Auvergne, the Green and Basalt-Black Heart of France

How the Fortunes of this Little-Known Wine Region Are Changing

The Chaîne des Puys. © Joel Damass.

Auvergne: an island in the middle of the hexagon. This is how local Auvergnats consider their ruggedly beautiful piece of central France. The main city of Clermont-Ferrand is at its heart, 400 kilometers due south from Paris, 330 kilometers north of Marseilles. 

The region is deeply embedded in French history, a symbolic as well as physical heart, remembered and celebrated as the place where the Gaul leader Vercingétorix famously defeated the army of Julius Cesar in 52 B.C.E. A museum dedicated to the ‘Battle of Gergovie’ now stands at the site on the Plateau of Gergovie near Clermont-Ferrand.

The Auvergne was once also the third largest wine region in all of France, but today, you are likely more familiar today with the region’s cheeses than its wine. No fewer than five AOP cheeses are produced from her milk: Cantal, Salers, Blue d’Auvergne, Fourme d’Ambert and Saint-Nectaire. Auvergnat lentils, too, are famous in international culinary circles, here taking on a flavour special enough to have been granted protected appellation status. The pearl-green lentilles du Puys (du Puys lentils) are prized for their ability to retain their shape and not turn to mush, as well as for their “peppery, earthy, flinty, mineral” flavour. It’s also an area unusually rich in tonic, mineral-rich waters, home to the sources of Perrier, Volvic and Vichy. 

Other more local specialties of the table are expectedly mountain-hardy, including charcuterie in glorious Technicolor, and saucissons of all sizes and shapes. The emblematic regional dish is la truffade, a robust preparation that features local potatoes – the ‘truffles’ of the Auvergne - thinly sliced and slowly confited in goose or pork fat, then mixed with crumbled nuggets of tome fraîche, the freshly-pressed curds of Cantal or Salers. It’s the Auvergnat version of poutine, hearty and satisfying. With such toothsome, simple foods, it’s no coincidence that Auvergnats are said to run three-quarters of the brasseries in Paris.

Truffade Auvergnate. Credit: Eaglemoss Pub

Auvergne’s Vinous Fortunes and Misfortunes

Aa a wine producing region, Auvergne reached its zenith in the first decade of the 20th century with some 42,000 hectares under vine. Its isolated location in the massif central area, far from seaports and other wine regions, delayed the arrival of phylloxera. Auvergne was one of the last regions in France to succumb to the invading American louse. 

While vineyards all around the country were perishing, Auvergne was flourishing, scrambling to boost wine supply to fill national shortages. Less productive pinot noir, then the most planted variety, was replaced by higher yielding gamay d’Auvergne, and production was stretched to the limits. But the inverse relationship between quantity and quality inevitably led to a decrease in the latter, and the region’s reputation eventually slipped along with it. 

Phylloxera then finally reached Auvergne in the first decade of the 20th century, when the rest of the country was already recovering. Soon after, the Great War, here, as elsewhere, decimated the work force. And in a unique local twist on the common story of vineyard decline in this era, a hugely successful tire company also contributed to Auvergne’s vinous misfortunes. The Michelin Tire company was founded in Clermont-Ferrand in 1889 and is still headquartered there. Dying vines, dropping demand, and reliable factory jobs made life choices easy; vineyards were all but abandoned. 

Clermont Ferrand and the Chaîne des Puys from Châteaugay, Plateau de Gergovie on the right.

The wine industry continued on an inexorable slide throughout the 20th century. Many claim that were it not for Portuguese immigrants, brought in to fill Michelin factory jobs, vines might have vanished altogether. Tenaciously tied to the land and a philosophy of self-sufficiency, the Portuguese émigrés maintained weekend gardens and vineyards for home consumption, thereby preserving a few patches of old vines. But as it stands, Auvergne counts a mere 400 hectares of vineyards today, an exponential decrease from over 40,000 a little more than a century ago.

Yet Auvergne’s fortunes are once again reversing. The tidal swings of fashion are again favouring the region’s natural vocation for lighter, fresher, more peppery wines. And an increasing number of young vignerons have recognized this fact and set out to exploit it, eager to make their mark.

Gamay d’Auvergne, the distinct clone that made the region’s fortunes thanks to its high yields, and then unmade them for the same reason, is proving particularly useful in this era of warming climate. It’s later ripening than the gamay of Beaujolais, retaining freshness and acid even in the recent string of torrid vintages.  It’s also unique, grown nowhere else, another strength in a world thirsting for regional specialties. 

And then there’s Auvergne’s special terroir: the volcanic underpinnings that yield such excellent mineral water and flavoursome milk and lentils, is also an important factor in the particularly spicy, peppery, mineral nature of the wines of Auvergne. With the growing reputation of volcanic wines around the world, Auvergne is nicely positioned for future success.

Of Basalt and Trachyte, Pouzzolane and Peperite: Auvergne’s Exotic Volcanics

Auvergne is also like an island because geologically it is unlike any other part of France. As the African plate slid into Europe, pushing up the Alps, further rippling effects stretched the earth’s crust in the region of Auvergne. The result was what geologists call the West European Rift, a series of cracks and collapsed segments of the earth’s crust that began some 35 million years ago. The most significant one is called the Limagne Fault (faille de Limagne).

