TDF 2010 Stage 8: Station des Rousses to Morzine-Avoriaz

So it turned out the Tour organizers were having a little fun at my expense. I got a call early Sunday morning from the chief commissaire telling me my services as lead car driver wouldn’t be necessary. Rather, they’d decided my presence at the arrive was of the utmost importance, therefore suggesting that I head straight to the city, without delay, to prepare for the finish line festivities.

Just as I was putting the wetlands of North Jersey behind me and about to take the plunge into the darkness that precedes the reemergence into Manhattan, the second call came. This time the commissaire had deputized the job. "Monsieur McDuff, of course the race this year is not really coming to New York. We sincerely hope, though, that you'll still continue with your planned celebrations. Bon courage!"

Damn straight I wasn't turning back. There was a ride through the Jura, where Saturday's stage took place and Sunday's started, to commemorate. So, even with the lure of an appearance by the peloton off the docket, I headed to 67 Wine, where natural wine buyer Ben Wood had invited me to show off a few goodies symbolic of the weekend's stages.

For openers, we poured "L'Uva Arbosiana" from Pascal and Evelyne Clairet's Domaine de la Tournelle, brought into the US by Jenny & François. The non-vintage "L'Uva Arbosiana" (this batch is entirely from 2008 fruit) is a completely unsulfured cuvée of Ploussard that undergoes a 30-day-long carbonic maceration. A real eye-opener for the crowd in attendance, light and bright in color, crisp, firm and snappy in texture, ever fresh and just a tad smoky on the palate. Kind of like the first stiff climb after many days of riding the flat lands. Something bracing to open up the legs, lungs and mind.

A little downhill relief — cool breeze and easy rolling — came next, via a taste of the 2007 Arbois Chardonnay from Gérard Villet, part of the Savio Soares portfolio. Its telltale sponti, wild yeast aromas were followed up by fresh, crunch fruit and a cascade of minerality not unlike what you might expect to emerge from the springs flowing beneath Les Monts Jura, through which Sunday's stage traversed.

The 2004 L'Étoile Savagnin from Domaine de Montbourgeau (Rosenthal) rounded things out, a real sting in the tail, the final hors catégorie climb that no one quite knew was coming. All afternoon, it had people raising eyebrows and scratching their heads, trying to put a finger on what it reminded them of and, even more so, trying to decide just how they felt about it. Definitely polarizing juice, with its Manzanilla-like nose, piercing acidity, and stony, spicy, pungent palate attack.

Three delicious wines in honor of the first attack on the high mountains in this year's Tour.

Given that the day's events kept me from posting according to previously planned schedule, I'm going to break form and give a shout out to Sunday's winner. At this point, I'm guessing everyone that's following the race has seen it, read it or heard it. If I'm wrong, though, and you're the one that still doesn't know, then quick, close your eyes.

Andy Schleck, crossing the line victorious on the mountaintop finish into Morzine-Avoriaz, his first ever stage win in the Tour de France.
(Photo courtesty of Fotoreporter Sirotti.)

While the field sprints of the flat stages may provide adrenalin-pumping excitement and there's certainly been no shortage of drama in the first week of this year's Tour, it's always the mountains, at least for this fan of La Grande Boucle, that bring the fireworks. And we're just getting started....

Up next: A rest day recap perhaps, then it's into the high Alps of the Haute-Savoie we go.

Intro only...

Chaptalization's Not In It

Since I know everyone's been on tenterhooks, trying to figure out just what exactly it was that I drank last Friday, I figured I'd cut right to the chase and open with a little photographic evidence.


Just in case it's still not entirely clear, it was the 2000 Arbois Pupillin Savagnin, from Maison Pierre Overnoy and its current winemaker, Emmanuel ("Manu") Houillon. Intensely oxidative and nutty on the nose, it could easily have passed for Sherry, at least until it passed the lips, when the razor's edge acidity and piercing minerality, ummistakable, of Savagnin took over. Deliverer of as much pain as pleasure, it's not a wine I'd conceive of drinking every day but is unquestionably something that will leave an indelible impression on the sensory memory of anyone who has the chance to try it.

