Claude Gros is an unprincipled chameleon. At least that's how he describes himself, not as a wiry, peripatetic consultant oenologist born in Perpignan 45 years ago and introduced to wine by his doctor father. Although now based in Narbonne, he has clients from Bordeaux to Ribera del Duero in Spain. Except that according to him they are not clients but “people that I work with”.
When I ask him what his winemaking style is, he insists, “I'm a chameleon. I don't have principles. We build something together. I don't have a style I want to impose. I try to understand what they want – obviously within the possibilities of their terroir. The most important part of my job is listening to them – and tasting together, too, so that I can hear what they have to say about the wines.”
The great bulk of the “people he works with” are in the Languedoc-Roussillon, the troubled underbelly of the French wine industry, riven by militant protest at declining subsidies yet dotted with astonishing achievement. He is involved with, for example, Bertrand Bergé who, to my mind, makes the finest Fitou; the highly regarded Ch?teau Puech-Haut and Domaine de l'Arjolle in Coteaux du Languedoc; Dom Borie la Vitarèle and Mas Champart in St-Chinian; and Pierre Cros and Domaine de l'Escandil in Minervois – all of them punching well above average Languedoc weight. He is also particularly close to Ch?teau de la Négly on the rocky mass of La Clape just south of Narbonne, which in recent years has been admirably revitalised by the current incumbent Jean-Paul Rosset. Since 2001 Gros has been making his own wine, Domaine de Boede, on Négly's sister property. “The job of being a winemaking consultant is very particular,” he told me. “I think we should all make our own wine too.”