The Pope is Back! - Jacques Puffeney

5/21/10 -

Attention all Jura enthusiasts, we’re pleased to announce the return of Jacques Puffeney’s wines to our shelves. There’s been a drought over the past few months, but at long last our thirst for Poulsard and Trousseau can be quenched. For those of you who are unfamiliar with this man, Jacques Puffeney lives at the top of a small mountain in the tiny village of Montagny-les-Arsures, a five minute drive from the relative metropolis of Arbois. This is a Tolkein-esque landscape of misty green fields, hay bales, cows, and winding roads barely wide enough for a single car. Puffeney farms about seven hectares in the Arbois appellation… and is arguably the region’s preeminent vigneron. There is an intensely preserved air in Puffeney’s cellar, as though it’s a place that has hardly been touched by the modern world. While you’ll find no new barrels here, you will find rows of perfectly aligned dusty bottles as well as the ambient scent of the wines themselves. Even in a region known for its vignerons' adherence to traditional winemaking, Puffeney is an arch traditionalist. The wines are beautiful expressions of terroir with their ineffably Jurassian aromas and firm mineral backbones, the whites with their rich, oxidative complexity, the reds with their incredible lightness and slight Burgundian austerity. They are surprisingly long lived and also quite beguiling as young wines.
Also, for interested parties we would like to herald the return of Pupillin vigneron Philippe Bornard’s Trousseau “Le Ginglet” to our shelves. 2007 is a remarkably forward and delicious vintage for this wine, showing more tangy red fruit than the 2006 as well as the faintest touch of pétillance, which may remind you of Overnoy’s most recent Poulsard release if you were lucky enough to get a bottle.