2003 Vin de Savoie Mondeuse Tradition

While Grisard seems to consider the material that informs his Prestige bottlings inherently more age-worthy, his 2003 Mondeuse Tradition preserves sweet red fruit juiciness that was missing from its Prestige counterpart. In this instance, he says that’s easy to explain: the farther west along the Isere one went in 2003 and the steeper and stonier the site, the more pronounced was the roasted and jam-like character of the vintage, characteristics which don’t tend at all to assuage the tannins inherent in both this grape and this vintage. Nutty, saline, and mossy forest floor tones here are consistent with my experience of other Grisard bottlings of this age and serve for considerable intrigue. There is faint but not obstreperous gum-numbing to an otherwise admirably prolonged finish. I would plan on enjoying this over the next couple of years. 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