Belly Wine Experiment 

Forgive the name-dropping, but we need to mention the circle of family, friends, and mentors behind Belly Wine Experiment: Aurelian Lefort, Manu Duveau (Yahou Fatal), Adrien Sage (natural wine importer) and the star of the show, Gamay d'Auvergne.

Belly Wine Experiment is a collaboration of three friends Claire Sage, Aimé Duveau, and Guy Enoch. Located in a small village on the Allier River in Auvergne. While they haven’t been doing it long we are very excited by the results. The three friends are connected to wine through family: Claire’s brother is an importer of Catalan wines to Paris (which explains the prevalence of Xarello in their wines); Aimé’s father is Manu Duveau of Yahou Fatal (former husband and collaborator with Auvergne natural wine legend Catherine Dumora). The majority of their Auvergnat grapes come from Yahou Fatal. The winemaking is intuitive and, as the name would suggest, experimental.

Complex, refreshing, unusual, and delicious...A rosé, obviously, but with a fairly solid structure. We could guess from its name that it is a gray wine, and its color ends up telling us something. Grisou is a gray wine quite typical of the experimental passion of the Belly Wine project since it is made from Carignan from the South and Pinot Gris from Heiligenstein (Alsace) obtained on clay-siliceous soils. Two very distant terroirs are brought together in one wine. Remember that gris is, like rosé, a still wine with a pale color obtained from short-maceration black grapes. Here, it's a little more complicated since two-thirds of the grapes go through the direct press, the remaining third being crushed in whole bunches and macerated for four days. Disgorging is done two months later. This wine comes from organic farming and has not received any chemical inputs or sulfites, in the vineyard or in the cellar. As he plays on several tables, both light and straight, Grisou will be able to afford very extensive agreements.