Holy Schist | 2007 La Vendemia St Joseph

A two-barrel, centurion-vine syrah production; gentle yet edgy and rather exciting!

The nose is unmistakably stem-retentive. It’s pure and smoky with a touch of violet, oil, pine and some olive. It’s decidedly old-school in the best sense; its real wine of the earth material, full of true local authenticity. The structure is sinewy, tight with pure bramble and black raspberry fruit adding the flesh to a fine-boned frame of ripe fruit tannin with the tannin leached from ripe-stems adding a fundamentally complex framework for the fruit and acids to duck and dive. It’s a provocative style of wine that the young duo may struggle to replicate in a cooler vintage. Its nervy, graceful and finishes with excellent clarity, clearly stylistically close to Reymond Trollat's (the vineyards legendary retired owner - see below) traditional expression of syrah.

The Clos St. Joseph vineyard has only 1000 vines. Its old, crusty syrah, planted on the schist and granite in Aubert at St-Jean-de-Muzols. There is only about 8cm of topsoil with hard granite underneath, so with solid rock underfoot, the skinny vines don’t have much wood to show for their century of life. The grapes are hand-picked, and in the traditional way, no de-stemming is carried out. The skins and stems are all left with the wine for 1 month to give richness, flavour and extract. There are no pumps used and the winemaking could not be simpler.

We first met Shane McKerrow working as a “cellar rat” in the cave of probably the worlds greatest shiraz producer, Domaine J-L Chave, who was, at that moment, racking fine Hermitage wine, trying not to spill a precious drop.

He and wife Claire later spoke of their own 100yo white vineyard that used to belong to a legendary vigneron Raymond Trollat [for an in-depth explanation, see John Livingston-Learmonth’s “The Wines of the Northern Rhone”], their tiny “Clos St. Joseph” shiraz vineyard that is even older, and their plans to make natural, essential and “honest” wines using all the knowledge, hard work and experience they could muster.

For lovers of great northern Rhone wines, they have released a pair of 2007 wines that are not only stunning and intellectually stimulating, but are now available in Australia [the entire production of 90 cases!].

Nic@

Smorgasbord

An excellent array of wines floating about my digs this weekend. All very welcome,too, even if my liver disagrees vehemently. I even managed to fit in a local wine for good measure (all four of my friends will be so proud).

Beaujolais featured heavily with an aristocratic Moulin a Vent from Vissoux, 2008, up first. Tasting like a bastard child of a Montille Beaune and Thivin Cote de Brouilly, the 2008 comes across as a hypothetically syncratic blend of the best of two worlds; Beaujolais fun draped over a Cotes du Beaune frame. Well, they do say that opposites attract. The 2007 Chignard Fleurie Vieilles Vignes was a more fun, less serious approached to Cru Beaujolais. Chalk dust tannins framing bubbly, joyous, violet-kissed fruit, this looked even better day 2. Yum. Both wines show, in their respective styles, what the Gamay grape is truly capable of, when handled with respect and are testament to the diversity and regionalism of this once maligned area.

A 2006 St Joseph ‘Offerus’ (of unknown origin, made and bottles for J L Chave Selections.... oo-er) was similarly impressive hitting all the right notes of high-toned mulberry fruit, great spice and tumbling tannins whist avoiding the over-the-top wall-of-fruit characters that characterized many Northern Rhone’s in 06.

Under the all seeing eyes of Douglas Neal and Graham Bonney the rejuvenated Moorabool Estate, (now renamed after the original Paradise IV Vineyard planted in 1848 by Swiss vigneron Jean-Henri Dardel) has been quietly releasing some of Victorias most exciting bottles of recent. The Paradise IV Chardonnay 2009 is another new release that revels in the fastidious viticulture and back to basics approach of this quality partnership. That Neal’s palate is finely tuned toward the Cote du Baune is evident in the structure, its the juicy, yet smoothly elegant glade of fine fruit that steals the show.

