Winemaker Notes
Aged sous-voile in barrel for six years. The vineyard is located in the village of Château Chalon (specifically the La Chaux parcel).
Professional Ratings
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Wine & Spirits
François Rousset-Martin grew up in Burgundy, where his father was a microbiologist at the Hospices de Beaune. The family had a vineyard across the valley, in the hills of Jura, where he worked the vines with his father. After studying oenology, he eventually returned to Jura to establish his winery in 2007. He practices organic viticulture at a range of parcels, including this one in Lavigny, where the chardonnay vines are 40 years old. Though he tops up his barrels to avoid oxidation, this 2016 is still golden in its flavors of russet apples, turmeric, curry and Comté. It’s youthfully tight and needs time with air for the fragrance to evolve, emerging with bright spice and pale freshness, a match for miso-glazed black cod.
One of the most popular and versatile white wine grapes, Chardonnay offers a wide range of flavors and styles depending on where it is grown and how it is made. While it tends to flourish in most environments, Chardonnay from its Burgundian homeland produces some of the most remarkable and longest lived examples. California produces both oaky, buttery styles and leaner, European-inspired wines. Somm Secret—The Burgundian subregion of Chablis, while typically using older oak barrels, produces a bright style similar to the unoaked style. Anyone who doesn't like oaky Chardonnay would likely enjoy Chablis.
On the foothills of the Jura Mountains, just east of the Cote de Beaune on the Switzerland border, the Jura wine-producing zone is recognized for its unique reds, as well as its particular and diverse styles of whites.
Though borrowed from their neighbor Burgundy, Chardonnay and Pinot noir have been growing in Jura since the Middle Ages. But here the altitude, topography, climate and clay-rich, marl soils support a different style of Pinot noir, not to mention its other deeply-colored, full-bodied indigenous reds, Poulsard and Trousseau.
Considering area under vine, growers here favor Chardonnay for its consistency and reliability; it comprises almost half of Jura's vineyard acreage. However, Jura Chardonnay is anything but boring; its many offbeat styles are part of what make region’s wines so distinctive. It is used for Cremant (sparkling), Macvin (a fortified wine), as well as fine examples at the quality level of Burgundy.
Jura also has a unique oxidative style for Chardonnay but is better recognized for its similarly-styled “vin jaune,” meaning ‘yellow wine,’ which is made from the indigenous variety, Savagnin. Vin jaune is made using techniques similar to those used to make Sherry.
For all of its wines, Jura favors a traditional, natural and often organic style in viticulture and winemaking.