Jura, & Christian Tschida in Austria
Happy pride y'all, here's a few new wines in stock.
Les Granges Paquenesses Chardonnay "La Mamette" 2018/2019
Les Granges Paquenesses 'La Pierre' Savagnin Ouille 2018
In the past 15 years or so the Jura in France has become one of the
most exciting wine regions in the world. Drawn to a mix of cheaper
land, old vines, strong traditions and delicate unknown wine
varieties, a group of young winemakers have transformed what was a
largely unknown French region into something known the world over.
Loreline LaBorde at Les Granges Paquenesses is part of that group,
leaving the large mediterranean city of Montpellier to buy a tiny farm
("Granges") in the middle of nowhere Jura and start making wine. For
white wines in the Jura the tradition had always been extended aging,
and wines released 3-9 years after harvest. While this style of
winemaking is well respected, it's almost impossible for a new
winemaker to make these types of wines and be commercially viable. So
instead most young winemakers have opted to make wine in a more
burgundian style, with shorter aging in topped up barrels, showing
more fruit than the oxidative style. No matter what style Jura wines
are made of the minerality is the star of the show, and these two
wines are no exception. It's a remarkable show of terroir that wines
from the same grapes (chardonnay) grown an hour apart and made in the
same style can be so drastically different. Loreline makes some of the
most transparent wines coming out the Jura right now.
Domaine de Montbourgeau L'Etoile Chardonnay, Savagnin 2018
If Loreline is emblematic of the new wave of Jura wines, Nicole
Deriaux at Domaine de Montbourgeau is perhaps the standard-bearer now
for ultra-traditionalist winemaking. Montbourgeau started in 1920
post-Phylloxera when Nicole's grand-father planted a few hectares
outside the village of l'etoile. In 1956 Nicole's father took over,
and then in 1986 Nicole joined him, and now she is fully in charge of
the Domaine. She has converted the entire domaine to organics, and is
fully committed to making traditional Jura wines, wines I find
beautiful, but wines that are often in opposition to the current
styles. The plantings are composed of mostly Chardonnay and Savagnin
(the tiny l'etoile appellation only permits white wines to be made).
The white wines, including this one, are made in the traditional
style, meaning the barrels aren't topped up (wine isn't added to the
barrels to keep them full) and a flor (voile in French) forms like
sherry. The basic cuvee is aged like this for 24-30 months. The wine,
a blend of chardonnay and savagnin, takes on a slightly oxidative
flavor, reminiscent of a sherry but not nearly as strong.
Christian Tschida 'Himmel Auf Erden' Weissburgunder 2021
Christian Tschida, by his own account, is an absolute obsessive when
it comes to making wine. When he took over his father's estate in
Burgenland, eastern Austria in 2003 he immediately started wines in
the style he preferred, which was lighter, low alcohol wines, rather
than continue making the heavier, higher alcohol wines the estate had
been known for. This alienated his former customers, and he recalls
having “below zero customers” for a while, until he started finding
young customers excited for what he had created. In the vineyard and
in the cellar Christian is an obsessive experimenter. In one vineyard
he resurrected the traditional practice of "doppel-stock" which is
planting two vines close together so they are forced to compete for
nutrients and send roots further down into the soil. In another
vineyard vines are planted irregularly to maximize shade (Christian
believes that ripeness and high alcohol kill the wine he's trying to
make). In the cellar he's the same, obsessed with all aspects of
vinification, from pressing (he owns a bucher vasslin basket press,
largely considered the finest in the world and a huge investment for a
tiny winery) to maceration in large format upright oak barrels, which
mark the wine very little, to his harvest team which he has had for
years, not trusting new people with his exacting methods. The Himmel
Auf Werden ("Creating heaven on earth" is the translation) is a blend
of Weissburgunder and Scheurebe (don't ask me to pronounce that). As I
said early this is a light wine, but how Christian gets so much out of
his light wines is beyond me.
In 1978, at least 20 years away from anyone hearing the term "natural
wine" Rita and Rudolf Trossen made the decision to convert their
entire estate in the middle-Mosel valley in Germany to bio-dynamics, a
kind of organic farming espoused by Austrian philosopher Rudolf
Steiner. At the time this was not thought of in any commercial sense,
the market for organic wine was non-existent and the expense was
simply because they looked at the dead soil and decided that this
wasn't the way (I won't get into exactly what biodynamic farming is as
it's a huge topic, but Wikipedia covers it pretty well
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biodynamic_agriculture). They quietly
plodded along, quietly making wines until the interest in organic
winemaking started to explode in the early 2000s, and people looking
for organic found their wines. Since then their status has risen and
they've begun to be known as the pioneers that they truly are. This
wine comes from 100 year old ungrafted riesling (soils heavy in slate
are one of the few that resist phylloxera) and it's one of the most
serious orange wines we have right now, multi-layered, mineral, just
beautiful stuff.