LAFON SET AGAINST REGULATION

Published: 23 July, 2008

By Neil Beckett

Dominique Lafon of Domaine Comtes Lafon in Meursault, one of France's most highly rated winemakers, has expressed his opposition to various forms of legislative restrictions, ranging from the labelling of biodynamic' wines to the drafting of stricter rules for members of the Acadmie Internationale du Vin (AIV). After the AIV/Circle of Wine Writers seminar in London on 17 May (see Harpers 28 May, p.10), he responded as follows to a wine writer who had asked why he did not refer to biodynamics on his back label: I'm selling a wine, I'm not selling biodynamics. You're a wine writer. What pen are you using? What ink are you using? I think you should say that at the end of all your articles! Biodynamics is a tool to give a picture of a particular place in a particular year. That's what I want to show - not the tool.' He also confirmed that he would continue to opt out of BIODYVIN, one of the biodynamic certifying organisations, which he feared was becoming too commercial, and that it would not necessarily be better' for the AIV to be governed by a Charte de stricte observance, towards which some in the organisation have been working for several years.

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