2008 Arbois Vin Jaune

We tasted a sample of the potential Château Chalon from 2013 that was still years from being bottled but already showed the finesse that made the appellation famous, and the one sous-voile wine I tasted was the 2008 Vin Jaune. This wine was poured from a 375-milliliter bottle in the shape of a clavelin—the 620-milliliter bottle used for Vin Jaune—but the crazy regulations for Vin Jaune stipulate that it 375-milliliter bottle cannot be sold in Europe, and the clavelin is illegal in the US! Anyway, this was tasted straight after the 2008 Les Vignes de Mon Père, which made it incredibly hard to taste, as I was still levitating from the previous wine. Fanfan was never a jaune specialist, and even if he resisted at first, he seems to have given in to the production of these traditional wines from Jura, and he seems to be getting better and better at it! Good depth. This has the classical nose of Savagnin aged for more than six years under a veil of yeasts, with notes of curcuma, dried morels, green almonds, pollen and saffron. The palate feels light but has very good depth, and this wine might feel light when young and seem to put on weight with time in bottle. It is clean and precise.