2009 Vin de Savoie Mondeuse Prestige

Pure, fragrant and alluring on the nose. Spice, liquorice, flowers – super expressive. Tremendous palate, just unusual enough to be really interesting without being screwball. (RH)

Grisard’s 2009 Mondeuse Prestige represents a return after a four year hiatus to a bottling so-labeled, and this time the fruit is from his ostensibly best vineyards in Freterive, aged in tank and subsequently in barrique (the same departure from long-term norms as he practiced with this vintage’s Tradition bottling). As so often, the Prestige – while more substantial – displays more of the frontal tanninity and less charm or intrigue in comparison with the corresponding Tradition, here allied to ripe cooked red berries where the freshness of the Tradition would have been welcome. A younger average age of barrel may have wrought this shift in the fruit’s personality and there is a faint overtone of smoky toasted nuts and caramel that also points toward oak. Still, this is impressive in its density, amplitude, and sheer ripeness; and it will be interesting to see how it evolves over the next 5-7 years if not for longer. Veteran Michel Grisard and his Prieure Saint-Christophe in Freterive (with vineyards also in Cruet, four miles south and neighboring Arbin) have long represented for many if not most observers of the Savoie scene that region’s foremost red wine address. Thanks to his generosity during a 2002 visit and again last November, I have tasted his reds almost without gap, spanning more than two decades, and their singular features are intriguing complexity and – in the most successful instances – significant aging potential. In recent years, this long-time practitioner of biodynamie has endured some years of extremely reduced yields and in 2008 a difficult vintage from which he elected not to bottle any wine at all. “I was too occupied at the time with the Domaine des Ardoisieres,” he reports of a remarkable and ambitious project (also covered in this report) that he founded but has since handed over totally to his young former collaborator there, Brice Omont. Not only are the wines of the Prieure Saint-Christophe generally bottled late, they are also generally sold only after enjoying significant bottle age, so it is by no means only young wines that are arriving in the U.S. market this year. Prior to vintage 2005, bottlings labeled “Prestige” represented a selection from parcels behind his winery that benefit from iron- and fossil-rich rock eroded from the mountain above. But I’ve frequently found that his Tradition has held up better than his Prestige, and from 2005-2007 Grisard blended to achieve a single wine labeled “Tradition.” (Even a Grisard Mondeuse not intended for cellaring at all can age well. I tasted on this occasion a 1981 that, while fading, still had some lovely features; and this was a wine made by Grisard with his two brothers two years before he founded the Domaine Saint-Christophe, and more to the point – as he emphasized – two years before the notion even occurred to him of attempting to render a Mondeuse for other than early drinking.) Importer:Tanaro River Imports, Irvine, CA; tel. (949) 870-6549