Jean-François Ganevat
We’ll kick things off with the cuvées produced from estate-grown fruit and begin, as they do in the Jura, with the red wines. The 2022 ‘Plein Sud’ Trousseau, from vines up to 70 years old, is oft considered the flagship – pure, lithe, packed with cherry and rose-petal perfume and clove-like spice. Whiffs of wild strawberry and smoke lead the way in the 2022 ‘En Billat’ Pinot Noir, meanwhile, whereas the velveteen-textured 2022 ‘Julien’ Pinot Noir is more ripe and floral. Win-wins all around.
As for the whites, the 2019 ‘Cuvée Orégane’ throws a bit of a curveball, blending old-vine savagnin and the obscure chardonnay mutant melon à queue rouge into a blossom-fragrant mesh of pears, blanched almonds and brioche. In news that will surprise no one, the straight expressions of savagnin are absolute belters yet again. Fans of a more delicate style will favour the 2019 Savagnin En Billat – stone-fruit forward with hints of struck matches and toasted nuts – while the seriously saline 2019 ‘Sous la Roche’ is tense and long, revealing layer upon layer of flint, green apple, preserved lemon and unbaked sourdough.
Holy heck there’s lots of chardonnay to discuss, and the 2019 ‘Florine’ Chardonnay feels like a fitting start, fashioned from the domaine’s youngest vines and super charismatic in its perky, zesty way. Thanks to a firm mineral imprint of the limestone soils, the 2019 ‘Chamois du Paradis’ plays an entirely different and far more opulent hand, with whispers of peaches, hay, cashews and caramel poking through. Abundant minerality is very much a thing in the sherry-like, citrusy, driving 2019 ‘Grusse en Billat’ too, which comes from 60-year-old vines and will age well for decades.
Speaking of old vines, there’s plenty more where that came from – and by plenty, we mean a magnum of the 2018 ‘Cuvée Marguerite’ Chardonnay, showcasing fruit planted all the way back in 1902 (!). She’s broad in the palate and bursting with flavours of nectarines, tarte Tatin and croissants with salted butter. Similarly high-toned is the 2019 ‘Les Chalasses Vieilles Vignes’ Chardonnay, which offers more in the way of tropical fruit and crushed shells. If you’re looking for a fine balance of creaminess and tartness, you’ll find it in the 2019 ‘Les Grands Teppes Vieilles Vignes’ Chardonnay, just as you’ll find bursts of quince and spirited acidity in the 2019 ‘Les Varrons Vieilles Vignes’ Chardonnay.
To finish, you’ll need to whip out a block of Comté to sit alongside the Vieux Macvin du Jura widely regarded as a regional benchmark for its candied-fruit complexity. Or better yet, the almighty 2014 Vin Jaune, the rarest of rare birds.
Anne et Jean-François Ganevat
While some of the negociant wines are made to the same exacting standard as those produced with estate fruit, others show off a more loose-knit, experimental side, by way of spunky labels and unexpected grape varieties and blends. You mightn’t expect pet nat from a domaine like this, but alas…the 2021 Vin Mousseaux L’Apero is the stuff of picnic dreams, a dry, clean, sherbety mash-up of riesling and sylvaner. For contrast, there’s also syrah-based bubbly, the 2020 La Bubulle à Jeannot, which serves up sloshy red fruits and peppery spice.
Contrary to the more demanding chardonnays in the stable, the 2021 ‘Kopin’ Chardonnay is a glou-glou wine and then some, fresh and free-wheeling as all get-out. Much like the name suggests, the 2021 ‘Rien que de Fruit’ is all about the fruit, a high-energy pairing of viognier and sylvaner that finds extra vitality thanks to some time in amphora. Altesse, the unsung hero of the Savoie, takes centre stage in the 2021 ‘Halte…S’ (get it?), which sparkles with scents of dried flowers and alpine minerality, while gringet – another Savoie beauty, sourced from the fabled Belluard estate – stars in the crisp, floral and gently honeyed 2021 ‘Le Feu’.
On the red side of things, the 2022 ‘La Collines des Dames’ is a fluid Alsatian expression of pinot noir, big on aromatics and juicy with pomegranate and strawberry characters. There’s a similar liveliness to the 2022 ‘Mon Rouge’, too, a semi-carbonic pinot noir with fruit from the Mâconnais and the Jura. Should the notoriously racy label not sell you on the slurpy 2022 ‘J’en Veux Encore’, the fact that it’s a flirtatious, yet deceptively intricate take on Fleurie gamay certainly will. The best of all these worlds comes together in the 2022 ‘De Toute Beauté’, a sleek and fine-boned blend of gamay, pinot noir and some rare native Jura varieties.
For a more defined sense of elegance, structure and depth, you’ll want to mine the more serious whites, which are shaped by extended time on lees and longer maturation. That comes through loud and clear in both the savagnins: the 2020 ‘Montferrand’, which nails that lemon-peel-meets-pear-and-
Oh, and if you need another ripper pinot noir for the road, the 2022 ‘Les Chonchons’ – an earthy, layered and definitively Ganevat cuvée – more than has you covered.
