Mesnay, Jura
Just outside arbois (the small road from Arbois to this tiny village is yet another reason to fall in love with this area) on the east side there's the village of Mesnay where we visited a vigneron, Thomas Popy who started his production very recently (in 2015). You
reach the village (see view of the main street on right) by following more or less the winding course of the river 1,8 km from town, this river also flowing through Arbois. Thomas, who is a Beaujolais native (Villefranche) has been trained by the vignerons he worked with, people in the Beaujolais like Julie Balagny (around 2010-2011), then Jean-Claude Lapalu (18 months) and Michel Guignier (8 months), or Jean Delobre in the Rhône (Ferme des 7 Lunes) then when he settled in the Jura Houillon/Overnoy and Céline/steve Gormally.
While in the Jura he studied at the Montmorot wine school (40 km south of Arbois). He makes wines from a couple hectares, he started with buying a parcel to Etienne Thiébaud, he now works from just a couple of vineyards and we were all particularly impressed by his whites.
Thomas lives with his family in a beautiful house along the river (which has more the size of a creek than a river) with a grassy garden and a deep, deep cellar, meaning the people of this region were serious when keeping their wines. I heard his production is quite small and his wines hard to get, so don't wait the bottles are sold out if you stumble on some.
Going down to the cellar under the house (the low door opens on the street). When I say deep cellar, you can have here an idea how steep are the stairs, watch your head and your steps, I guess they'd rarelly haul out full barrels from this cellar (maybe it was as often just for home consumption), or maybe with a rope manned by several strong men...
The large single-room vaulted cellar goes all the way across the house, here the stairs are in my back and the air duct window at the other end opens on the garden, simple and sound. Thomas having a small surface this cellar is big enough to keep his wines. He settled in this house in 2017, before that, to make his wines, he used temporary premises, an underground garage located under the vineyard of Emmanuel Lancon, a friend and vigneron, the place was simple with a small press and a few tanks, and the view was beautiful, but he likes here even better....
Thomas keeps his 8-hectoliter press above in the garage/barn (see the large door on the right of the house, street side - picture on top-left) which we didn't visit, and he can have the juice flow by gravity through a purposely-made hole in the ceiling (the wonders of traditional architecture, these people were wise...). The hole is somewhere above this white tank, which he uses for the débourbage (settling of the lees). A friend of his who is carpenter custom-built the wooden stand to have it at the right height so that he can further use gravity to fill the barrels. The fact that this tank is see-through helps him evaluate the volume needed for the barrels to be filled. The juice remains 24 hours in there. The fabric of this US-made Flextank is neutral and it's designed to have the same breathing or porosity as a 3-year-old barrel.
Asked about his vineyard surface today, Thomas says he'll pich 1,8 hectares, and he planted 35 ares this year, not counting another 50 ares which he'll plant soon.
__ We taste a first white, a Chardonnay 2018, taken from a 228-liter barrel. Parcel name : le Cul du Bray, located 500 meters from the house. He got this parcel in 2016, very beautiful vines, he says he's always impressed when he walks among them, they're on a steep slope, these are actually old indigenous variants of Chard, the Chardonnay Melon à Queue Rouge (more about this sub-variety on this page). he only made a real harvest there in 2018 because he lost most of the fruit in 2016 with mildew (the vineyard sits near a creek, the ruisseau du Grand Mont, and there's lots of humididity in the morning) and in 2017 it all froze, same alas in 2019...
Juliette says that Ganevat makes also a cuvée from this local Chardonnay sub-variety (Melon à Queue Rouge) and she asks about the difference with mainstream Chard, Thomas says that it's like the classic Trousseau and the Trousseau à la Dame, it has smaller berries, the grapes are loose on the bunch with more concentration. He says there's a clear difference between these two Chardonnay wines, the local ancester making wines that are more concentrated, more complex, this said, he doesn't see a clear difference in the aspect of the vines or the leaves, you just see that on the bunches with also grapes getting redish shades when they're ripe.
The wine is very clear, not turbid at all. Nice energy in the mouth, droit, neat, with a good length. In 2018, Thomas says he had a big volume of grapes because he had increased his surface to 1,6 hectare, resulting in many grapes and his press at the time could only handle 3 hectoliters, so he made a pressing of his Savagnin from the terroir La Roche Maldru at Domaine de la Pinte where he was working at the time. Over there press was pneumatic but otherwise he could work by gravity like he used to.
Juliette ask what had him decide to go settle in Jura [he's originally from Beaujolais and worked with vignerons there], he says that was because the wine school with training in organic viticulture was there in Montmorot. Plus, he jokes that Jura is easier : if you want to loose your driving permit, loose your wife and your health (you drink much more there), go in the Beaujolais... He felt really welcome here, his peers helped him a lot.
