Pupillin, Jura
Adeline Houillon and Renaud Bruyère have been building their domaine along the years in Pupillin outside Arbois, starting in 2011 with less than one hectare located in Arbois and with a surface today of 5 hectares stretched between Pupillin and Arbois, but Renaud says there downsizing back to 4 hectares
next year because they have
enough surface that way (he adds they prefer to make less, but better). Adeline who is the sister of Emmanuel Houillon has been learning while working with her siblings at Domaine Overnoy with Emmanuel and Aurélien. Renaud who is originally from the Rhône (Tain-L'Hermitage, he was a cook there and met Adeline in the rhône) worked with Emmanuel now and then from 2004 to 2007 while refurbishing this house and then with Stéphane Tissot along 7 years from 2007 to 2015 (he kept working there after starting their domaine). Adeline and Renaud live literally next door to Houillon-Overnoy and vinify their wines in their cellar under their house which has an old rusted sign reading Vins Fins (fine wines). They vinify naturally, don't filter or add anything in the wine and farm their vineyards organic and sometimes with biodynamie.
They vinify everything in parcellaire with 4 varieties altogether : Chardonnay, Savagnin for the whites, and Ploussard and Trousseau for the reds, the parcels being located in roughly 3 zones : Arbois-Pupillin with a specific terroir of triassic marls, Then Arbois with its Lias clays and Montigny-lès-Arsures with also Lias clays, but that's the one they'll drop next year. To be precise they also have a limestone terroir, Les Tourillons (a light soil with limestone scree).
At the time Adeline was working with her brothers and they had no plan to start their own winery but things matured and
the idea came up by itself, especially that in 2011 Stéphane Tissot gave them the opportunity to have a small parcel, les Tourillons, an old-time 70-are parcel complanted with Chardonnay, Savagnin and Trousseau. They liked their first wine there and other people liked it too, so they saw a good omen to start doing something.
There's no intervention in the cellar, from the day the juice went into the barrels, it stays put stay put, no stirring, no racking, just topping up. Until now they only made topped-up wines (vins ouillés), they just begin to make oxidative wines, but they take their time for that. they only make still wines, no sparkling, also because their parcels are quite old with little volume of fruit. For the 7 first vintages they made an average of 16 hectoliters/hectare, 2018 was better and there was frost in 2019.
__ Les Tourillons 2018, made from the namesake parcel which is 50 years old on limestone debris, 80 % Chardonnay, 20 % Savagnin, it's not a blend, it's just that this parcel is complanted, different varieties growing together and thus vinified together, there are also a few Trousseau vines in the lot. They don't know if the complantation was by purpose by the growers or if it was the random result of what they had at hand at the time. The wine has a good energy feel at the end of the tongue. Neat, droit. Renaud says they use a non-pneumatic 22-hectoliter Vaslin press, often having 3-hour press time, there's a program on the press but he work also manually, meaning he doesn't wait it to loosen completely, he has it press back at half the loosening so as not to crush too hard the pomace. For the reds they use a 7-hectoliter basket press manned by hand, with the ratchet you get a good result with very little lees, only thin lees, yielding very refined juices. For the whites the Vaslin is more adapted, for the volume as well, as they have more than 3 hectares of whites.
__ Les Tourillons 2019. Turbid, same proportion. Vivid, tickling on the tongue, still working obviously.
__ Chardonnay Les Nouvelles 2018, another terroir on the other side of Les Tourillons in the village of Mesnay, exposed full south, on a Lias soil with limestone. Wine from a 500-liter demi-muid. Quite rich and ample. He says it's dry at this stage. they had 1,1 hectare on Les Nouvelles and now they have only 50 ares, and they kept the part with the Melon à Queue Rouge, with loose, arerated bunches.
__ Pupillin 2017, blend of Chardonnay (30 %) and Savagnin (70 %), a catastrophic year for them he says because the yields was 7 hectoliters/hectare on average, whether red or white with a hard frost, so they made mostly blends except for a Savagnin. the name of this cuvée will be Savagnin Chardonnay "En Aspis" (the lieu-dit or old cadastral name). Nose slightly oxidative (typical for the Savagnin, even topped up), nice richness and just glorious down the throat. Add to that good length and freshness, a treat ! Very good acidity again, says Aaron.
There were a few foudres (big capacity barrels) in this cellar when they settled here. There was a line of 30 or 32-hectoliter foudres, not oval but round type, but they were out of order. One of them maybe could have been salvaged but they didn't take the risk, these vessels hadn't seen wine since 1993, quite a few years... There were also two 15-hectoliter foudres, oval type, but they wren't reusable as well alas. He'd like to have a couple of these, Alsatian style, because that's good for the whites, but it's very difficult to get some as there's a high demand.
__ Montigny-lès-Arsures, 100 % Savagnin 2017, other barrel sample. Very old vines on lieu-dit "le Viaduc" (means the viaduct in French).
They can use sulfur wicks when the barrels have to remain empty a long time, but they try to as much as possible fill them immediately after racking the previous wine, which allows them to eschew any sulfur use. Then they clean the inside of the barrel with water, they bought a Moog barrel cleaning tool to do that, with a system to pump the cleaning water out. He can do that in the cellar, he just takes the water out in a bucket as there's no wastewater drainage in this old cellar.
