life as art

almost every grape variety divides itself into three color morphs: noir, blanc, and gris. it’s obvious when you think about it. it’s why you have pinot noir and also pinot gris (more often grigio). there is also a pinot blanc, as there is grenache noir, grenache gris, and grenache blanc. those are all just different colors of the pinot and grenache grape, in the same way that cabernet sauvignon and sauvignon blanc are two morphs of the sauvignon grape. the most consistently and ethereally lovely of the three are the gris (sometimes called “rose”) varietals, and that is why our friend, Thierry Rodriguez, an aesthete as much as he is a winemaker, has planted 12 different varieties of what the french call “cépages gris,” from which he makes an explosively aromatic white wine called “péchaligous.” he asked me to photograph them, and just before they were harvested, steve and i made this assemblage of bloomy, luminous bunches running from pale blue, to rust, to pewter, to gray, to pink, to a translucent dusty rose. i love extravagant variations within a limited palette.

different varietals of gris/rose grapes