l’Absurde Genie des Fleurs

It’s sometimes said that music is the highest form of art. To refer to a painting, a sculpture, a book, or even a bottle of wine as ‘musical,’ is to give a compliment of high order. Beyond simply being musical, all of the wines that Miha Trifa and Tom Gautier make under the name l’Absurde Genie des Fleurs sing. I recently spent a week in the Languedoc staying with Miha and Tom, alongside a small group of their close friends during the 2022 harvest. Driving south after a few days in the Auvergne, I showed up after sundown one evening at their cellar in Bedarieux, and immediately fell into the rhythmic spell of the group, washing buckets from the day’s pick, and helping with other miscellaneous end of day cellar chores.

Every moment that week felt like a dance and the performance of a live score, Miha and Tom as both choreographers and conductors, masters of organized chaos. This wasn’t accidental. I think the reason why I connect with both Miha and Tom’s wines, as well as them simply as people, is because the three of us don’t come from strictly wine backgrounds; we all share a deep connection to the world of avant garde music, and a huge part of that harvest week involved a form of collective DJing, all parties taking turns selecting records from their collection to soundtrack even the smallest of moments. The first record that I chose was Meredith Monk’s Turtle Dreams, an American minimalist classic that features the late Collin Walcott on didgeridoo. I still remember the smirk that came upon Tom’s face as that record started playing during lunch one day, a glimmer of approval in his eyes. Both him and Miha explained how important Meredith’s music was to the ethos and spirit of their project, and generally just how imperative a life surrounded by art and music was to their wines. Other musical constants that week included Maria Callas, Keith Jarrett, Theo Parrish, Joy Division, Eno, and a slew of obscure handmade mixtapes that the duo had recorded strictly to be played in the cellar on a tiny old boombox; noise bombs, deep funk shit, enveloping electronic, outsider country—the variety on tape was immense, but the consistent thread was the feeling of the artistic search.

A morning pick at the Dor terrace

Of course we talked about wine influences as well. For Miha, Pierre Beauger remains a north star; his notorious V.I.T.R.I.O.L. and Jauni Rotten cuvées in particular. “I can have expensive tastes sometimes,” Trifa confessed one evening, me nodding in complete agreement. It was also the house wine that her grandparents made in her native Romania, that Trifa imbibed at a young age, and which she believes imperceptibly set her on a path towards grapes and farming. Over a back vintage bottle of Dor (a cuvée made from cutting each grape by hand to start a natural carbonic maceration in cuve) that we drank one evening, Miha mentioned that it reminded her of her family’s table wine. For Tom, the wines of the nearby Fontedicto—a domaine I was unfamiliar with at the time—showed how powerful well farmed paysan juice from the Languedoc could be. Referring to the Bellahsens (the couple behind Fontedicto) as less social than Alain Castex, and therefore less known, Tom believed the wines could be just as profound. And he was right; treated to a 2004 Carignan at lunch one day remains one of the highlight bottles of a unicorn filled trip; rich red fruit, a taste of soil, and a backbone of acid that felt like it was just beginning to settle in bottle, showed how much of a life this wine had ahead of it. Coincidentally, I drank a 1999 of the same cuvée just a few days later, shared by the staff at La Legende in Sauveterre-de-Béarn that proved this—certainly a bit more worn in than the 2004, this was no less a living wine of profundity.



Miha and Tom love to taste the still fermenting, or unfermented juice from the press as to almost predict the characteristics of how the fermented dry wine will turn out. 2022’s Chardonnay for awhile tasted like savage pear juice, and then all of a sudden lychee became the dominant characteristic. In an almost psychedelic manner, this becomes a psychic exercise in intuitively shaping the final product. And as far out as that may seem, after drinking a handsome amount of both wine and fresh juice from l’Absurde that week in Bedarieux, I felt that I was beginning to taste this process in the glass. The wines of l’Absurde Genie des Fleurs are exercises in pure intuition, and at their best deep lessons in artful humility—are you willing to listen?



Cutremur 2021 (inox) 
Cinsault / Carignan
$31





Cutremur 2021 (inox) MAG
Cinsault / Carignan
$62





Cutremur 2021 (fiberglass)
Cinsault / Carignan
$31





Cutremur 2021 (fiberglass) MAG
Cinsault / Carignan 
$62





Ploum 2021
Cinsault (4 day maceration, 35 y/o vines)
$31





Penumbra 2021
Cinsault (60 year old vines)
$31





Bunici 2021
Aramon
$34





Bunici 2021 MAG
Aramon / Cinsault / Carignan
$68





Urs 2021
Aramon / Carignan
$33





Visator 2021
Cinsault / Carignan (co-ferment)
$33





Visator 2021 MAG
Cinsault / Carignan (co-ferment)
$66





Ciulin 2021
Terret Blanc / Terret Gris 
$33





Ciulin 2021 MAG
Terret Blanc / Terret Gris
$66





Curcubeu 2021
Late harvest of Grand Noir de la Calmette / Morastel / Alicante / Aramon / Cinsault / Carignan / Grenache
$37





Curcubeu 2021 MAG
Late harvest of Grand Noir de la Calmette / Morastel / Alicante / Aramon / Cinsault / Carignan / Grenache
$74





Dor 2021 MAG 
Cinsault / Carignan / Aramon
$74





Nea 2021 MAG
Chardonnay (direct press)
$74





Bonus: listen to an improvisation between Miha Trifa, Gaël Gittard, and myself, recorded on an iphone in l’Absurde Genie des Fleurs’ cellar while Tom worked the press.

Miha Trifa - Vocals
Gaël Gittard - Cello
Brian Allen Simon - Tenor Saxophone