Friday was one of those tough days. Writing about it five days later, I can't really put my finger on what made it so tough. It was just one of those days when, at some point in the action, I decided something special needed to be opened that night. Something that might take me out of the negative space, not through alcohol delivery but rather through the act of thoughtful wine drinking.

Step back. Experience. Contemplate. Enjoy.

---

If you're wondering what the title of today's post has to do with this, let's all take a step back.... The inspiration to which I alluded in Friday's "Name That Wine" post had been delivered by something I'd read that day: Cory Cartwright's post on his visit with Manu Houillon at Maison Overnoy. Its partner post from Guilhaume Gerard (I'd forgotten how funny it is), taken from an earlier trip to see Houillon, didn't hurt either. What made me pick this wine was the sense of respect and reverence that came through in Cory's post, along with the sense of joy (however snidely presented) in Guilhaume's, and, finally, my own realization that I don't get to drink these wines nearly as often as I'd like.

What stuck with me, though, even longer than the finish of that Pupillin, was Cory's revelation that Houillon sometimes chaptalizes his wines. That's just how it came across to me: as a revelation both in terms of Manu sharing the information in the first place and of the impact that information had on my friend Cory.

---

Perhaps another step back is in order.... For those of you who aren't familiar with the wines of Overnoy/Houillon, they hail from Eastern France, from a sub-Alpine subdistrict of the Arbois known as Pupillin. In the last few years, the wines have become increasingly hard to come by, as they're coveted heavily here in the States, back in France, and most recently, word has it, in Japan as well. The wines are always compelling, almost always delicious, and very often cited, by very many people, as bastions on the short list of flagships within the natural wine movement.

This picture of Manu Houillon was stolen brazenly and without permission
from The Wine Digger.

Chaptalization, quite simply, is the practice of adding sugar to grape must before or during fermentation in order to raise the alcohol level in the finished wine (not to create a sweet wine). It's a process that's been used for centuries, starting long before it was fully scientifically understood, codified and promoted by French chemist Jean-Antoine Chaptal.

Chaptalization has long been a useful tool in cool climate areas, in regions where it's often difficult to achieve ideal ripeness levels on the vine. In Bordeaux, before the advent of global warming, reverse osmosis, must concentrators and ultra-late picking, chaptalization was necessary in most vintages just to achieve the once standard 12.5% alcohol level. It's still used commonly in Burgundy, in the Beaujolais, for non-Pradikat wines in Germany.... And I've little doubt that it's also used in plenty of warmer climes too, in places where it's supposedly forbidden, as a little (or a lot of) sugar is quite useful in making up for the dilute nature of the extremely high crop levels necessary for the production of the global supply of bulk wine. Yes, it can be a useful tool, but it can also be a crutch.

What's struck me for quite some time now is the lack of reference made to chaptalization when discussing the ins and outs of natural wine. The big buzz words are yeast, sulfur, enzymes. There's plenty of discussion of engineering tricks in the winery, and of course about farming practices, herbicides, pesticides, etc. But hardly anyone ever mentions chaptalization. Alice doesn't, at least not in her core definition of natural wine. Cory expressed shock when Manu admitted to its use. I've never found the inspiration to write about it until now....

My point is not to point fingers at anyone as being right or wrong but rather to ask questions, to hope everyone will step back and think about it.

Think about Cory's interpretation of Houillon's words:

"He doesn’t like doing it [chaptalizing], but he freely admits to it when the year is thin and the wine isn’t going to amount to much.... He understands chaptalising wines (a common, accepted and traditional practice in many appellations) and feels he can get better wines in certain vintages by the addition of sugar."

And ask yourself the following question. Is it most important to make wines in a totally unadulterated manner, or to make the best wine you can from what nature has given you?

There are so many ways to interpret the above question that its answers are near endless.

When it comes to chaptalization, I appreciate the answer posited by Guilhaume, who does address it in laying out his own natural wine dogma, saying, "Sugar is definitely the least important [no-no] as it's not harmful. Still, if we are talking about natural wines i think chaptalisation should be banned."

