2009 Vin de Savoie Mondeuse Tradition

Vibrant red fruit, excellent spice and pepper character. Awesome stuff. Very 'natural', but with recognisable, familiar flavours – not the esoteric weirdness often encountered in the category. (RH)

Pronouncedly peppery on the nose in a way that Grisard’s reds seldom are, his 2009 Mondeuse Tradition – from vines up behind his winery – also features sour cherry and rhubarb-like red fruit tartness in a sappy, bright palate display. This was in his words “a new experience for me,” having been handled in reverse manner to the estate norm, namely spending a year on its lees in tank (with minimal sulfur) before going into barriques that had when new held Grisard’s 2009 Altesse. “You get really nice lees with Mondeuse and seldom the risk of reduction problems such as with Gamay or Pinot,” says Grisard by way of explaining his willingness to try this mode of elevage. “I watched how Jacques Maillet (also profiled in this report) and others in our (promotional) group worked with significantly reduced sulfur, and I though ‘why not?’. And I like the inter-cellular fermentation I achieved here from a high percentage of whole berries.” There is a find sense of buffering of the native Mondeuse tannins here; a succulent primary red fruit juiciness; and fascinating overtones of musky floral perfume (hibiscus, narcissus) that follow all the way through a strikingly persistent finish. This ought to be worth following for at least the next half dozen years. Veteran Michel Grisard and his Prieure Saint-Christophe in Freterive (with vineyards also in Cruet, four miles south and neighboring Arbin) have long represented for many if not most observers of the Savoie scene that region’s foremost red wine address. Thanks to his generosity during a 2002 visit and again last November, I have tasted his reds almost without gap, spanning more than two decades, and their singular features are intriguing complexity and – in the most successful instances – significant aging potential. In recent years, this long-time practitioner of biodynamie has endured some years of extremely reduced yields and in 2008 a difficult vintage from which he elected not to bottle any wine at all. “I was too occupied at the time with the Domaine des Ardoisieres,” he reports of a remarkable and ambitious project (also covered in this report) that he founded but has since handed over totally to his young former collaborator there, Brice Omont. Not only are the wines of the Prieure Saint-Christophe generally bottled late, they are also generally sold only after enjoying significant bottle age, so it is by no means only young wines that are arriving in the U.S. market this year. Prior to vintage 2005, bottlings labeled “Prestige” represented a selection from parcels behind his winery that benefit from iron- and fossil-rich rock eroded from the mountain above. But I’ve frequently found that his Tradition has held up better than his Prestige, and from 2005-2007 Grisard blended to achieve a single wine labeled “Tradition.” (Even a Grisard Mondeuse not intended for cellaring at all can age well. I tasted on this occasion a 1981 that, while fading, still had some lovely features; and this was a wine made by Grisard with his two brothers two years before he founded the Domaine Saint-Christophe, and more to the point – as he emphasized – two years before the notion even occurred to him of attempting to render a Mondeuse for other than early drinking.) Importer:Tanaro River Imports, Irvine, CA; tel. (949) 870-6549