Where My Inner Wine Snob Meets Her Match
My inner wine geek got a freaking workout today. Since we had another day off en route to our final set of shows, we decided to swing by the Jura region of France - a smaller region in the eastern part of the country, just across the border from Switzerland, known for comté cheeses and incredible, very unique wines. On a whim I emailed Domaine Stéphane et Bénédicte Tissot (I used to sell some of Stéphane’s wines at the shop I worked at in Beacon) to see if there was any chance of a visit. Turned out there was: and the visit was the deepest dive of an industry tasting I’ve ever experienced. Seated at the table along with us was a Who’s Who crowd of wine professionals, including a well known NY natural wine writer, a natural wine maker from the republic of Georgia, and the former sommelier of Noma (the restaurant in Copenhagen voted Best in the World 4 times running.) No sooner had I formed the thought “holy crap, what the hell am I doing here?”, than Stéphane started talking, showing us the cellars, and opening bottles. Talking wine with biodynamic vigneron Stéphane Tissot is like opening a fire hydrant of information - you just stand out of the way and absorb as much as you can as fast as you can. His father, André Tissot, started the domaine in 1962 on the family dairy farm, and they’ve been among the earliest proponents and producers of biodynamic wines in the Jura. Stéphane has well deserved rockstar status among fellow producers, wine critics, and oenophiles, but it’s quickly apparent that the reason for this stems from his deep commitment to his land and his vines and his passion for it as a whole. (For a quick rundown on what exactly biodynamic viticulture entails, check out this guide: https://winefolly.com/deep-dive/biodynamic-wine-guide/) Over the course of three hours, we opened a slew of bottles, well over three dozen, and that’s not counting the barrel samples Stéphane pulled right out in the cellars for us to taste. I lost track somewhere around the eleven-hundredth chardonnay (OK, MAYBE I’m exaggerating!) but it was the hardest of the hard core, deepest dive into wine nerd nirvana (nerdvana?) I’d ever seen. We talked about dirt a lot. I mean A LOT. Having worked in wine, it was a mind-blowing, one of a kind experience, and a delicious, profound honor. It was also poor Greg’s first professional tasting. I feel like I should get him a t-shirt that says “I survived my first industry tasting.” If I go much more into the wines of the region themselves, this blog will become very very long, and also no longer a tour journal, so I won’t. But if you’re interested, look up “wines of Jura”, particularly the magic they do with the savagnin grape (cousin to gewürztraminer), which includes oxidative, sherry like styles, and the region’s most famous wine, Vin Jaune. They even have a festival in February to celebrate Vin Jaune. (We arrived too late. We are very sad about this.)
These are incredible moments, the kind of road magic we all live for. But lest I think I’m actually on vacation, once the high level wine tasting is over, and we’ve stumbled back to the hotel after a delicious locally sourced dinner at a nearby bistro, I open my computer and realize there are a bunch of emails to catch up on, tour journal postings to write, and even though this hotel has the bathtub of my dreams - so big I could do a couple laps - there’s still stuff to do and it’s too late to take a bath. The wine was more than worth it, though. Here’s Stéphane’s website: http://www.stephane-tissot.com/
