2018 Michel Gahier, Trousseau, Le Clousot, Arbois AC, Jura, France.
One of the Jura classics, Gahier’s 2018 Le Clousot Trousseau has a beam of stony red fruits, a light dusting of dried herbs, spice and subtle florals with a light palate of red apple, strawberry, sour cherry, pomegranate and tart huckleberry fruits, as well as leathery notes, tobacco, laurel, chalky tannin and fennel. A spot on example of terroir and varietal, definitely what Jura fan would be looking for, especially from one of the best in the region. Michel Gahier has learned from the best, as neighbor and friend of the now retired Jacques Puffeney, who many consider the grand master of Jura wines. Gahier I understand, harvests and vinifies his wines parcel by parcel. Each wine, his importer says, ultimately is derived exclusively from a single vineyard site. His whites are produced both ouillé (topped-up), more Burgundy like, and old school oxidative “sous voile” (left to form a protective veil of yeast), which is like Flor in sherry, though they all have a minerality that distinguishes them as jurassien. Gahier’s viticulture is all organic, the reds here are 100% de-stemmed, the yields are quite low, obviously making for more intensity. The grapes see a cold maceration followed by a cuvaison of approximately one month with some pigeage done in the initial parts of the process. The wines, both white and red, are bottled without filtration. Rosenthal continues that situated on a southwest-facing slope beneath his Grands Vergers vineyard, Le Clousot is a parcel of the domaine’s younger vines from which Gahier produces a Trousseau in the same fashion as his others, with this wine being a glowingly pale red, but with good persistence, slightly reductive (funky) and notable complexity.
As Neal Rosenthal, Gahier’s importer likes to say, the Gahier family has been resident in the Jura since 1525, and Michel lives right off the main square of Montigny-lès-Arsures, known charmingly as “The Capital of Trousseau. ”The Trousseau grape, as I’ve said before, remains a bit of a mystery in its origins and is thought to have a distant relationship to Petit Verdot, but has been in the remote and high elevation region of France’s Jura for longer than anywhere else that we currently know of, where it is the top red grape and famous in the wines of Tissot, Ganevat (Pein Sud), Labet and Jacques Puffeney to name a few of my favorites, along with Gahier of course, who is a Jura legend. Trousseau is also often blended with Gamay, Poulsard, another rare Jura (pale colored) varietal, and Pinot Noir as well. Gahier top cru it should be noted, “Les Grands Vergers” represents Gahier’s oldest Trousseau vines, planted in the 1940s on a gentle slope with superb exposure to the sun, contiguous with Puffeney’s legendary “Les Berangères” vineyard, and is one of the region’s holy grail wines. Also of intense interest is Gahier’s Chardonnay wines, especially those made from the local clone known as “Melon à Queue Rouge” that has skin color of which bleeds towards a red hue as it approaches the stem. Plus I recommend Gahier’s Côtes du Jura Rouge, “La Vigne de Fort” which is 90% Trousseau and 10% Pinot Noir, as well as his Champagne style Crémant du Jura 100% Chardonnay bubbly and the traditional Vin Jaune made from Savagnin that ages “sous voile” in old oak barrels for around seven years before bottling, it is a classic. Over the years, I’ve enjoyed tasting through the Gahier wines, and especially after Puffeney has now left the scene, though they remain quite rare and hard to get, this bottle was just one of the very few I had got for myself to personally enjoy.
($35 Est.) 92 Points, grapelive