Olivier Cousin's Loire Legacy

Cousin's story is one that energized a growing base of natural wine fans in 2011 when he was threatened with a €30,000 fine and two years of jail time by France's Fraud Control for supposedly misleading statements on his wine labels. 

It all began because Cousin left the AOC — the bureaucratic organization which ultimately targeted him — because he felt that it increasingly subsidized wines made with harmful additives and ecologically-harmful farming methods. As it embraced bigger agro-chemical wine business, it also began charging more fees from members. Cousin was using organic and Biodynamic farming practices while making small amounts of wine (25,000 bottles a year) and little income. He refused to pay. When the AOC permitted sugar and acid adjustments in 2003, he finally left for good, preferring to use the less prestigious 'table wine' or vin de table designation. In spite of this he continued to label his wines with the grape varieties and as coming from Anjou, which was truthful, albeit illegal, to include on the label of lowly table wines.

Cousin intentionally used his labels as a provocation calling attention to the fact that the AOC never once checked his methods in the 25 years he was a member. Yet when making vin de table — which should have left him more free of regulation — he was prosecuted aggressively for making wine the exact same way as before. He accused the agency of "being in the service of profitable wines that pollute." It was an argument that held a lot of weight with winemakers and wine drinkers alike.

For over four years the case dragged on in France's infamously congested court system. Cousin showed up at the courthouse with his plow horses and at times brought barrels of wine and supporters to picnic and protest. In late 2015, after many years of pubilc outcry against the ridiculously aggressive prosecution, Cousin was convicted guilty — but with no jail time, no fines. He and his son Baptiste continued on making wine in the same way. Olivier's first vintage was 1980, so he is making far less wine and handing over more and more of the work to Baptiste, who is now making sought-after wines himself.

For me, though, Olivier's wines will always be near and dear to me as a particularly baroque example of the ways that natural winemakers are unfairly policed for making wines as they have been for millennia, while the big agro-businesses have the support of government agencies and are largely free to manipulate wines, ecosystems, and laborers in the service of profit. I knew little of this when I first opened a bottle of "Pur Breton" some 13 years ago. But somehow in that bottle I found something compelling enough that I'm still writing about it. And, more importantly, still drinking it. Maybe you'll find something as inspiring in his simple table wines, too.