Jean-Rene Dard and Francois Ribo, both locals of Tain L’Hermitage, met at Lycee Viticole de Beaune (a wine school in burgundy). They started working together in 1980 and started their estate in 1983. Starting out, they only had about 1ha of vines from Dard’s father in Saint Joseph, but over the years have acquired more and more land and now also have vines in Hermitage and Crozes Hermitage and produce both red and white wines from all 3 appellations. They now own 8.5ha of vines and 35% of their production is white wine, which is very large for Northern Rhone.
Although they are relatively unknown outside of the natural wine world, they are one of the top wine producers in Northern Rhone. Keeping a low profile, they don’t host visitors or attend many tastings. They became know in the natural wine world through the natural wine bars popping up in Paris in the 1980s. It was here that they gained many customers, but nowadays their wine is exported around the world, but notably the USA, UK and Japan.
In the beginning, Dard et Ribo’s wine was not organic. After trying to make wine in the way in which they were taught in wine school and realising that this was not for them, they started looking back to the way in which Dard’s father would make wine. They wanted to make wines that they enjoyed and would want to drink and this happened to be wines with no sulphur and a more natural approach to the vineyards. In the end they reverted back to the old school style of wine making and focusing on making natural wines.
Dard et Ribo started using the plastic ‘Nomacorcs’ corks in 2002 after doing some experiments and finding no adverse effects to their wines. The main reason behind the change was that 100% real corks are too expensive and they feel that other corks are a huge rip off. Not ones to shy away from what they stand for, they have chosen to have black plastic ‘Nomacorcs’ and not to try and trick the public into having cork-coloured plastic corks.
Dard et Ribo wines are known to be full of fruit, juicy, uncomplicated and delicious. According to François, ‘what we like is natural wine because it’s alive, wine that does not necessarily have to be kept – just drunk and drunk again’
In wine, there is truth 