__ Last barrel tasting : Pupillin, Savagnin 2015, a terroir with Trias soil (these are marnes irisées with different color of marls together). Good freshness with alcohol. Very, very beautiful, majestic wine. 4 barrels, some go for a long élevage. Renaud says this wine is ready for a year, they've been busy these last months but he should bottle it soon.
What you see here are custom-made barrel bungs, these tiny sand bags doing a better job at sealing the barrels and at the sametime letting the gas (CO2) overflow out. They use them during the fermentation, when there's an intense activity in the wine, ir prevents at this time the flies or drosophila to reach the wine. If you use the usual silicone bung it usually pops open from the pressure, leaving the barrel partly open with all the induced risks. He got this idea from Stéphane Tissot where they've been using these for a while. there's of course the sophisticated way they use in Alsace with these glass bungs with a water airlock, but these sand bags do the job and cost nothing, and can't be broken.
Asked gain why they downsize a bit their surface (from 5 to 4 hectares), if it's entirely their choice, Renaud says they indeed have enough with 4 hectares with the work this needs, and they realize that you don't need a big surface to make a living. Plus, with the Coronavirus this they were faced with having to tazke care of their boys (they have three sons if I read my notes correctly, the oldest may be 13 or something like that), do home schooling at the same time as working outside, it also ads up. The parcels are outstretched, from the nearest one at 700 meters to 4 kilometers (as the crow flies), not that much but often on a tractor. So next year they'll work on 2,5 hectares of white plus 1,5 hectare of red.
Renaud says that for the topping up of all these barrels and demi-muids (even though there's a sizeable humidity in the cellar) he uses a full barrel of Tourillon for all the different cuvées. Man, that's a lot of wine and a generous part des anges ! If it was me I'd begin a try with metal barrels or something, just to see.... Asked about amphorae, he says you don't get the same type of wines, They made a try with a 150-liter clay vessel but they had to put 300 liters of juice to make 100 bottles because of the evaporation, worse than a barrel...
Speaking of their sales, they had their first buyers thanks to Le Nez dans le Vert, the yearly wine fair for natural wines of the Jura. This was in 2012, they had a very small surface at the time, only Les Tourillons which makes 70 ares and they had made only 1500 bottles total. The small wine fair managed by Jean-Baptiste Menigoz and his partner Florian Kleine Snuverink is a vibrant event and a great way to taste the wines of the region (and beyond). The Bistrot des Claquets also bought their wine, and Adeline says it's a key place as many people including from out of town and importers stop there. As a result the first 3 years they only had exports, Sweden (Vin Natur), Japan (Vortex), Australia (Living Wines), United States (Zev Rovine), Denmark (Rosforth & Rosforth), the U.K. (les Caves de Pyrene), Germany, Spain (Cuvée 3000), Norway (Nondos), Italy (Roberto). These are small allotments each time because the volume is small, and for the French sales they have to limit the allotments also, even though there's a growing demand.
__ Arbois blanc 2016, Savagnin from Le Viaduc (terroir in Montigny-lès-Arsures),
__ Arbois Pupillin , terroir En Aspis, Poulsard 2018. They now have a bit more reds, the 5 first vintages 3/4 of the volume was made of whites. The Poulsard is destemmed by hand in the vineyard, very slowly, then it goes through Renaud says the vines of Poulsard are very tricky to manage, this rustic vine grows like a bush, pruning is complicated, tying is risky as the canes break easily, they use to say that Poulsard is only good in the glass... On the other hand it's a thirst wine and it can age 20 or 30 years without problem, even if you get then another style of wine (they prefer the young ones). Asked about the maceration length. Asked about the unfiltered thing, Renaud says that's a rule here, they don't filter (either whites or reds) and dont add sulfites. Their view is that when you filter you take something off the wine, it's not neutral, there's only the visual thing that may disturb some. They let the CO2 in the wine and some people also mistake the light tickling of the CO2 with hints of refermentation, but that's not the case.
__ Trousseau "En Aspis" 2018, this is the first such cuvée because the planting was made in 2015 on 11 ares with a nice massal selection of Trousseau à la Dame (a sub-variety of Trousseau sporting bunches with loose grapes). Comes from the same parcel than the Poulsard, with Trias marls in the soil. Bottled a year ago and will remain another year in bottles. Not on the market yet (no label yet). Super enjoyable wine, a pleasure ! They say the Trousseau is more animal, goes well to eat with including game, while Poulsard is more on the fruit, more like a thirst wine.
In paris you find their wines at La Cave des Papilles, Yard, Septime, the person who distributes their wines in Paris is Clovis Ochin.
bottled september 2019 but will be on the market late 2020. Oxidative aromas in the mouth but it's topped up, this is the expression of Savagnin. In 2016 they had no frost and before 2018 that was their best vintage, they had made 29 hectoliters/hectare. tHey consider that economically they need an average of 25 ho/ha along the years, so such years help. They have many missing vines and as most parcels are rentals (they just own the ones on Pupillin) it's difficult to consider the investment of replacing the missing vines.
a 30-day maceration in stainless-steel tank, pressed in a basket press, after which the juice goes back in the steel tank. Bottling was august 2019 (no oak at all). they began to sell it in february 2020. Super color, turbidity. dryness feel in the mouth, some astringency, tannic feel, not my prefered one, but I think it's early to drink it with this maceration length. The 2nd mouth is more enjoyable. Unfiltered, no SO2, there's CO2 in the wine to protect it...
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Posted by: olivar wilson | September 24, 2020 at 03:04 PM