Vinmøte Knut 20.8.26
Bourgogne Blanc 2017, Pierre Boisson
Syrlig, spiss, ung og grønn. Bra frisk syresnert, men mangler fruktkjerne. Vi mente dette ikke var Chardonnay. Sauvignon Blanc, Chenin Blanc ? Litt sukkertøyaktig, flat og minty. 84 poeng
Meursault-Perrières 1cru 2017, Michel Bouzereau
Mere klassisk stil med smørtoner, overraskende tilgjengelig og kommerz. Elegant og harmonisk. Men forventet mer eleganse fra den beste vinmarken i kommunen. 90 poeng. Kr. 2 100,- på VP (2022)
Chardonnay Matè 2017, Kumeu River
Rik, eika, fyrstikk, reduktiv med spearmint tyggis. Bør nok lagres lengre, denne var veldig up-front på nesa, litt voldsom med høy intensitet. Etterhvert litt mere steinete og elegant. 92 poeng.
Chardonnay Les Cretes Cuvèe Bois 2018, Valle d`Aosta
Endel alkohol og eik på nesa. Flere var i Rhone, rik vin med høy modning fra et varmt år. Litt trå og vanskelig med en bitter hale. Men hadde en bra kompleksitet. 90 poeng
Ian d`Agata:
Les Crêtes
is not just one of Italy’s most important wineries, but also the one that first
put the Valle d’Aosta on the world wine map attracting the attention of wine
lovers and collectors everywhere. It is the brainchild of one of Italy’s
greatest wine men of all time, Costantino Charrère, illuminated, insightful and
passionate like few men and women of wine. It is thanks to Charrère if today we
can talk about the wines made with grapes such as Prëmetta, or have a clearer
understanding of the potential of Fumin. By paying attention to and working
closely with the Institut Agricole Régional (IAR), Valle d’Aosta’s teaching and
research academic agricultural institution, he was able to turn long forgotten
grapes into wines.
The winery
and wines did not exist as such at the beginning of the Charrère family
history. The Charrère family traces its roots in the Valle d’Aosta and
Aymavilles in particular (the hamlet where the Charrères have always lived)
since 1750, when Bernardin Charrère moved there from Haute Savoie (in today’s
France). There his descendants Etienne, Louis and Antoine (the father of
Costantino) all dabbled in grain farming and making of different food products
such as apple cider (Valle d’Aosta has some of Italy’s best apples) and nut oil
(a classic specialty of the Valle). It was only in 1955, when working in grains
and oils was becoming less remunerative because of the arrival in the region of
cheaper what products and olive oil, that the family turned its attention to
grape growing and fine wine production.
Initially, Charrère bottled wines under his own name: the winery, located in the pretty Valle d’Aosta hamlet of Aymavilles, was initially called Costantino Charrère and the bottles were characterized by a white label and a Gothic type-looking script. Later, in, he founded the Les Cretes estate, and that is when he and his winery went from Italian high-quality wine curiosity to wine stardom. The estate was long run by Costantino and his wife Imelda, but today it is the new generation that has taken over and that you’ll meet at the beautiful accommodating winery, the sibling duo of Elena and Eleonora.
Today the estate makes about 250,000 bottles a year from 35 hectares located the territories of six different Valle d’Aosta communes, with a focus on both international and native grape varieties.
First made
in 1994, the Cuvée Bois was born out of the friendship between Costantino and
the Count Gagnard de la Grange, a noble vine grower of Puligny Montrachet. In
sharing the secrets of the “gobelet” pruning with the count, which is practiced
in Valle d’Aosta, a friendship was born that led to the élevage of
this wine. To be crystal-clear, the Cuvée Bois is one of Italy’s four or five
best Chardonnay wines, one fo the very few that can stand up to international
scrutiny. Simply put, there are just too many very fine Chardonnay wines made
all over the world nowadays for the mostly insipid, neutral and/or frankly
over-oaked Italian Chardonnay wines of Italy to hold any interest whatsoever
for anyone with even just a modicum of tasting experience. And that includes
all the more or less “famous” names you might think of in Tuscany, Alto Adige
and Fruli Venezia Giulia. By contrast, the Cuvée Bois has been a star right
from tis first vintage, and nothing has changed since that first iconic
bottling: the wine still shines a very bright path.
The grapes
for the Cuvée Bois are picked in seven crus in St.Nicolas, Coteau, Pompiod,
Champorette (the old vineyard of Petite Arvine was replanted in 2016),
St.Christophe and Vigna (which is at the foot of the Côteau la Tour, the hill
famous as the source of Les Cretes’s Syrah and Fumin grapes ). The oldest
vineyard dates to 1979 at St.Christophe (both sections), but Coteau is old too
(1989), and St. Nicolas and Pompiod both have many parcels of vines all about
20 years of age.
Vinification
of the grapes for the wine is straightforward. The grapes spend one night in
fridge, then are lightly pressed; only the first pressing is used to make this
wine. Stainless steel-fermented, then moved to tonneaux and stays there for
almost twelve months on the lees with plenty of batonnage (lees-stirring).The
winery’s belief in their Chardonnay wines and its continuous search for
improvement has led Les Crêtes to work on a new project over the last decade or
so. From 2018, the winery has begun a single-vineyard bottling study: the goal
is to release one wine from a specific cru each year (clearly,
the one that performed best in that vintage) but they still haven’t decided if
and when they will begin to do so. Understandably, as they only make from
16,000-20,000 bottles a year of what is the winery’s flagship wine, there
exists the fear that subtracting grapes of one cru that would
normally go into the Cuvée Bois may damage the latter wine.
Meursault Les Grands Charrons 2017, Domaine Pierre Boisson
Rik og oksidativ på nesa med skrotepler. Ikke en optimal flaske. NR
