Remembering Bernard Bellahsen
An archive interview with the inestimably influential Languedoc vigneron behind Fontedicto, who passed away on Aug. 4th.
Languedoc vigneron Bernard Bellahsen of Fontedicto passed away on the evening of August 4th, following a long struggle with cancer. According to the sources available to me at time of writing, he was seventy-five.
French-Tunisian-Italian, born in Tunisia, Bernard Bellahsen began farming vines in 1977, working organically from the start, producing grape juice west of Béziers. (Only upon moving his family to Caux in 1994 did he begin producing wine.) A pioneer of organic viticulture (since 1977), biodynamic viticulture (since 1980), horse-plowing (since 1982), and unsulfited vinification (since 1994), Bellahsen’s influence reverberates throughout several generations of natural winemakers in France, particularly among those who followed him in embracing horse plowing. (Olivier Cousin, Sébastien Riffault, Rémi Poujol, and Alexandre Bain, to name just a few.)
Like his early peer in southern France natural wine, the late Roussillon vigneron Alain Castex,1 Bellahsen was a friend, mentor, and fount of inspiration to younger natural vignerons of his region, including the Andrieu family of Clos Fantine, Pierre Lavaysse of Le Petit Gimios, and Paulhan vigneron Julien Peyras. From his first vintage to his last, he produced singular, immortal wines that demonstrate the majesty of great Languedoc terroir. Fontedicto wines, like those of Beaujolais vigneron Christian Ducroux, comprise the perfect riposte to the perennial question posed by curious natural wine neophites: “Can natural wine age?” Fontedicto’s intense, savoury wines demand aging - and reward it handsomely.
I first met Bellahsen in 2019, in a visit arranged by his neighbor / acolyte in Caux, the British vigneron Joe Jefferies. His health already faltering, Bellahsen had recently transferred his winemaking and bread-making businesses to his wife, Cécile, who continues with the help of their son, Gari. (Bellahsen is also survived by the couples’ daughters, Sarah and Elise.)
Back in 2019, Bellahsen still kept a horse, though he no longer used it for plowing. He and the horse had grown old together, he said that day, as he fed the horse from a stack of estate-grown hay beside the winery.
By the time I visited again in 2021, the horse was gone. A few weeks earlier, Bellahsen explained, his equine working companion of several decades had suffered cardiac arrest, after being targeted by a local teenager wielding an air rifle.
In the shade of the hay shed, still stocked with hay, Bellahsen’s gentle equanimity that day was piercing. Surely what the teenager did was tantamount to murder? Did he know who did it? Would he press charges? Bellahsen waved these inquiries away. His weariness was probably familiar to many who farm more-than-organically in the Languedoc. He spoke like someone accustomed to being surrounded by senseless, heartbreaking idiocy.
Neither his son nor his wife planned to continue his regimen of horse-plowing. So Fontedicto’s stable would remain empty. Bellahsen didn’t blame them.
“With the horse, I used to work the soil in both directions. Now I’m physically no longer capable. I ruined myself a little, because I did that for thirty years,” he said, smiling. “But I don’t regret it.”
In addition to three decades of great Languedoc winemaking, Bellahsen bequeaths a legacy of kindness, of social and environmental engagement, of deep reflection upon what it means for a vigneron to live as a paysan.
Godspeed, Bernard! Your example lives on.
For more on Bernard Bellahsen, check out out this 2019 interview from Issue 5.5.
Subscribers can also scroll below for a short archive interview from my last encounter with Bellahsen in early 2023.
BERNARD BELLAHSEN ON ARAMON AND TERRET
The following brief interview concerning two obscure Languedoc grape varieties was conducted in February 2023. It has been edited and condensed for clarity.