Tuesday, 10 March 2020

Etienne Thibaud | Domaine des Cavarodes

Savagnin merman:
dreads, oh sage jurasienne.
Lune noeud donc on boit.

— Visit 10 March 2020. Cramans, Jura

(Photo and merman credit to Christina Rasmussen)

Alice Bouvot | Domaine de l'Octavin

A gnome is a gnome is a gnome though hers are rainbow-minded not mould-hided, living their best lives in technicolour rather than forgotten somewhere at the bottom of the garden. If black-hats means home-grown: pizza-Ploussards and opera-curtain soft Trousseaus; this white-topped chorus represents team négoce, a colour-by-number medley of compass points singing in voices of sweet gravity Grenache and pithy Alsatian suns but also honeydew drops of far-south Muscat and pistachio-shades of Sylvaner in an orchestra that Alice, chieftess of insane harvest logistics and curl-haired cuve conductoresse, leads in whispers.

— Visit 7 March 2020. Arbois, Jura

'Foutre d’Escampette' 2015, Domaine de L'Octavin

Things used to be simpler. Penguins were without a doubt my favourite animal and I hated Chardonnay. It reminded me of those constantly condensing glasses at awkward art shows and tasted like vanilla butter cream pie from a can and yes this applied to all of them thank you very much, now please pass the red.

Then I had a Chardonnay by Axel Prüfer and it was crunchy, not buttery, earthy, not creamy. It tasted like hazy sunshine dappling over lazy water or running barefoot across a spring-flowered prairie: hair-flowing, fresh-aired, care-free and problematic: I liked it. But I took it in my stride, put it on the list and told people it tastes how it ‘wants’ to taste without being forced it into format.

I called it a ‘wild’ Chardonnay and an exception to the rule and was ok with that, bandying about terms like ‘straight-jacket’ and ‘homogeneity’ and posing questions like standardisation vs. individuality?

I remember trying to explain the taste of electricity.

But of course when things seem simple you have to be sure you're not being stupid, and this wine reminds me of the time we went to Arbois / when I realised I was being stupid.

Domaine de L'Octavin's "Foutre d’Escampette" 2015 tastes like a long summer day at a lake legs long over the dock, swimming out to the far raft, watermelon slices in bags, emerald-green slash brown water with light streams cutting through.

What it’s not like is vanilla butter cream pie, and if they’re pouring this at art shows I wanna be there which is to say that I was totally wrong and that both penguins and Chardonnay can be ok.

Tasting notes:

Looks like cold sunshine through smoke. Tastes like hay and lemon-pithy lees with a hint of almond and stony white plums not quite ripe. Long lingering finish and cold water on your face acidity. Clean tasting, dirty name.

"Foutre d’Escampette" 2015

Domaine de L’Octavin, Alice Bouvot and Charles Dagand

Chardonnay

Arbois, Jura

(Brought to the table by Clavelin for Le Carton pop up Dead Sheep, Living Wines).

More notes on Domaine de L'Octavin

Notes on a Chardonnay raised by wolves

'Ja-Naï' 2013, Domaine des miroirs

Two years ago we squatted a garden which sounded cool up until we got told to clear out. We grew sunflowers. And Mexican sunflowers. And poppies and astor and cosmos and sweetpeas and hollyhocks and one of those wildflower good-for, god save the bees mixes and a ‘pale cut flowers’ mix, though I think it’s cruel to actually cut flowers, and our Christmas tree from two years ago and a plum tree and two rows of corn up to my waist and a big awkward cucumber and dog zucchini and a crazy wild growing sage and trees of swiss chard and cavolo nero or just kale and a pumpkin and endive and soft lettuce heads and broad beans and string beans and having a place to put our hands in dirt and make stick fences and stone paths and play pioneer or whatever and also three marijuana plants which maaaaay have been the problem.

Kenjiro Kagmi's "Ja-Naï" 2013 reminds me of garden. Of bramble, pulling nettles, weeds, hands and knees knock-knocking clumps of dark, wet root dirt, hot (plastic!) bagged manure. Of the breeze breezing over the smell of cut grass which is to say the smell of someone with an actual garden with actual grass, not nettles. Of bunches of herbs nailed to a beam to dry, not to forget. Of bay leaves and basil and roses and Angostura Bitters which sorta technically comes from gardens.

Tasting notes:

A Ploussard made by a Japanese in the Jura in a limestone vineyard full of flowers. There's melty marzipan and a packet of red fruit gummies you left in the sun on the back seat of the car plus somehow the taste sensation of your tongue on cold mineral metal plus see above.

"Ja-Naï" 2013

Domaine des Miroirs, Kenjiro Kagmi

Ploussard

Grusse, Jura

Jan brought this over

More Ploussard

'Commendatore' 2015, Domaine de l'Octavin

This is summer time blended then bottled. Flip flops flopping-flipping, blender-blitzed lemonade sipping ice cubes clinking shaded under straw hat or wind waving breezy tree. It’s raspberry picking backs bending searching through the prickly green and berry fatness-feeling and eating overloaded slice of peach pie thick crust with your hands paper plate, peaches dropping. Dripping ice pops, watermelon, tomatoes sticky down your chin and summer evening crickets cricketing fields rippling, corn — then marshmallows — grilling.

