Yet this may be the condition of the flower and the condition for fullness of life: you cannot know beforehand what life will bring you if you open yourself to it, and certainly the flower does not; it is because they are unnatural and unlike flowers that the cold people rule nature, and the cost may be too great.
—William Empson, Some Versions of Pastoral

Grégory Guillaume makes wine in the Ardèche, a pretty, hot region without much maritime influence, but with plenty of limestone and lots of idealism. Over the past few decades, the likes of Oustric, Bock, Calek (and now many others!) have turned this summer tourist region into a hotbed of natural wine. It’s impossible to characterize these wines in a marketing sound-bite. So hard that I had to revert to quoting William Empson’s essay on Shakespeare. I recommend you buy his lovely book and read it with a clear mind and a very sharp pencil.

Sometimes the reds of Ardèche are light and purple juicy, sometimes squid-inky rich and sunburnt, sometimes green and brightly shallow; the whites range from pet-nats struggling against their inherent sweetness to insanely reduced salty weirdos, to limpid, satisfying floral blends of who knows what grapes. In short, the region lacks a stylistic identity. And it is for this very reason that I love it.

Natural wine is wonderful, in part, because of the way that it respectfully fails to rule nature; it respects the elemental forces that rebuff it. It strives to have an identity, but realizes that everything true is non-identical. I feel like the wines of Gregory Guillaume crystallize this ancient relationship, but at the same time, they don’t take it all that seriously. I urge you to approach them in a similar spirit, remembering that you cannot know beforehand what life will bring you if you open yourself to it.

It just so happens that we have decided to hold back some of Grégory’s wines over the past two years. They are living wines that change from month to month, and we thought it would be fun to keep some in the cellar so that you could experience them after a short maturation. We are offering these “cellared” wines alongside a fresh shipment from France.

this is the condition of the flower,

Bradford

2017 Lucky (Grenache Blanc Pet Nat) 29$
2018 Lou Coulego (Chardonnay) 31$
2018 Louforosé (Alicanté Bouschet Rosé) 29$
2018 Koforobé (Merlot/Syrah) 29$
2019 L'Excentrique (Merlot/Grenache) 26$
2019 L'Epicurien (Grenache) 26$
2018 L'Epicurien (Grenache) 29$
2019 Mystère (Syrah) 32$