2010 Arbois Pupillin Chardonnay

Only in bottle for just over a week when I tasted it, the Houillon-Overnoy 2010 Arbois-Pupillin Chardonnay comes entirely from one site – though it isn’t named on the label – and a single foudre. Fresh lemon, apple, and milled grain are reminiscent of white Burgundy, but this exhibits a grip and vibrancy as well as a diversity of (for lack of a better word) minerality that you’ll only rarely encounter in the former genre. The mouthwatering sense of salinity runs toward the oceanic in its nuanced complexity as well as its enveloping palate persistence, not to mention mouthwatering persistence. Suggestions of vegetable stock including celery and carrot have some analogy in the realm of Chablis, but this is delightfully distinctive stuff. “This will still be young in 20 years,” claims Overnoy, and I am hesitant to challenge his prognosis. Since his late teens, Emmanuel Houillon has worked with his mentor and now partner Pierre Overnoy (whose name until recently also received top-billing on this Pupillin estate’s very old-fashioned label). The domaine, divided almost equally among Chardonnay, Savagnin, and Poulsard, has more than doubled in size – to a bit more than a dozen acres – in less than five years, thanks to property owned by Overnoy’s sister and to parcels acquired by Houillon himself. While Overnoy is happily still very much with us, he has long since become a legend in his own time, not only as the local viticultural guru and epitome of vinous Jura integrity, but more recently to a wider audience of self-proclaimed “natural wine” producers and devotees as a staunch (and long-time) advocate of sulfur-free elevage and bottling, whose wines are complexly expressive in their youth but also consistently stand the test of time. According to Overnoy, his father naturally (i.e. automatically, given his time and place) vinified the wine from his small holdings without any added sulfur, but Pierre came to his determination and his understanding of how to do this after visits in the early 1980s by sommelier-turned-consultant Jacques Neauport and a subsequent consultation with Neauport’s mentor, biochemist and Beaujolais specialist Jules Chauvet. That said, there is no particular secret or difference I could discern or learn to the methods these two vignerons follow. An entire book of conversations with Overnoy was recently published, and when time permits I hope to pore over it. Interestingly, Houillon and Overnoy report that their wines normally complete malo-lactic transformation before the end of the year in which they were harvested, even though completion of alcoholic fermentation often lasts not merely into the New Year but at times into a second year. Every few vintages, a barrel or two will be set-aside to become vin jaune, but I was not lucky enough on my first visit to taste an example. The wines are bottled manually, directly from barrel – hoisted with a lift – and without filtration. Spending time at the dining table of Overnoy’s homey domicile involves lots of convivial conversation and slow, thoughtful sipping, though in the end the number of wines tasted – at least on the occasion of this initial visit – was small. The Houillon-Overnoy wines represent amazingly, indeed – given their notoriety – improbably fine values; the problem is to score even a few bottles. Imported by Louis/Dressner Selections, New York, NY; tel. (212) 334 8191