2007 Les Claviers

From a blend of Ugni blanc with small amounts of Grenache Gris, Clairette, and Chardonnay, grown on Marne chalk, picked mid-October, and vinified in his usual medium of used 400 liter barrels, his 2007 Les Claviers is remarkably silken-textured, glycerin-rich and full of pineapple, apple, diverse floral perfume, and myriad, illusive notes that are poorly captured by just writing “mineral.” There is also a rather beer-like primary yeastiness which some tasters may find slightly off-putting, I find this highly distinctive wine – meant for immediate consumption – at once invigorating and alluring. I observed, incidentally, that topping these whites off to the rim of the bung hole is not exactly high on Quinonero’s agenda, and that the deeply-colored lees are stirred with a few forceful and noisy applications of a genuine wooden club! There was a slightly oxidative overlay to the 2008 before batonnage, but the sort of soup that emerged afterward was nutty, floral, and as such promising. Meeting Pierre Quinonero happened to me by intent and by accident. He had been highly recommended as a fellow-renegade by Robert Creus of Domaine Terre Inconnue, but it was an automobile accident only a couple of hundred meters from his house that forced me to introduce myself. I was glad on more than one level that I did. Quinonero founded his estate near Caux in 1991, and is following his own passionate inspiration on paths few if any other Languedoc vintners have trodden. A proponent of low sulfur and long lees contact, as well as (for his reds) very late bottling and release, he has recently begun farming white grapes and Pinot Noir in high altitude sites far to the north of his home base. Unfortunately, this estate has no U.S. importer.