The tastemakers of Terroirs

Narioo refutes the idea that this is how we have to drink. 'I think maybe some wine buyers and sommeliers are too conservative. It can be patronising. It reminds me of when the BBC decides some programmes are too complicated for the viewer. We don't need to give people baby food all the time.'

Les Caves de Pyrène has become a sort of guerrilla force for the reintroduction of what they call 'natural' wines - those that are only lightly treated, may be organically or biodynamically grown, perhaps unfiltered, only lightly fined, and are not even always treated with sulphur, which is used as a preservative.

Set up in 1988, by Narioo and three others (all of whom still work for the company in some capacity), Les Caves de Pyrène originally operated a list of 100 or so wines out of the back of a van. The first was a Jurançon, from Narioo's native southwest France - he comes from a long line of sons of the soil. Their list is now more like a telephone directory, and you don't just find their wines in Terroirs. They have a shop in Artington, near Guildford, and supply independent retailers as well as restaurants and bars all over the country. You may have drunk one of their wines at Wild Honey, Corrigan's of Mayfair or the Anchor & Hope pub on The Cut.

It's Narioo whose flair and personal taste drive the personality of Les Caves de Pyrène's list. He appears to have a genius for choosing wine which he does by the quite straightforward method of buying what he likes. 'It's very simple. Forget about flavours, the main thing is: is it alive? There's something essential about the energy of a good wine that you can tap straight into. It reaches down to your stomach. It's something you want to drink. Your generation, my generation, has been formatted to drink only what we know, and what we know has become very insipid. In the last 25 years we've become chemists about wine - we've discovered equipment, selection of yeasts, adding acid, taking alcohol and we've cleaned up and made the wine what we think it ought to be. In the process, we've taken it away from where it comes from. But people are starting to go back now to real wine.'

A good real wine is comfortable in its own skin. It has a settling quality that persuades you to sip and listen to it. But sometimes there's a problem. The authenticity and lack of processing mean these wines are unpredictable: one bottle on one day may be pure and joyous, another on another can just, somehow, have lost it, miss the point, and fail to deliver. This is a chance you have to take if you want to break out of the comfort zone of tedious predictability and have a drinking experience. But is it a reasonable ask of a paying customer?

Doug Wregg, an Oxford English graduate and novelist manqué who says he 'drifted' into wine via a stint working first in his mother's and later in other restaurants, has been with the company since 1996 and is now its sales and marketing director, defends the fluctuation with a quote. 'WC Fields said: "I feel sorry for people who don't drink. Imagine waking up in the morning and knowing that's as good as you're going to feel all day." Well, imagine tasting a wine and knowing that's as good as it will get. Consistency gives a lowest common denominator of pleasure. Natural wines are like sulky lovers that you sometimes want to tell quite sharply to come out of their shell, and when they do they're beautiful.'

It certainly transforms wine drinking into an adventure. Wregg, whose intelligent, literary and sometimes verging on the pleasingly over-the-top prose illuminates Les Caves de Pyrène's and Terroirs' wine lists, says he recently tried one of Les Caves de Pyrène's latest buys - a Chenin Blanc from the Aveyron called Le Petit Curieux. Narioo had bought half the production, which amounted to a mere 300 bottles (another feature of Les Caves de Pyrène is that they are willing and able to buy in ludicrously tiny quantities, and often do). 'I'm loving this craziness. Eric brought it back from the Aveyron. He'd asked the producer what he was going to do with it. The producer said, "Well, it's in barrel, I suppose I could bottle it." So he did, without sulphuring or fining it, as Eric asked. It was a beautiful, pure style, a little bit sweet but with searing acidity and a sort of sweet-sour honey, pineapply taste. I tried it and thought it an acquired taste but lovely. Then I ordered a bottle three weeks later and thought, "It's fizzing." I tried it and it was absolutely phenomenal. It had become a bone-dry sparkling wine. I brought a few bottles home and every time I have it it's fizzing away nicely, but drier and drier and drier. It's done a secondary fermentation in the bottle so my tasting note on the wine list is now completely wrong. But it tastes brilliant.'

So, you might say that drinking a Caves de Pyrène wine demands a certain level of trust, a suspension of disbelief, a willingness to be taken by the hand and led God knows where, into the unknown.

It isn't always a rewarding journey. I didn't go for a Malbec-Gamay I tasted at Terroirs recently. I also find a number of their wines so, frankly, peculiar (and not funny-peculiar) or insanely off-piste that one sip is enough; I don't want to drink them. It's disappointing, too, when you try a wine that because it isn't on song has become so-whatish. But these are risks I would take over boredom any day.

The Sampler, 266 Upper Street, N1 (020 7226 9500) Thanks to Enomatic machines that keep a wine fresh after opening, The Sampler allows you to buy and try glassfuls of up to 80 wines at any one time, from humble vin de pays to iconic Bordeaux vintages.

Lea and Sandeman (shops in Chelsea, Notting Hill and Barnes, see londonfinewine.co.uk) This independent merchant is strong on Italy and France. Try the gorgeously dry champagne Larmandier-Bernier Terre de Vertus Extra Brut 1er Cru, £32.50.

Berry Bros & Rudd, 3 St James's Street, SW1 (0800 280 2440) Berry's opened here in 1698 and is still an institution. It's certainly not the cheapest, but is good for old-school wine regions and higher-end classics. The staff manage to be helpfully knowledgeable without being patronising.

Victoria Moore is the wine writer for The Guardian. Her new book, How to Drink, is out now (Granta, £15.99)

Before you even begin to taste, find a decent glass. It needn't be expensive but it will help if it tapers in - even slightly - towards the rim, the better to hold the wine's lovely (hopefully) aromas in a concentrated cloud where your nose can enjoy them.

An inch or so is enough for a tasting sample, but even if you're drinking, don't fill right to the top - a third of the way up will do. You are in charge of the bottle: you can pour yourself some more in a minute.

Now give the glass a swirl, and take a good sniff. Your nose is almost more important than your taste buds - smell is our most sensitive sense. Check for faults: a smell of damp cardboard and it may be corked; sherryish but not sherry and it may be oxidised; sulphur and it may either be 'reduced' (this fault sometimes occurs with screwcaps) or over-sulphured, in which case decant it and the wine may improve.

Now take a sip, enough to shuck round your mouth but not so much that your mouth is full. Suck in some air, too, and swish the liquid over your gums (which are sensitive to tannin, which feels drying and astringent, like black tea). You're looking for balance, pleasure and personality, but if you want to get technical you could also think about oak influence, acidity, sweetness and body.

Now spit or swallow. The wine has 'good length' if its taste lingers in your mouth for some time. You may also notice a wine with high alcohol at this point because it will feel 'hot' on the finish, leaving a slight burning taste in your mouth that cuts through the rest of the wine. If you're tasting a lot and need to 'reset' your nose, sniff your own arm. Yes, I know it sounds dodgy but it works.