Description
Macvin du Jura is produced in the Jura region of eastern France. We call this wine in a very loose way as it is fortified. The juice and must of Savagnin grapes are reduced in half by boiling, and the resulting liquid is then fortified with the marc or brandy. Once the wine reaches 16% alcohol by volume it is placed in oak casks to age for at least 18 months in old casks.
Located in Rotalier in the Sud-Revermont, in the late 1970s Alain Labet was probably the first vigneron in the Jura to make and bottle wines from individual terroirs separately. And in the 1990s when he started making topped-up whites, there were only one or two winemakers making wines this way elsewhere in the Jura (Pierre Overnoy in Arbois being foremost).
The tradition in Rotalier and the rest of the Sud-Revermont was to age wine under flor, but Alain found that oxidative ageing of chardonnay masked the subtle terroir nuances present after fermentation and decided to top-up his barrels regularly, thus preventing the formation of ‘voile’ (layer of yeast forming on the surface of a wine when left in contact with oxygen) which tends to dominate the aromatic profile. His wines became much more precise as a result and showed an ability to express the subtlest variations in exposition and soil composition, revealing in the process one of France’s finest terroirs.
