Twenty years ago, a winery could do well selling one white and two reds, says Konrad Pixner, a northern Italian winemaker who set up his vineyard, Domaine de L’Accent, in Languedoc, France, in 2019. But today, importers and bars always ask: “Do you have something new?” So up in the hills, surrounded by deep gorges and limestone plateaus, Pixner is constantly experimenting.
After a good harvest in 2023, Pixner walked into the shed he shares with other winemakers at 4am to find that his biggest vat of white wine, pressed from carignan blanc grapes, had overflowed during fermentation. He had run out of space, so he quickly “pumped the white juice into the tank where whole bunches of carignan noir were,” he says, and left them to ferment for 10 days together. In contrast to rosé, made from red grapes left for a short time with their skins on before being pressed, he created “blouge” – a light, fresh wine blended from white and red grapes that’s best served chilled. It has now caught on among creative vintners around the world.
“The blouge is more for the bar and for apéro, 5pm or 6pm after work, in the sun,” says Lucas Madonia, a French winemaker living in Switzerland, whose Blouge 2024 arrives in London in April. His wine is a mix of chasselas white grapes and gamay red ones for a fruity and aromatic taste that has good acidity from the high altitude where it grows organically on the south-facing slopes of Valais. Madonia is one of only a few in the region who produce natural wine, which is made from organic or biodynamically farmed grapes with minimal intervention; it doesn’t contain sulphites or additives. Unlike most vintners in Switzerland, where only about 2% of the roughly 218m litres produced annually leaves the country, he exports what he makes.
“Lucas’s wines have been popular in a lot of the natural wine bars in London,” says Joel Wright, owner of Wright Wines in south Wales, who imports small-brand natural wines to the UK. Natural wine attracts customers in their 30s, who can afford the wine but are still open-minded enough to try something new, he says. “Blouge is probably for that kind of customer, who wants something more juicy and fresh.” The grapes are grown at an altitude where it is cooler, which means they are lower in sugar because the restricted sun exposure doesn’t let them ripen as fully – and therefore they are slightly lower in alcohol (Madonia’s latest blouge is 10.7%), which suits younger drinkers who are approaching alcohol with more ambivalence.
In the past decade, this natural wine revolution has seen a surge in new-style wine bars, popularising orange wine (made by fermenting white grapes with their skin and seeds), which has broken down barriers when it comes to talking about the drink. In London, Cardiff, Manchester and Edinburgh, staff playfully characterise wine not by tannins and minerals, but with fun descriptors such as “natty” and “crunchy”. At Dan’s in Dalston, east London, they can be “hectic”, “skinsy” and “turbo-chilled”. The vintners making blouge choose similar phrases: “fresh”, “vibrant” and “juicy”.
New terminology aside, mixing grapes is not new: champagne is usually a mix of white chardonnay grapes and red pinot noir or pinot meunier. Châteauneuf-du-Pape is a blend. In Florence, where fourth-generation owner Daniele Dzieduszycki runs Fattoria di Sammontana, farmers have been drinking wine mixed from trebbiano and sangiovese grapes for centuries. “It gives the wine more freshness,” says Dzieduszycki, resulting in “a red that is also good to have in summer”. Unlike new wines that are marketed as blouge, these are usually sold in either red or white categories.
Blends such as beaujolais, gamay and grenache, which are often served at cool temperatures, are increasingly favoured over fuller-bodied reds such as cabernet sauvignon. With the rise of these lighter natural wines, customers have finally realised they can enjoy red wine throughout the year. “People want to drink more chilled beverages,” says 36-year-old Anthony Aubert, who co-founded Aubert et Mathieu with his schoolfriend Jean-Charles Mathieu. “My generation grew up with a bottle of soda and Coca-Cola in the fridge, and everything we drank since we were alive was cold.”
Aubert et Mathieu released BoogieWoogie, their blouge, in 2023. They sold 20,000 bottles last year, and hope to sell 30,000 in 2026. It arrives in the UK in May. “The wine industry is super-traditional, particularly in France,” says Aubert. “We bring something new.”
Natural wine blends have become increasingly popular as winemakers shed some of the po-faceness that once shrouded the industry. Film industry veteran Scott Sampler, whose Scotty Boy wines are sold in LA’s trendiest restaurants, draws inspiration from countryside wines “made in neighbourhood garages and served at the local cantina in large carafes”. His blend, El Sandweeech!!!, mixes pinot noir and chardonnay grapes.
Nearby, in Sonoma, California, Joel Burt and Eric Wareheim at Las Jaras Wines have mixed white chenin blanc and viognier with red carignan and grenache noir to create Superbloom, which they call “Californian table wine”. Superbloom grew out of the Parisian natural wine bar scene, where co-ferments are popular. They drive “a lot of really interesting flavours”, says Burt, whose Superbloom has the taste of grapefruit, watermelon and white tea with some spice notes.
These lighter, fresher, lower-alcohol wines draw on a “European sensibility” but were “pretty fringe” in the US when Las Jaras was founded 15 years ago. Now “it’s definitely in the mainstream”, says Burt. The newer generations want to have fun when they’re drinking wine, he adds. “They’re not going to light up a cigar while they’re drinking a cabernet.”
Best of blouge
Bobo Wines: Blouge No 2 (France/UK), £49 per 2.25 litres
Blouge is the second bestselling wine (after orange) for Bobo Wines’ Chris Wawak, an American living in London, who has been on a mission to destigmatise boxed wine since he launched Bobo three years ago. “It tastes exactly the same as a bottle and is slightly better value,” he says. And it’s more environmentally friendly: “It takes seven trucks to move the same amount of wine in bottles as one truck of ours.” He came across blouge by way of Claude Straub in France, a winemaker who blends 85% pinot gris white grapes with 15% pinot noir. As with an orange wine, Straub lets the skins macerate for three weeks, then ages the grapes in stainless steel tanks for two years to create Bobo’s blouge. What results is a light drink with a flavour of blackcurrants, and a hint of cherry and rose petals.
Domaine Lucas Madonia: The Blouge 2024 (Switzerland), £40 per 75cl bottle
Lucas Madonia’s vineyard sits on a very steep mountainside in the Swiss Alps of Valais, making it hard to farm organically. Most of the vineyards around him use chemicals to manage the grass and weeds that grow at high altitude but Madonia is passionate about creating high-quality, natural wines. His blouge is no exception: a fruity, aromatic blend of chasselas white and gamay red grapes with a clean, lively finish. It’s best drunk cold on a sunny day after work, he says, for the taste of juicy strawberries and raspberries to come through.
Aubert et Mathieu: BoogieWoogie (France), £10.98 ex VAT per 75cl bottle
BoogieWoogie is a light and juicy blend of red and white grenache grapes – the perfect match for tapas, pizza and picnics. “The idea is to make wine, but less conventional and with more fun,” says Aubert. Young people “don’t want to have too much explanation, they want to drink something easy to understand, like a beer or a cocktail, in a moment shared with your friend or your family.”
Domaine de L’Accent: Blouge 2023 (France), €13 (£11) per 75cl bottle
At 39 years old, Pixner is by far the oldest person working on his estate. “I have many young people around me – we try to do many different things to keep it interesting,” he says. His Blouge 2023 is one of the happy coincidences that have resulted from this lively environment: an easy-to-drink, fresh and food-friendly wine made from the juice of carignan blanc grapes and unpressed carignan noir. He has only bottled 600 so far, but has received interest from importers in New York.