Fortunately, I had the opportunity to taste both at the K&L Burgundy tasting. And neither could hold a candle to the wine from Puligny-Montrachet that I really loved anyway!
Mâcon is a region that produces almost entirely white wine. It’s warmer there than the Côte d’Or, but the wines are fairly solid. Or maybe I just think so because I’m finding myself so enamored with white Burgundy and its acidic un-oakiness! Near the southern tip of the region, just north of Beaujolais, is the Roche de Solutré.
Nice rock! It marks the end of the great growing region of Burgundy (or rather the end of the limestone plateau in which great Burgundy is grown). It is within sight of this landmark that Pouilly-Fuissé is grown.
I picked up a half bottle of Louis Jadot Mâcon-Villages for my tasting. It was fairly clear and golden yellow. It smelled like oaky chardonnay. I thought uh-oh, should’ve sprung the few extra bucks for the Pouilly-Fuissé! But, on second smell, I could pick up the acid underneath. Sure enough, the wine had a biting acid, but was also creamy, with a fairly heavy body and lots of minerals (i.e. stones).The Score: ★★★
This also seems an appropriate time to interject a quick lesson on negociants, given that Louis Jadot is very well known and often seen outside France (like in Target, for example). So, I mentioned in my previous post that Burgundy is not a land of glorious château, but mostly rural farmland. Until fairly recently, especially in Burgundy, most French wine was made by negociants. They were the ones who made, bottled and sold the wine, but did not grow the grapes.
As I’ve mentioned before, vineyards have been split into very small parcels (law of equal inheritance) and so it was often the case that growers didn’t have the quantity of grapes or the financial means necessary for the equipment to make wine. Negociants bought the grapes, or must, sometimes even juice, produced wine, often with a “house style”, and sold it.
They were dominant until about 25 years ago when more small growers began producing their own wines. And many negociants have since gotten into the grape-growing side of things too. How do you tell when looking at a French wine label if it was made by a negociant or not? The key word is “Domaine”. It functions very much like the word Estate on American wines. So, this Mâcon-Villages said simply “Louis Jadot”. This means they bought the grapes to make the wine. However, if it said “Domaine Louis Jadot” that would mean it was made from grapes grown on land Louis Jadot owns.
Next lesson- what does Maison on a label mean?
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