which was soon to be vacated in favor of a larger site in Sélestat) and a chat about his vision of what must be done to truly “democratize” natural wine.
PIERRE DIETRICH OF PEPIN AND DOMAINE ACHILLEE: AN INTERVIEW
The following interview was conducted on Aug. 19th, 2024. It has been condensed and edited for clarity.