"Winemakers are looking for
interesting
wines...".
Kent Rasmussen (Rasmussen Winery), 2007 wine maker tour.
This trip is all about his
request...
3 WINE REGIONS
){kind=small}
Everything in the "Vin Jaune" (yellow wine) is out of the ordinary. A single grape variety, the Savagnin, very unorthodox wine making rules and an ancient bottle of unusual size.
Wines from Jura were known
and appreciated by the Romans (mentioned by Pline the Young and
Martial). In 280, the Emperor Probus requested that many more vines should be
planted on the hills of Sequanie (now Franche-Comté)
Harvested in October, often after the first snow, it is a "vin de glace" (ice wine).
Aged in 228 liters oak barrels without "ouillage" for a
minimum of 6 years and 3 months in dry caves with wide
temperature variations, it is bottled in the characteristic "Clavelin" of
62cl, the equivalent of one liter 6 years earlier.
Aging?...:100 years and more.
It should be decanted and be drunk after only 2 or 3 days!
ALSACE 
Less
known than Bordeaux
and Bourgogne,
the vineyards of Alsace
are among the oldest
in France. Making it’s appearance way before Julius
Cesar conquest of the Gaul, the cultivation was
improved by the Romans during the 3rd. century. Abbeys, churches
and local lords received rights to practice vine growing until the
French Revolution.
During
the middles ages, the wines from Alsace were very highly regarded and
often considered the best in France. The thirty year war and the
following centuries of invasions and diseases almost eradicated the
Alsatian vineyards. Back
in the 19th century, we still have to wait until after WWII to see these
wines reaching the perfection they display today.
Seven
"cepages"
are
cultivated today in Alsace:
Muscat,
Pinot Noir, Pinot Blanc, Sylvaner, Riesling, Tokay Pinot Gris,
Gewurtztraminer. The Chasselas represents now only 1%.
Sylvaner
Pinot Noir
Tokay Pinot Gris
Pinot
NoirWine
in this region dates back to Gallo
Roman times. The
vineyards were developed in the middle ages under the clergy of
Reims and Chalons. In the late xv, these wines acquired the name of
“vin de Champagne”, but only in Paris; in their region,
the word “champagne”
described a very poor soil, good only for sheep
grazing. In 1670 don Perignon, a Benedictine monk from the abbey d’Hautvillers is the first to mix cépages
to improve quality, he also introduces the cork held to the bottle by a
string of oiled hemp and promotes the use of thicker glass, avoiding the
common bottle explosion. Bubbly making stayed quite empirical for
centurie until the work of Louis Pasteur on
fermentation during the XIXth.
Pinot
Meunier
Chardonnay
Three cepages only are used in Champagne: Pinot Noir, Pinot Meunier and Chardonnay.