December 8, 2008

Chateau Chalon, Vin Jaune and Cotes du Jura

"The charm of the Jura and its wines come from the sense that time has grown genuinely mossy and amnesiac here. Small vineyards, old vines, curious grape varieties seen and tasted nowhere else, vinification methods that would be regarded as obtuse or mad by the oenological conformists who pass judgment at international wine shows. If you are one of those people who long to escape from the shallowness and tedium of wine fashion, then the Jura is for you." Andrew Jefford, The New France

France's Jura is truly one of the final frontiers of wine. You may be 50 miles east of the Cote d'Or, the beating heart of Burgundy (near the border with Switzerland), but you might as well be in a galaxy far, far away from modern wine tastes. If today a handful of grapes hold nearly despotic sway over people's palates and the world's wine styles all seem to be marching, lemming like, off a cliff into some homogeneous ocean where everything looks and tastes the same, well, the wines of the Jura are absurd and eccentric, unique and invigorating and extraordinary values in the context of the long-lived complex wines that they are.

Posted by Joe Salamone at 3:02 PM | TrackBack