Finally a Heart & Soil number; a 2007 Vaudesir Grand Cru from Domaine Louis Moreau. At such a young stage of evolution its a cornucopia of aromas and flavour; of Peach liquor, Argentinean Lemon Verbena, Moroccan cinnamon and Mexican vanilla. Strewth! That said, the structure, the wines crackle and it’s sinewy skeleton, are defiantly French, suggesting this needs at least a few more years for it’s subsumed terroir to find its voice amongst the more boisterous elements currently dominating the wine. Delicious.

Nic@

Etienne Grivot on his 2008's

Wine Funnies

King Of The Mountains

Pinot Noir, 2006
Jacques Puffeney, Arbois, Jura

I opened a bottle of this to wash down my first concerted attempt at the Jura specialty Poulet au vin jaune et aux morels (except without the morels which were notable by their absence from the East Geelong Happy Shopper). Not quite in the same league as Randalls 'Poulet' efforts, though I’m quite happy with my sophmore result.

The wine takes its time to unfurl before revealing it’s bright cherry kirsch bouquet spiked with dried herbs. There’s something mineral or umami/savoury coming to the party too. This is wild, mountain Burgundy. I can’t imagine this being an instant hit in a one-size-fits-all society; it has none of the modern attributes that make a wine instantly appealing to the mob; obvious fruit, sweet oak, alcoholic power and sucrose saturation. With a world of wine at our fingertips we become picky. The wine has to fit our, often-inflexible, notions of good better and best. This is thankfully one of those wines that doesn’t fit in. Perhaps a misunderstood loner that speaks of a time and place on the brink of vinous extinction.

US importer/writer Eric Asimov summed up Puffeney as a creator of “jagged wines in a silky-smooth world.” Well said. Nothing slick is happening here. No consulting oenologists, no pandering to export markets. Puffeney inherited a sliver of land from his father, which he expanded to 7½ acres by earning extra income as a cheesemaker, producing the region’s famous Comte cheese. He hand-harvests all of his vines, including the .6 acre parcel of Pinot farmed to produce this bottling. The wine is fermented in large old oak foudre and then aged in barrel for up to 30 months before bottling. Puffeney does not fine or filter, this, or any of his wines.

The palate, firm and jagged alone, moulds into the chicken. There’s a refreshing cut though the dish creating a mouthful of harmony. It’s a minimalist, idiosyncratic wine, a Jim Jarmuch job; unhurried, lacking clear meaning by focusing on mood and character.

Scorpio Rising

The Premier Cru "Les Cailles" is situated in the South part of the village of Vosne, close to Prémeaux Prissey, surrounded by the "Saint Georges" and the "Porrets" vineyards, with the "Vaucrains" premier cru above.

The vineyard usually produces a wine more accessible, in its early years, that its more esteemed neighbors. That’s not to say its ‘forward’, though these is a generosity of fruit to young Cailles that is not evident in the other Chev bottlings from St George and Vaucrains; it’s often quite plummy and layered with black cherry tones. There is also plenty of game, mushroom/soil notes that are more minerally than either and early on it typically has high tones of violets and blood orange. However, young Cailles is by no means a wine of meager structure; it is a big-boned and sturdy Nuits that just happens to be rather generous with its fruit out of the blocks. This quality tends to ameliorate some of the asperity or ‘adolescent tannins’ that can be found in young Nuits premier crus from this section of the commune. The southern Nuits, Les Cailles included, may have a touch of the maverick, but the robust charms of leather and denim are often no less alluring than the soft elegance of silk and satin.

The vineyards themselves, Les Porrets St.-Georges, Les Cailles and Les St. Georges, are planted on deep brown limestone, on a band of rock and pebbles which continue the marble quarries of Comblanchien to the south. There is often a granular feel about these fine young southern Nuits though, from the top domains, this is balanced by a concomitant measure of complexity and finesse

The 2006, flowing down my trachea, came to my glass via a birthday drink from the Guvnor. It offers an intriguing glimpse of earth-go-glass purity of flavour while its ‘taste-beyond-taste’ has something of the night about it; magnetic, elusive, sexy and determined. Scorpio rising over the gentle hill’s of Nuits St George.