2010 General de la Revolution

Just to get this out of the way up front, Abbatucci’s 2010 Cuvee Collection Blanc General de la Revolution Jean-Charles Abbatucci – his only white in this series from ancient cepages that I’ve tasted (but then on two disparate occasions, having had to pinch myself the first time) is among the handful of most profoundly (not to mention improbably) beautiful and delicious white wines that I’ve tasted in the past several years. Vinified in older demi-muids – whereas most wines from Domaine Abbatucci, regardless of color, are rendered in tank – it’s sourced (for the record) from Carcajolu Biancu; Paga Debbiti; and diminishing shares – ranging from 15-5% – of Riminese; Rossola Brandica, and Vermentinu. If you’re inclined to shake your head when my ilk go on about sticking one’s nose in a glass and smelling the scrubby, herbal, and floral ambience in which the wine grew and perhaps even the bracing mountain air itself (all of which would in Corsica fall under the term maquis), this wine might make a believer of you. Amid a persistent effusion of thyme, gorse, tarragon, mint, lavender, wild chrysanthemum and ineffable others comes an uncannily buoyant wave of creamy yet refreshing essence of raw almond and pine nuts in a melon and citrus matrix. The effect is cooling and soothing, yet refreshing and (in more than one sense of that word) uplifting, with a finish whose mesmerizing flavor interplay is almost ceaseless. The first edition of this roughly 1,500-bottle cuvee came in 2006. So even if I had experience from its inception, I doubt I would be positioned to predict longer-term bottle evolution. But I’m pretty confident that evolution will be positive. (Since this wine is legally forbidden from advertising its vintage, you’ll need to verify that from the first two digits that appear in tiny print on the label after the capital letter “L.” The additional numerals identify the specific lot number, but needless to say there is but a single bottling of this rarity.) What to make of a biodynamic wine grower whose unorthodox methodology includes having the choral polyphony for which his homeland is famous broadcast to his vines (and the sheep that graze them) as well to his young wines? Now that Jean-Charles Abbatucci has begun to acquire some of the fame he deserves, I’m told the music – rather than emanating from loudspeakers mounted to his pick-up – is performed live. Recent projects at this 50-acre (20-hectare) estate just outside Corsica’s capital Ajaccio on the island’s west coast include two “Imperial” bottlings sourced from Sciacarellu vines that have been left, un-pruned, to revisit their riparian roots as he imagines them having done for centuries. Another profoundly important project whose results – just two of which I have yet tasted – I can only characterize as awesome, involves vines from ancient Corsican cultivars that Abbatucci’s father collected as cuttings and established on a rocky granitic site in the early 1960s. This vineyard was never intended as a museum, but rather as a living link – in some instances possibly the very last – to vine varieties and a way of life that persisted just short of a millennium from the Pisan and Genoese conquests (with vines in tow) to the mid-20th century. In that spirit, Abbatucci, his horses and singers cultivate it, resulting in a Cuvee Collection with wines labeled to honor several of his heroic Napoleonic military and diplomatic ancestors. Collectively, Abbatucci’s wines will stretch your palate, your imagination, and even your notions about what wine is or can be. (And you’ll have fun drinking them.) Importer: Kermit Lynch Wine Merchant, Berkeley, CA; tel. (510) 524-1524