The turbo bee of life

Wine is a really cool thing in and of itself.

Yet it is riddled with unnecessary complexity, snobbery and promises made but rarely kept. Every now and then a wine comes along and screams, "BUST ME LOOSE!" This wine is Le Tourbillon de la Vie, by Jean-Phillipe Padié. On the label you can see a carousel, gaudy, pixelated, smeared. You can hear the grinding of the gears and smell the circus. The carousel of life goes round and round. Inspired by Jacques Brel and with a nod to Joni Mitchell, this wine defies its origins. He is Vin de France. It comes from Macabeu, which grows on bush vines in the Catalan highlands and was harvested by moonlight. Here's the wine we want to quench our thirst with while we throw another gamba on the grill. And yet, despite our rejection of origins and nomenclature, this white wine manages to whisper to us a powerful message about the soul of a place.