Celebrating nearly 25 years of the "Return to Terroir" Group & In-store tasting with Rachel from Peybonhomme this Saturday 4/19
4/17/2025
Back in 2001, the same year we opened Chambers Street Wines, the iconic winemaker N
icolas Joly, along with other like-minded producers, started the Renaissance des Appellations group. They formed the group in an effort to support and promote a "Return to Terroir," with a focus on forgotten agricultural traditions, centered around the concepts Biodynamics and writings of Rudolf Steiner, but also encouraging regenerative farming and low-intervention winemaking. Now, nearly 25 years later, the group has grown to include 230 winemakers from 13 different countries!
Next week, 60 of these 230 winemakers will be in New York City for an industry event, pouring their wines and hosting talks and symposiums. Though the public is not allowed to attend the Return to Terroir tasting next Wednesday (we'll ask them to open it to the public next time!), we will be hosting Rachel from Chateau Peybonhomme and Chateau Grolet here at Chambers Street Wines this Saturday, 4/19 from 5-7pm, and will be co-hosting a free public walk-around tasting with at least 10 producers from the Renaissance des Appellations group at Skin Contact Wine Bar on 76 Orchard Street next Thursday, April 24th from 5-7pm (with glass and bottle specials all night!).
For those of you who cannot attend, we figured it would at least be worth offering a taste of the wines that will be open at the event next week! Click the link below to View wines available for purchase, and keep scrolling to read more about the history and philosophy of the Renaissance des Appellations group!
>>> View Wines Here <<<
Nicolas Joly in the vines
A "Return to Terroir"
Text from the Renaissance des Appellations website
The purpose of this group is to guarantee the full expression of the appellations and a wine with a high quality level with a great originality.
To obtain this we act at 3 levels :
1. A legal guaranty of good agriculture, this means an organic and or biodynamic certificate on the whole vineyard and since at least 3 years. The presented wine comes from a living soil, not treated with chemicals. The consumer has the guarantee that the winegrower has taken a legal engagement. Over 90% of the group practices bio-dynamic agriculture.
2 A guaranty that in the cellar no actions would change the full expression of the AOC’s taste. When agriculture is right the cellar is a maternity and not a factory. Banned are of course all 300 aromatic yeast, osmosis, GMO, mechanical harvest (see quality charter). The winegrower signs a record of his cellar actions for the last 3 years.
3. A tasting is made by a tasting committee made of well-known winegrowers. The unanimous consent of the committee is needed to join the group. In some cases we allow a winegrower whose application is in good order but who was refused at the tasting to take part in a tasting of the group to help them commercially.
Only the winegrowers who have had a minimum of 3 years of organic or bio-dynamic farming on thetotality of their vineyard, can present their wines to the tasting committee of our group. The logos Quality France , Demeter , Eco-cert, Biodivin , Nature et Progrés , bring this garantee. Such controls have become a necessity to give the consumer the legal guarantee of a sane wine, where the appellation is fully expressed. In some countries, too many people use the words organic or bio-dynamic without carefully applying the rules they imply.
We see everywhere the spread of a change in awareness concerning the horribly destructive effects of chemical products that have been used in agriculture over the past few decades. But how can we definitively get out of this impasse that has been, alas, so neatly built up with the complicity, perhaps unconsciously, of so many chambers of agriculture? This is the question being asked today that is pressing ever more urgently: how can we get out of this nasty business?
The work of the cellar has only needed to become intense to correct the grave secondary effects of synthetic chemical products that farmers were advised to use, without warning them of the consequences.
This is why then one must no longer “make” a wine to “please” Mr. X or Mr. Y who because of their name can “sell” to consumers who are too confident and badly informed of the changes of the past 25 years (how many people know for example that wine-makers can make use of 350 aromatic and genetic yeasts along with a whole arsenal of other products as well?).
As long as we don't penetrate these spheres of life, solutions will not be sustainable. They will remain debts for the whole world and will prevent us from eating and drinking the harmonious energies that by this single fact are nutritive. Changing man’s conscience is contingent upon going through this understanding.
This is how to understand that agriculture can become an art again, the art of knowing how to comprehend and advisedly use the forces that give life to the Earth. This is above all the door that has been opened by bio-dynamics. And it is for this reason that it has developed so broadly, especially in viticulture, because it touches a passionate customer that is ever more sensitive to the truth of taste.