__ We taste the same cuvée from another barrel, nose with wheat notes, more acidulous, with vividness and nice glycerol.
__ From the stainless-steel tank, more Chardonnay 2018, a blend (made at the beginning of this spring) with a 400-liter demi-muid and two barrels. He bought this demi-muid new from Billon cooperage (Michel Guignier buys often from them) but somehow it gave an oaky taste to the wine, so he've blended it to soften this feel, it will make a different cuvée. The wine is sappy, with also an acidulous mouth, oak not that forward, I guess blending with two barrels helped.
__ On the other side of the cellar, Thomas takes another sample, Savagnin Sous La Roche Maldru 2018, for him the most beautiful parcel in the Jura, it sits under a rock, with as a result lots of limestone debris. Patrice Hughes Béguet who has his vineyard on the other side has more like marls (grey and black) in the soil while Sous la Roche maldru is really stones, debris and scree, the marl beginning on this side at a greater depth, like 3 or 4 meters. And the vibes on this terroir is similar to Julie Balagny's [where he worked a couple of years] en Rémont, with the woods on the side, it's a quite fresh terroir with the sun in summer coming late, he's often the latest to pick.
What a mouth !, vivid with tannic touch. The wine is very clear. There will not be any of this cuvée from 2019, because of the frost, then there were still a few grapes, he put a fence to ward off the roe deers and other game, but the birds (thrushes and blackbirds) got what was left, he thinks because there was little to eat elsewhere that year. Regarding this wine he initially wanted to have a 4-year élevage, and it's still his aim, bottling this in 2022. We taste another barrel from the same parcel & vintage, more richness, acidulous too, purity and beautiful.
__ From another barrel, Sous la Roche Maldru 2017, Savagnin. Vigor in the mouth, acidulous, vividness, my stomach noisily approves. Nice tension, incisive wine. This vintage will be bottled in 2021.
We taste a few bottles in the garden, what a peaceful place, there's the small river flowing a couple meters away on the right under the trees. Two guys who come from Switzerland and Savoie joined us in the cellar, they were very knowledgeable about all the natural wines of the region.
__ Sous la
Roche Maldru, Savagnin 2016, bottled late 2018. Super nice bitterness at the end of the mouth,
exciting energy, here is indeed a superb Savagnin !
Thomas speaks about overgrafting and coppicing (recépage in French), the latter is a method to regrow a vine anew from a shoot at its bottom [my interpretation]. He did the former when he helped a vigneron, this was Aligoté and they'd do 100 vines a day, the good side is you don't have to wait 5 years before full load harvest. For Coppicing he says in Alsace they call it rajeunissement de pied (vine rejuvenation). Otherwise there's a good nursery in Jura, they changed the grafting method, dropping the Omega and inventing a method similar to cutting a lemon in Dents de Loup (wolf teeth), he got nice results, less disease. This nursery (of which and didn't understand well the name, seems Evingey or something like that) also handles well massal selections, they also are familiar with biodynamie, Thomas could ask them not to prune his baby vines before planting so that he could choose himself the bud he wanted to keep. Juliette asks for the cost per vine, it's between 1,8 € and 4 € and normally you have a vine that last a hundred years at least... He also thinks it is good to first plant the rootstock, let it grow and root for 3 years (without being disturbed by the graft) and then graft it, usually in august.
__ A magnum, Arbois, Clos Bareth 2018, Trousseau. Bottled in august 2019. What a nose ! The color is quite dark but somehow still luminous. Unfiltered, no added SO2. The whites will also get no SO2. The only bottles left for this wine are magnums,
he tries to keep them as much as possible, he'll soon have a cellar in a 12th-century house 15 minutes from here where he'll store the bottles he wants to keep aside long term (less temptation in late evenings when you have to drive). The turbid wine has a nice bitterness, some tannin feel, freshness and meaty notes, beautiful even though you feel you may enjoy it even better after one or two years.
The vinification : grapes destemmed by hand and maceration. He used a custom-made wicker grill made by a local basket maker, David Monmarché, the guy also comes at harvest with his donkeys to haul the grape boxes between the rows. This year with the Chardonnay-Trousseau of Clos Bareth he may use half whole-clustered grapes, he'll see.
We ended with a bottle brought by the two visitors : Un Palotin by Daniel Sage, a vin de France (table wine) with 11 % alcohol. A no-added-sulfites claret made with Cabernet Sauvignon, they say using 2016 grapes from Le Mazel. Very glouglou, easydrinking. I noticed "lot 2015" on the label, this could mean it's a 2015 actually.
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