Michel Gahier 'Les Crêts' 2023 Chardonnay Arbois

750ml

13% abv

Creamy texture with umami depth. Notes of green apple, apricot, and a touch of salty minerality. Signature vibrancy tempered by a subtle oxidative touch from traditional barrel aging. Bracing acidity and long, chalky finish. A benchmark for non-oxidative (ouillé) Jura Chardonnay.

Les Crêts possesses a deeper, more saline personality than Michel's other whites. Though it is also topped up during its two-year passage in 400-liter barrels, Les Crêts displays the layered character and the endlessly ringing finish more commonly associated with wines aged under veil.

The grapes for this cuvée are sourced from a hilltop vineyard (Les Crêts meaning “crest of the hill”) where the Chardonnay has been grafted onto the rootstock of the local grape variety known as “Melon Queue Rouge,” planted in soils of marne rouge, which contain more iron than marne blanche. The wine is aged for about fifteen months in large foudre and is then racked into the smaller format (600 liter) demi-muid for another year of elevage.

The Gahier family has been resident in the Jura since 1525. The family domaine is 6.5 hectares with the vineyards concentrated in the village of Montigny-les-Arsures, the place recognized as the home of Trousseau. Michel Gahier has learned from the best, as neighbor and friend of Jacques Puffeney. His observations and ongoing dialogue with Puffeney have instilled skills and sensibility that produce undeniably outstanding wines that clearly express the very particular terroir of this corner of the Jura.

Gahier harvests and vinifies his wines parcel by parcel. Each wine ultimately is derived exclusively from a single vineyard site. His whites are produced both ouillé (topped-up) and sous voile (left to form a protective veil of yeast), though all have a minerality that distinguishes them as jurassien. The Vin Jaune is a testament to the old traditions of the Jura, and many of Gahier’s Vin Jaune barrels are a century old, acquired from Jacques Puffeney’s cellar after his retirement. The same “yeast mother” living in these barrels that nurtured Puffeney’s wine for so many years is now safely ensconced at chez Gahier.

Gahier’s home base of Montigny-lès-Arsures is known charmingly as “The Capital of Trousseau,” and may well produce the most thrilling, layered, and dynamic renderings of the grape variety in the entire Arbois appellation. Gahier’s viticulture is organic; the reds are destemmed; the yields are quite low (averaging 30 hectoliters per hectare). There is a period of cold maceration followed by a cuvaison of approximately one month with some pigeage done in the initial parts of the process. The wines, both white and red, are bottled without filtration.