1999 Arbois Pupillin Savagnin
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During the tasting session at Pierre's house, a bottle of the 1999 Arbois Pupillin Savagnin Ouillé was uncorked. This is the wine they also call "vieux Savagnin," but this doesn't appear on the label (ouillé doesn't feature anywhere either...), and it's the Savagnin with extended élevage that is released in small bottles sealed with yellow wax. It has an incredible nose of a mini Vin Jaune, with tons of spices, morel mushrooms, lanolin, rubber, iodine and peat. It is pungent, deep and long, reflecting a superb year. This was the 2009 bottling, so the wine spent 10 years in a 2,200-liter oak vat that was always topped up to protect the wine from oxidation. The dead lees must have given it the curry-like notes technically known as sotolon, reminiscent of fenugreek seed and lovage (celery). Tremendous wine! Note that there were different bottlings of this wine and only the more recent ones carry the bottling date.
Punteggi della critica
Robert Parker
Luis Gutiérrez, Wine Advocate
Altre recensioni e punteggi
I also tasted an unbottled sample of the 1999 Arbois Pupillin Savagnin Vieux (which should be in half-liter bottles in the future) that has had a very long élevage in oak, over 17 years, and it has a nuttier character. Even if the barrels were topped up, the wine had an unmistakable biological nose from the effect of the ambient yeasts in the cave and a slow oxidation through the years. There are notes of morel mushrooms, a clear "gout de jaune" and pungent flavors. With time, the nutty character is less evident, and the wine showed even some aromas of white flowers and felt a lot fresher, developing notes of ginger and jasmine. It would be fascinating to follow this wine once the bottle is open over the course of a long evening, even the day after. 1999 was a ripe year, and they picked these grapes with 14.6% potential alcohol; the wine is very powerful and should have a long life in bottle, as it has all that it takes to evolve slowly, and time in cask has slowly stabilized it. Pierre started doing vieux Savagnin in 1985; early on, the wine was in normal bottles, but from 2006 or so they started using the half-liter bottles for it. They still have some unbottled older wine in cask, from 1993, which was an almost experimental lot that they kept. I was dying to taste it when they were talking about it, but we didn't...