Vinocolor : Nuancier des couleurs du vin | Keribus

Interview with Gala Colette and Victor Coutard, artist and writer

Together with photographer Paul Lehr and journalist Matthieu Le Goff, they have just co-written Vinocolor. A colour chart of wine that is as pleasing as it is instructive. Interview.

How did you come up with the idea of looking at wine through the prism of its colours?

G. C. : It all started with one of our daughter’s books, Colorama. Un imagier des nuances de couleurs pour enfant, published by Gallimard. I had a flash on the ring road, in traffic of course, with Victor…

V. C. : I remember it perfectly. It was between Porte d’Aubervilliers and Porte de la Chapelle…

G. C.: As an artist, I’ve been interested in colour for many years. I don’t know much about wine, though. So it’s more their tones that speak to me. So I suggested to Victor that he put together a guide to wines by colour, designed like a Pantone colour chart. It’s an approach I’ve never seen before.

V. C. : For my part, what made me want to write this book was a kind of epiphany, a fairly recent realisation that natural wines had done away with the idea of drinking labels. As a fan of these anti-Parkers, I had a more sensory, more romantic approach to wine: I was more interested in colour than in a specific vintage or cuvée. Here, a bright orange maceration; there, a very light red; another time, a well-bled rosé… I thought it would be useful to defend this approach, by highlighting in this book the beauty of wine colours, as a call to drink them.

What does colour say about wine?

V. C. : A lot. Sommeliers are unanimous on this point. All you have to do is watch them. The best sommeliers can tell you a lot about a wine just by looking at it. Its nuances, intensity, turbidity, density… provide information about its grape variety, terroir, exposure and vinification methods. This highly sensory approach is just as educational…

Watch the full interview here