For me, though, there's at least a little shade of gray. No chaptalization ever? That's natural to the extreme. (I can't help but think back to Alice's distinction between softcore and hardcore natural in the context of additive SO2 use.) Chaptalization in small amounts, only when truly necessary to find balance in an unfriendly vintage, never as a crutch to make up for poor farming, never in extreme quantities.... I'm okay with that, as long as it doesn't show itself as a detriment to the finished wine. But I do prefer to taste nature in its full, naked glory.

Intro only...

On The (Yellow) Star

On a recent evening, shared with a few good friends over a few good bottles and some food, of course, one wine in particular raised not only my eyebrows but also an excellent question. "What is L'Étoile?" We were drinking a bottle of L'Étoile Savagnin from Domaine de Montbourgeau at the time, and it was my friend Bill who asked the question(s). He wasn't asking what it means — "L'Étoile" is French for "the star" — but rather, "Is that the AOC? Is it a place?" I answered in the affirmative to part one but realized that I couldn't quite explain, off the top of my head, the origins of or reasoning behind its name.


A quick Google Maps search points to a town in France called L'Étoile that's located about 150 kilometers due north of Paris, very much not in the Jura, which is the region where AOC L'Étoile is located. As it turns out, though, there's another small town called L'Étoile in the heart of the Jura. While the AOC takes its name from this commune, "L'Étoile" also refers to two of the area's distinct regional characteristics: a series of five hills surrounding the village that, with the help of a little imagination, form the five arms of a star, and from the fossilized remains of invertebrate starfish ("crinoïdes" or "pentacrines") that are common to the soil in the vineyards of L'Étoile, situated on what were seabeds many millennia ago.

The AOC boundaries encompass roughly 75-80 hectares, about 50 hectares of which are under vine. Split that between 30 farmers and 26 different wineries (21 estates, 2 co-ops and 3 négociants) and you'll start to get a sense of at least one of the reasons that so little wine from L'Étoile reaches the US market. The AOC allows for the production of white wines only, primarily from Chardonnay and Savagnin, which respectively account for 90% and 10% of overall plantations, though small amounts of Ploussard (vinified as white wine) are also tolerated.

Now that we've done at least some justice to the questions, let's move on to the wine that raised them... and raised my eyebrows....

L'Étoile Savagnin, Domaine de Montbourgeau (Nicole Dériaux) 2002
$37. 13% alcohol. Cork. Importer: Rosenthal Wine Merchant, New York, NY.

There's surprisingly little information available about this cuvée of Savagnin from Domaine de Montbourgeau, not even a mention on the producer's own website. Though Nicole Dériaux apparently carries on the oxidative winemaking practices used by her father, Jean Gros, and traditional to the Jura, this is not obviously oxidative wine. Its color is a waxy yellow in the glass and it does eventually reveal background flavors of hazelnuts and walnuts, but those are typical characteristics of Savagnin and strike me, in this case, as more primary than oxidation-induced flavor elements.

In any event, I'm splitting hairs. The wine is deliciously captivating. One eyebrow arched when I put nose to glass, finding subtle yet piercing aromas of turmeric and coriander, coupled with powerful minerality. The other eyebrow went up at the first sip, where those same curry spices blossomed in the wine's mouth aromas, magnified and amplified by very energetic, muscular mouthfeel and nervy acidity. Both eyebrows stayed up when the wine conjured an unmistakable aroma and flavor memory: Singapore Chow Mei Fun. I kid you not, the association was fixed, stamped indelibly in my mind.

I'm not sure whether Bill planned it or whether the stars (no pun intended) had simply aligned, but the wine proved a compelling match to just about all of the food he'd lined up for the evening. A great contrast to the salty, fatty savor of thinly sliced Jambon de Bayonne, which brought out the spice and minerality in the wine. It worked equally well with a hunk of Morbier, which just happens to come from nearby Franche-Comté and to be an only slightly less classic match than Comté itself. Here it was the pleasantly funky nuttiness of the cheese playing with the similarly wild, outdoorsy characteristics of the wine. And damn if it didn't prove a fine match with roast chicken, too.


