Taste of Europe
LesDom: Natural Wine Produced in Korea
LesDom
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If you go to Chungju, Korea, you can drink wine made by winemakers from Alsace, France. The protagonist is Dominique and his wife Shin Yi-hyun, a novelist. The two settled in Chungju, Korea in 2016, and are farming and making wine.
In France, Dominique worked as a computer programmer, but he always dreamed of becoming a winemaker. It was nothing new to him. Alsace is famous for wine in France, and his mother ran a vineyard and his grandfather made wine. From childhood, during the grape harvest season, the whole family gathered grapes together. From some time he was happiest when he was pruning in the winter vineyard. So he decided. “I have to become a farmer!”
To achieve his dream, Dominique entered the French Agricultural University at 45, majored in viticulture and oenology, and became qualified as a winemaker.
His first step in brewing in Korea, was that his Korean wife recommended; making apple cider in Korea. “There is a really juicy and sweet apple called Busa in Korea, but there is no cider. Let us make it!”
In this way, the two settled in Chungju, Korea. Dominique made apple wine by fermenting Korean apples in the traditional way of French farmhouses. This is the natural wine method. Natural wine is basically fermented with wild yeast attached to the skin of the fruit without adding anything to the juice of eco-friendly apples. And it doesn't filter or sterilize to remove lees from fermentation. There is no way to add acid or fragrance to give it a preservative or flavor.
Dominique Herque
“Natural yeast is the spirit of fruit wine.” He says it's the winemaker's job to press the fruit and slowly follow the work of the yeast in it. The yeast then eats sugar, spits out debris, and CO2. The natural gas that has changed naturally is the natural carbonate in the bottle.
Sparkling wines that we commonly drink are a method of fermenting fruit concentrate, adding various flavors and sugars, and injecting artificial carbonate gas. You can make this method any time you want in a year. However, Dominique's natural wine method can only be made once in the season when the fruit is harvested a year. In addition, the amount of making is limited because the whole process is done by hand one by one without the help of a machine.
Natural wine is where the fruit describes the whole earth, so to speak, I think nature is sealed in this bottle of wine,
said Dominique Herque, the French wine maker in Korea.
His philosophy of wine is not just to make wine that suits people's taste, but to believe that fruit is an honest account of the whole earth. His cider is captivated by the natural carbonated feel that gently pops into his mouth the moment he sips. It is bitter, but it feels a combination of Akashi and honey. “The characteristic of LesDom wine is that if you drink one, you want to drink two, and if you drink two, you want to drink a third. It is a very digestible wine, so to speak. That's the biggest feature and advantage of natural wine.”
Dominique & Yi-hyun
Not only cider, they plant vines, plow fields, and make grape wine. They are farming with the biodynamic farming method, which is a bit unfamiliar in Korea.
“The most important thing in wine is farming. 70 percent of the winemaking work is farming.” They are currently cultivating vines and apple trees in Suanbo, Chungju, on an area of 2,000 pyeong. Their dream is to make terroir wines in Suanbo, Chungju that reveal the local characteristics.
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Dominique & Yi-hyun