Where fault lines occur, volcanic activity often follows. But the ancient remnants of volcanic activity in the Limagne plain below the fault today are visible only to experts; it took some geological detective work to figure out why hardened basaltic lava flows cover the top of some hills in the region. Lava, of course, flows downward into valleys by gravity, but the Auvergne has instead what’s called an “inverted relief” landscape, in which the natural course of deposits are seemingly upended in illogical layers.

The answer lies in the remote past: the now-vanished volcanoes that erupted these lava flows, some 25 million to 11 million years ago, were three thousand meters higher than the is plain today. The basalt that bubbled out did flow into valleys. Subsequent erosion later stripped away the more friable clay-limestone material around the much more resistant volcanic rock, eventually leaving behind these basalt-capped plateaus and mounds. In other words, what were once valleys are now hilltops.

The villages of Boudes, southernmost cru of the Côtes d’Auvergne AOC, on basalt-covered slopes.

The much younger activity of the Chaîne des Puys volcanoes, on the other hand, the last of which erupted just 4000 years ago (a blink of an eye in geological time) is obvious to all. This linear, 30-kilometer-long string of 80 picture-perfect cinder cones, lava domes and steep-sloped, crater-crowned hills is neatly aligned above and just west of the fault line in parallel symmetry. Overlooking them all is the Puy de Dôme, the highest volcano in the chain at 1465m.

UNESCO deemed the region special enough to inscribe it on the list of world heritage sites in 2018, citing that the area “is an exceptional illustration of the phenomenon of continental break-up, or rifting, which is one of the five major stages of plate tectonics. The Chaîne des Puys - Limagne fault tectonic arena presents a coincident view of all the representative processes of continental break-up and reveals their intrinsic links.”

Pépérites. Credit: Désprat Saint Verny.

The finest wines of Auvergne are grown on the hillsides of these recent, and more ancient volcanoes in a mixture of rocky, basalt-derived soils. Other pockets of more explosive “pépérites” are also home to vines, a type of volcanic rock that occurs when smouldering magma comes into contact with wet sediments, limestones in this case, exploding and fusing, leaving granules of black basalt trapped in whitish-grey limestone, so-named for its resemblance to black peppercorns. Trachyte is another variation on Auvergne’s volcanic terroir, a light-coloured, also explosive, silica-rich rock with a rough and irregular surface. Both peperites and trachytes were first identified and named in Auvergne. And lastly “pouzzolane”, a pumice-type rock composed of volcanic ash, rounds out the exotic volcanic terroirs of Auvergne.

Thick layers of volcanic ash – pouzzolane -with vines growing above.

AOC Côtes d’Auvergne

In recognition of the improving quality and changing fortunes of the wines of the region, the Côtes d’Auvergne was granted official AOC status (Appellation d’Origine Controlée) in 2010, upgraded from the lower VDQS status it held since 1951. Today, the appellation covers vineyards in 53 communes, the majority of which lie on soils of volcanic origin, with more rare patches of clay-limestone. The permitted varieties are chardonnay for whites, and a minimum of 50% gamay d’Auvergne (and gamay of Beaujolais) blended with pinot noir for reds and rosés. Reds dominate, accounting for 90% of production.

As a further distinction, five crus were officially delimited within the Côtes d’Auvergne AOC. Madargue is the northernmost appellation; next is Châteaugay, some ten kilometers north of Clermont-Ferrand in the charming village of the same name. It’s characterized by its peperite soils, easily carved, as the 200-odd cellars excavated under the plateau along the ‘Rue des Caves,’ or the street of cellars, indicates. Coincidentally, or not, the exclusively red wines of Châteaugay are particularly spicy and peppery, and account for a significant percentage of Côtes d’Auvergne production, over one-third.

Rue des Caves, Châteaugay.

Chanturgue is the smallest cru, surrounded by the fast growing city of Clermont-Ferrand, while Corent, twenty kilometers south of Clermont-Ferrand, is a cru exclusively for rosé wines, dry, vibrant and crunchy.

Boudes is the southernmost cru, noticeably drier and warmer than the rest of the Côtes d’Auvergne, where an unusual wealth of old gamay vines, many pushing a century, grow on dark rocky basalt hillsides at up to 700 meters above sea level. These rocks retain the suns warmth and radiate it back at night, further advancing ripening and leading to some of the most structured reds in the region. 

Century-old Gamay d’Auvergne on the rocky basalt slopes of Boudes.

There’s never been a better time to explore the wines of the Côtes Auvergne. Prepare a truffade and raise a glass with the peppery freshness of volcanic gamay, or the salty richness of a rare volcanic chardonnay, to toast Vercingétorix.

Producers to seek out

Désprat Saint-Verny, Domaine Miolanne, Domaine Vincent Auzolle, Pierre Gougoix, Domaine Sauvat, Domaine Pélissier, Domaine de la Tour de Pierre, Domaine Gougis, Clos Luern, Heritage Volcanique, Domaine de la Croix Arpin.

Text and Photos by John Szabo, MS