“Ready for the music?”. For several weeks, the same litany has awaited visitors to the Domaine du Dragon, after a well-started tasting of the wines from this historic Draguignan property.
We do not leave the sales cellar without having tasted Black Pearl 2020. It’s almost a mantra, for the Dracénois who have been waiting for this moment for… two years.
The estate’s great wine, a red lulled by the music of Jean-Sébastien Bach, is finally on the market after eighteen months of aging in the barrel cellar, from which the notes of Jean-Guihen Queyras still escape – even though the oak barrels are welcoming a new harvest.
“Musical interpretation is extremely important”assures the owner, Mir Nezam, who was able to convince the world-renowned cellist. The former prodigy of the Manosque Music School agreed to entrust his musical interpretation of Bach’s Suites No. 1, as part of an original scientific experiment: the molecular impact of sound frequencies on wine aging.
Musical winemaking
A hobby for some, a fashion effect for others, in recent years, musical research on the vine, winemaking or wine maturing has been increasing among winegrowers, following the example of Melodythe first vintage aged in the sonorities of Nina Simone, developed at the Haut-Lirou estate, in Hérault.
Since then, the gentle music – jazz or classical – has found followers in the vineyard.
According to its supporters, the wine is enriched thanks to these good vibrations.
At least that’s what the owner of the Domaine du Dragon says, who chose to use this process to make his red exceptional, “even more unique”. “After the fermentation phase, the juices from the 2020 harvest were placed in 300-litre Burgundy barrels. So that the sound could pass through the oak barrels and act on the molecules of the wine, we opted for the low frequencies of the cello, broadcast 24 hours a day”, explains Mir Nezam.
From Kabul to Draguignan
For this scientist by training, born in Kabul, who arrived in France at the age of sixteen to study, introduced to genetic biochemistry and plant biology at the University of Toulouse, before taking the reins of the American pharmaceutical laboratory Allergan (the inventor of Botox, Editor’s note) as CEO for France and then Europe, there is nothing far-fetched in this new field of exploration.
Simply, the desire to always bring more excellence to the wines of its 26-hectare estate, cultivated using organic farming. “My objective has always been to make very good wine. But this does not always correspond to what can be implemented with the Côtes de Provence grape varieties with very regulated specifications. This less Cartesian, purely sensory part of winemaking musical, immediately interested me, by the different, inexplicably unique side”he says.
It was while observing a similar scientific experiment, carried out on sand, that the idea came to him. “Depending on the musical frequencies, the vibrations created ordered geometric shapes, circles, squares, they were not shapeless piles of sand. I then asked myself the question: “And if music could create similar arrangements on the molecules of wine, sugars, acids, polyphenols and tannins, without transforming them, creating an unprecedented situation and a unique wine? “, he asks.
Immediately, the erudite entrepreneur immersed himself in the scientific literature, contacted the winegrowers who had tried the experiment – in Languedoc, in Alsace – to get to the bottom of the subject. In 2020, he threw himself passionately into the adventure, despite the initial reluctance of his consulting oenologist. “During the tasting of the juices for the blend of the vintage, he was finally amazed, without being able to say if the music was to blame or if it was the vintage effect,” rejoices Mir Nezam.
The wine, a warm and sunny red, gains in silkiness, becomes softer in the mouth, and reveals its elegance.
A first vintage which should call for others, raised in a different musical register, to create a body of wines.
At the Domaine du Dragon, however, it will be necessary to convince the cellar master, Richard Grassi. “This music day and night was driving him crazy, he asked me to turn the volume down.”recognizes the boss.