Aside from mentions of "Singapore Chow Mei Fun" and "yellow," my notes are dominated by one other key phrase. "Buy." Priced in the high $30s, this is by no means inexpensive but it's money well spent for a wine that should develop extremely well in the cellar and that already delivers compelling pleasure. In one of those odd synchronicities in the wine blogging world, my cohort DoBi just wrote up Montbourgeau's regular bottling of L'Étoile, paired it with Chex Mix in homage to Dr. Vino's impossible food and wine pairings, and even took a picture that's very similar to my own. As Jeremy says, "Not everyone will like this wine." But that's okay, I do, so there'll be more for me.

Intro only...

Two from Tissot

Ever find yourself thinking eerily alike another? I stopped by a friend’s house not long ago to do a little tasting and cooking. For good measure I’d carried along a bottle of Domaine Tissot’s Arbois “Sélection,” one of a handful of interesting wines I’d picked up a few days earlier. As it turned out, he’d already lined up a bottle of Tissot’s Arbois Chardonnay. No advance discussion or planning, just a freak coincidence – a welcome one.

At work in the vineyards at Domaine André et Mireille Tissot
(photo courtesy of stephane-tissot.com).
When Stéphane Tissot began taking on more and more responsibility for the farming and winemaking at his parents André and Mireille Tissot’s estate in the mid-1990s, he immediately began a slow but sure conversion of the property to organic farming methods. That cycle moved to the next logical step with the first application of biodynamic principles in 2004, becoming “official” via full biodynamic certification by Demeter in 2005. Farming at the 32-hectare estate is natural and so too is the winemaking. All of the Tissots’ wines – as many as 28 different cuvées in any given vintage – are fermented spontaneously on their native yeasts, with sulfur used minimally if at all.

Arbois “Sélection,” Domaine André et Mireille Tissot (Stéphane et Bénédicte Tissot) 2004
$23. 13% alcohol. Cork. Importer: A Thomas Calder Selection, Potomac Selections, Landover, MD.
Tissot’s Arbois “Sélection” Blanc is a blend of 70% Chardonnay and 30% Savagnin made in an intentionally oxidative style. The two varieties are barrel fermented and aged separately for nine months, with occasional topping up of the barrels. After blending, the wine undergoes a further fifteen months of aging in barrel, this time sans ouillage (without topping up). In this environment, a partial veil of flor forms, much as with Vin Jaune though to a lesser extent, and the wine is eventually finished with a very light filtration prior to bottling, with no further sulfur treatment.

The end result is delicious. The first pour opened with a typically apple-y, oxidative nose and Sherry-like brininess and savor on the palate. As it unfolded in the glass, its flavors developed greater complexity and depth. Persimmon and kumquats, dried apricots minus their sweet-fruited aspect, sour limestone and marshmallows (yes, marshmallows). The whole package is carried along on a razor’s edge of acidity. It was mouth coating in its intensity yet not at all heavy, the flavors and texture clinging to my teeth like a free-climber might cling to a sheer rock face, with sinew, grip and desperate balance. This is certainly not for everyone but it’s one of the most exciting wines I’ve had this year. And at $23, it’s a tremendous value.

Arbois Chardonnay, Domaine André et Mireille Tissot (Stéphane et Bénédicte Tissot) 2007
$24. 13% alcohol. Cork. Importer: A Thomas Calder Selection, Potomac Selections, Landover, MD.
Quite backward – our order, that is, not the wine. In our enthusiasm to taste the “Sélection” we didn’t bother thinking about which wine to open first. It would certainly have made sense to start here but, hey, sometimes it’s more fun just to forge ahead.

This is made in a far less oxidative fashion, with spontaneous fermentation in barriques (10% new) followed by twelve months of barrel aging. Lighter and more youthful in color, as expected, it was loaded with flavors of d’Anjou pear and aromas of fresh honey and Braeburn apples, all on a taut, medium-bodied frame. Like “Sélection,” it displayed tremendous grip and energizing acidity, calling to mind Burgundian cousins such as commune level or premier cru Chablis (but with more flesh) and Viré-Clessé (but with a more intense acid and mineral profile). This could do interesting things in the cellar but it’s already drinking great. I’d love to try it with a plate of grilled scallops, completely unadorned. Definitely.

Domaine Tissot’s website, by the way, is very much worth exploring. Lots of good information about the estate as well as biodynamic farming principles, all set to a soundtrack of fermenting Savagnin.

Intro only...