East Coast Wines: Savoie, Isère and Bugey from Dupasquier, Finot and Lavie!
10/2/18 -
Today's email takes us to the rugged mountainsides of eastern France and three estates who are working beautifully in the vines and in the cellar, creating vibrant, distinctive wines featuring local varieties such as Roussette, Verdesse, Persan, Etraire de la Dhuy and Mondeuse.
We're extremely happy to have a new shipment from Thomas Finot, a young winemaker who, after experience in different regions of France, discovered abandonned vineyards in the Coteaux du Gresivaudan" (Isère) northeast of Grenoble, and is working to restore the vineyards and the region's potential. With great passion, he is reviving local varieties such as the white Verdesse and the reds Persan and Etriare de la Dhuy as well as working with the appellation's permitted grapes including Jacquere, Pinot Noir and Chardonnay. Thomas is committed to organic and biodynamic farming to best express the regions quality. The terroir is an ancient valley with soils of glacial stones and sands with limestone scree and clay and the daytime temperatures are among the highest in France, but with very cool nights. Domaine Finot is also producing a small quantity of superb Crozes-Hermitage from his grandfather's 1.8 hectare of vines on great sites in Larnage on both limestone and granite with white clay (kaolin) soils. For a relatively young winemaker, Thomas' grasp of the land, the soil types, and the health of his vines is impressive. He's a warm, humorous, and focused vigneron with a great future ahead of him!
The Dupasquier vineyards are located in Jongieux, a pastoral village perched on the southwestern foothills of Mont du Chat, a few kilometers away from Lake Bourget. The Domaine has consistently provided some of the best examples of mature Savoie varieties, notably Altesse, Mondeuse, and Gamay, owing to their committment to extended elevage. Each wine is fermented in large foudre with native yeasts, and rests on the fine lees for a year with an additional 18 months in bottle before release. This tradition is an outlier for the area, where the local method is to add yeast for a quick vinification in stainless tank. Their vineyard work is equally particular. David and Veronique became the fifth generation of winemakers at the Domaine after taking over for their father, Noel. David farms the 15 hectare with painstaking detail. Clusters are hand selected and light plowing is done once a year for every other row to promote biodiversity in the soil (mostly clay and limestone). Their holdings of Altesse on the steep Marestal (Mah-reh-tehl) Cru may be their most impressive. The southwestern facing slope provides abundant sun exposure for the vines, which aids ripening in the cool mountain clime. The extreme elevation also provides good drainage of the soil, for small yields of concentrated fruit. The Marestal bottlings are well worth seeking out and setting aside for aging. The Dupasquiers are talented stewards of the Savoie who excel at terroir-driven wines from this remarkable region.
On the other side of Mont du Chat lies Bugey, where newcomers Guillaume Lavie and Aline Ziemniak came together three years ago to make a marvelous vintage of Roussette and Mondeuse. Les Vins de Lavie is the first project for the young couple, who studied in Burgundy, and wanted to produce wines of terrior using only Biodynamic methods. In 2015 they took over 2 hectares of beautiful, western-exposed vines that face the Mont du Chat. All vineyard work was done with horse and plow or by hand. The cellar work included long, fine lees aging for the Roussette, and partial wholecluster with light rimontage for the Mondeuse, with minimal amounts of added sulfur. The wines are soulful, expressive, and focused -- a testament to the potential and purity of low-sulfur wines. We learned that the 2016 vintage will be the last at this location in Bugey, but the talented vigneron is currently scouting for vineyards in the Savoie. We will certainly be keeping an eye out for what comes next! (Wines arrive by October 3rd)
Tonight at 6pm, Racines NY will offer a flight of half-pours: Finot 2015 Persan; Finot 2016 Etraire de la Dhuy; Dupaquier 2012 Gourmandise; Duspaquier 2013 Marestel; Lavie 2016 Roussette; Lavie 2016 Mondeuse and the Finot 2015 Verdesse. $35, no reservation required
