Tag: Vin de Paille
Domaine de Montbourgeau L’Etoile Vin de Paille 2000
This bottle of vin de paille from Domaine de Montbourgeau was the first chance I had had to try this style of wine made by drying the grapes in straw boxes before vinifying them. The wine is then made in the sous voile style. The end result is a wine that bears much of the sweetness of a dessert wine, while coming in at a lower alcohol percentage than most dessert wines, and having many of the characteristics of a sherry – nuttiness, rancio, walnut, spices, etc.
The Domaine de Montbourgeau vin de paille is, in a word, fantastic. This is one of the few wines that I’ve had that has really blown me away. As much as I liked the vin jaune from Puffeney, I found this wine to be beautiful. The nose carries notes of walnut, candied apples, poached pears, and aged balsamic vinegar. The palate is rich and velvety with up-front flavors of nuts, spices, brown sugar, and baked apples, and then back again to walnuts and almonds. The finish is very long, begins with warm caramel and tails away to nutty flavors accompanied by a bright acidity.
I could not get enough of this wine, and the 375ml bottle went far too quickly among the four of us who shared it. It was the only bottle we had, but this is a wine that I will always keep my eyes open for and will definitely grab if the opportunity to do so arises again. What a fabulous wine, and a testament to the fact that my occasional obsessions with different wines, etc., sometimes leads to the discovery of a real gem.
In this case, the obsession was with the wines of the Jura region of France. A couple of years ago when I first stumbled across the Art Of Eating the issue that I found was devoted to “Wines of the Jura”. I was instantly taken in. I had never heard of the Jura region of France, of the wine it was most famous for – Vin Jaune -, nor of the savagnin grape making up that wine. All of it was new to me, and what is more the wines were both entirely unique and hard to find. The more that I read about the wines, in this article and elsewhere, the more I was interested in finding the opportunity to taste some of them.
The most noticeable difference to wines made in the Jura region was the frequent mention of the sous voile method of wine-making. This approach involves the winemaker not topping up the barrels that the wine ages in, and in some cases not fully filling them up to begin with. The result is that the resting wine develops a thin layer of yeast on its surface that limits the amount of oxidation that takes place, allowing certain beneficial flavors to develop while preventing the wine from turning to vinegar during the wine’s years of aging. In the case of vin jaune the wine is required to age for 6 years and 3 months, during which time the wine develops a range of flavors including hazelnuts, walnuts, curry, along with a noticeable viscosity and depth. Other wines made in this fashion will be aged sous voile for differing periods of time, depending on the winemaker’s preference.
The other noticeable difference was the handful of different grape varietals unique to the region. These include the white-wine grape savagnin (vin jaune is comprised of 100% savagnin), and two red varietals poulsard and trousseau. All three of these are nearly entirely limited to their production in the Jura. The other two more common varietals grown in the Jura are chardonnay and pinot noir.
So as time passed I found a few bottles here and there. A “Fleur de Chardonnay” from Domaine Labet, a Chardonnay made in the sous voile fashion giving the wine a nutty flavor to undercut the sweetness of the chardonnay and blended with a touch of savagnin to lend it a distinct acidity. This was followed by a savagnin from Domaine Berthet-Bondet, a poulsard and a vin jaune from Jacques Puffeney, a pair of savagnins from Domaine de Montbourgeau, and one from Domaine Andre et Mireille Tissot. Of these, those that stood out most were the savagnins from Montbourgeau, the poulsard from Puffeney, and the vin jaune from Puffeney.
The vin jaune from Puffeney was amazing, the farthest thing from any wine I had ever tasted. Whereas the savagnins that I had tasted all carried elements born of the sous voile style, the vin jaune had them in spades. Whereas the other savagnins achieved a balance between the wine’s inherent sweetness, acidity, and the nuttiness from the sous voile, the vin jaune fully embraced the results of the sous voile method. The wine was rife with nuts, caramel, curry, rancio, and had a velvety mouthfeel that led to a finish that just lingered on your palate for ages.
All that being said, while the vin jaune was wonderful and such a unique experience, it really did not hold a candle to this vin de paille. Again, this wine was simply amazing. Not a wine for every occasion, its sweetness and boldness required some contemplation around when best to drink it, but a fabulous wine when you find the right time to open it up. I’d recommend this over and over again.
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