Wine: Reality TV will make a star of grower Monty Waldin

First we had Jamie the cook, then Jimmy the pig farmer. Now we have Monty the organic vinegrower. I am not a great fan of reality TV, but I was amused to see this self-confessed lippy journalist caught up in it all with a new Channel 4 series.

Monty Waldin has, according to his new series Chateau Monty, "packed it all in and risked his life savings" to endure the rigours of making his own wine in a very scenic, fashionable part of Roussillon, in southern France. In the first episode we saw him trying to buy a vineyard, but what we are not told is that in the end he only rents an already established, already organically certified vineyard for a year.

So he neatly avoids the biggest financial risk of all – starting from scratch, waiting three or four years for vines to mature before you can make wine from the grapes; and then waiting three years for Ecocert organic and Demeter biodynamic certification.

I remember meeting Monty in his younger days at gruelling blind-tasting training sessions in London. He opted out of exams and academia, preferring to concentrate on the practical side, getting his hands dirty.

In the series, we see Monty pushing the donkey plough, spraying chamomile and discussing the cycles of the moon. He has always been passionate about organic and biodynamic methods. "In my new vineyard I didn't want to go to war every day with a bunch of man-made chemicals as it's the surest way of producing artificial wine," he says. "The bio approach is all about prevention rather than cure. It makes you a better, more thoughtful winegrower and lunar pruning costs nothing too.

"I chose Roussillon as it was cheap, with an ideal sunny dry climate ideal for organic production," he says. "I discovered the five-acre vineyard, Le Vivier, in the Agly valley between the Pyrenees and Corbieres mountains, when I picked out the owner's wine in a blind tasting on a press trip to Roussillon."

We aren't told that the person organising the press trip ran a business renting vines – or that the vineyard owner Eric Laguere (the guy with the Viking hairstyle in the series) who rents them to him, and his neighbour Gerard Gauby of Le Soula, are actually Monty's well-established biodynamic gurus – or that Agly is a very fashionable hot spot for vine-growers. So there was plenty of help close at hand when Monty needed advice on "harnessing the cosmic energy" when he ploughed, picked and bottled according to the waxing and waning moon.

The part I enjoyed most in episode one was watching the late Bill Baker, a larger-than-life figure in the wine trade, make something of a mockery of Monty's "wacky" cosmic theories.

With the Channel 4 series behind him, Monty didn't find it hard to find a buyer for the 6,500 bottles of his first carignan red blend. Alastair Marshall of Adnams Wine Merchants, who has a penchant for organic wine, bought the entire stock.

This year, Monty has rented a further eight hectares to make a dry white and barrel-aged reds under the Monty label, with hopes of helping "the French make softer, cleaner, friendlier wines".

• Chateau Monty, Channel 4, Thursdays, 8pm.

Taste Test: Grape expectations

MONTY'S RED, VIN DE PAYS DES COTES CATALANES

(£7.99, Adnams, Suffolk, 01502 727222, www.adnams.co.uk)

Mostly carignan, with 20 per cent syrah and a bit of grenache and maccabeu produces briary forest fruit aromas for this biodynamically grown, vegan-friendly wine. Initially juicy fruit and soft smooth tannins offer some complexity in mid-palate, but slightly short to finish. Very good for a first effort. 15/20

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