"Commendatore" 2015

Domaine de l'Octavin

Trosseau

Arbois, Jura

Buy from Clavelin.

More Jura drinkings.

'Arbois Pupillin' 2014, Adeline Houillion and Renaud Bruyere

The parties were last week, they told us. You should have been here.

‘Here,’ then, was Arbois; a village in the Jura but as I’d never heard of the Jura, more importantly the place in France where they make Comté and where we were going to have a holiday. At the time we had no idea it was a ‘thing’ in the wine world, much less a thing in the natural wine world — the only time we’d heard about either was in the context of, ‘Try this. It’s a Ploussard from Arbois and it’s natural,’ in other words, no context, just a string of words we didn’t know the meaning of. But it was tried and it was w o w and this causally herbaceous, vivacious, pink like punch, rose-on-the-nose, perfectly chilled Ploussard was, in a word: redefining. Was in six more words:

All.

wanted.

to.

drink — ever

But like I said, at the time it was still really about us having a holiday.

The idea was to set up our tent, walk, cook outside and drink wine during the day and maybe do a few tastings because I think we vaguely knew you could, this being France. So when we saw the signs hanging pretty much everywhere that said you can, welcome to the home of the Ploussard (also Poulsard) we thought great! and that we’d start with this Bruyère guy because it was his Ploussard (a 2013) we’d drunk that night months before.

And that’s when we heard about the parties or rather, that they were over.

No one could believe that we were here to taste wine maintenant a week after the rest of the world and didn’t you know about the harvest? The old wine had been drunk, the new stuff was in tanks and everyone had things to do; the mood, sober. Evidently we were the only souls who didn’t know that the 'non-stop dégustation' had, in fact, all, this week, stopped; that they’d just left out the signs.

And we didn’t know. So, safe in our ignorance, we went ahead knock-knock knocking on barn doors, open doors, front doors and cellar doors, meeting many a winemaker, their mothers / wives / dogs in the pursuit of something to drink during the day before retiring to Bistro des Claquettes each night to read our books because it had wine and light and our tent didn’t. The next day we’d start in Bruyere’s cellar.

Here's what I remember.

Renaud was making bread or maybe his wife Adeline was, and there was a roll of those happy little crescent moons lying on top of the microwave and a kid in a highchair. We’d dropped in unannounced and were told to come back later. We killed time on a bench. It’s later: we’re led down under the house to the cellar to go through the wine-thief hullabaloo drop-drop, swish-swish, smell, taste, spit (we didn't spit), repeat-thing because that’s what the Danish guy who'd joined our tasting was doing (spitting) and he made it clear he knew ~~what he was doing~~ everything about wine you needed to know, ever.

We climbed the ladder to look into the tanks and he told us about the guy who blacked out from the CO2, fell in and died. How you should always do it in twos. I remember being surprised when he told us he made only a thousand odd bottles of the Ploussard a year, that we could only buy six — both figures sounded incredibly little. And obviously we’d thought ‘harvest’ meant something different to ‘call in family and friends’ because we couldn’t believe it when he said that’s what he does. But what did we know? We’d never been in a wine cellar before. Anyway, the indigenous yeasts sounded cute and we left and we didn’t even know he was a big deal.

On Sunday we invited Jan to come drink to the Jura with us. He brought some bottles for the cause and we ate leftover potato salad and listened to Nirvana with the doors open. At the time of writing we have two bottles left.

Tasting notes:

Smells like barn with fluoro pinky / peach glossy tears streaming down the sides of your glass. Delicate while prickly, rose-floral patterns on your dress, funky. Fresh hay but also vegetal. Morning grapefruit juice. Spicy. Still a helluva lot of energy: racy, incredibly fresh and snappy. Ethereal, and I’ve already said energy. Candy. Fast moving lights, pale like a rosé but structured like a Burgundy. Fermenting strawberries, punchy and I can’t believe I’ve not yet said juicy so, juicy, juicy, juicy.

//

"Arbois-Pupillin" 2014
Renaud Bruyere, Adeline Houillion
Ploussard
Puppillin, Jura

'Album' 2012, Jean-Baptiste Menigoz

I’ve mentioned baskets of bruised apple before but Jean-Baptiste Menigoz's "Album" 2012 gives you quince. Fuzzy quince browning in wooden fruit bowls of walnuts and almonds and baked apples in warm sugar dusted dough. Lush with ripe pears dipped in Manuka honey, some lemon pith and tastes somehow heavy.

"Album" 2012

Domaine les Bottes Rouges, Jean-Baptiste Menigoz

Savagnin

Jura

Le Carton throws supper

Because we don't know anyone who cooks with enough garlic, we decided to start a sort of supper club. A place to sit people next to strangers around a family table and drink lots of wine.

So we found a squat, hung a branch and gave everyone kefir cocktails. There was a three course menu, a storyteller and a herbalist and Ploussard from Overnoy-Crinquand on tap.

'La Bidode' 2014 is from a 5.5ha vineyard tended by Mikael Crinquand in Pupillin, the village up the hill from Arbois where we were camping for a week in October. A rustic chug-chug red that's lean and earthy with a fermenting strawberry fizzle plus a spitter-spatter of manure on your boots with some hay stuck on. Very danceable.

Photos by Sophia van den Hoek