Wine & Spirits - August 2017 - 20

KNECHTING

the Dots

A Lighter Shade of Pinot
Terroir-Expressive Rosés
by David Schildknecht

"If we were going
to make rosé,
then it must be
by consciously
grooming the
vines and pressing
the fruit in search
of white wine
virtues: elegance,
minerality and
freshness."
- Ingrid Groiss

WINE & SPIRITS

Pinot noir was established here well before the postphylloxera incursion of sauvignon (which has a
longer history, as "blanc fumé," across the river in
Pouilly), and today most Sancerrois growers make
rosé, if offhandedly. Grab a glass from Gérard Boulay, François or Pascal Cotat, Pascal Reverdy, Claude
Riffault or Vacheron, though, and you'll experience
not just consummate refreshment and fascinating
complexity but also some shock-here it helps if
your glass is jet black-that the contents, which you
might well guess as Sancerre, aren't sauvignon but
pinot noir.
Boulay's version, from ancient vines in a steep
parcel near Chavignol's renowned Grande Côte, can
serve as a template: seedy red berries, lime and fresh
tomato flavors are strewn with herbs and laced with
saliva-liberating salinity. This is, however, hardly the
rosé of his countrymen's imagination. Comparing
notes after cellar visits a decade ago, two US importers concluded that they must have been purchasing Boulay's whole production. "Thank goodness,"
observed Madame Boulay, "because the French don't
order it."
Deep into the ancient province of Berry, forty
miles from Sancerre, Reuilly shares both its famous
cousin's dominance of sauvignon and a long history
with pinot. With barely 350 vineyard acres, Reuilly
renders rosés utterly unlike any others, not from
pinot noir but from its purple-skinned mutation,
pinot gris. That grape (rather than "rosé") is mentioned on labels of this salmon-colored genre; but
Berry's presentation at the 1859 Concours Régional
d'Auxerre-in which Reuillys far outnumbered
Sancerres-featured a "vin rosé" among the former;
and a menu saved by Camille Rousseau from Berry's
pavilion at the 1937 Paris International Exposition
lists only three wines: "Blanc de Quincy," "Sancerre
Sauvignon" and "Rosé de Reuilly." At the time,
Reuilly had just acquired its AOC, but solely for sauvignon blanc, of which Rousseau's own vines were

AUGUST 2017

poised to deliver their first crop. Perhaps that meal
in Paris inspired his subsequent planting of pinot gris
(which, like pinot noir in Sancerre, would wait two
decades for AOC recognition). His grandson Denis
Jamain has elevated Reuilly pinot gris to fine art.
Jamain maintains that Reuilly's dominant Kimmeridgian chalk is less suited to pinot than quartz- and
silica-rich gravel nearer the river Cher. Nevertheless,
chalk, salt, citrus and mouthwatering suggestions of
herb-laced shellfish stock evoke Chablis. Although
it often excels with a year in bottle, the 1,700 cases
of Jamain's pinot gris sell out almost instantly-half
destined for the US. New acreage, being propagated
via sélection massale, won't come too soon.
Another aberrant pinot recently emerged in
improbably resplendent rosé garb. The Mariafeld
clone's loose, straggly clusters-anything but pine
cone-shaped-render it scarcely recognizable as
pinot. But loose clusters are its raison d'être, conferring rot resistance on this Swiss clone, designed for
climes where ripeness might not arrive before the
first snow. In 1968, Washington State viticultural pioneer Walter Clore convinced Charles Henderson to
plant it at his Dragonfly Vineyard, perched 1,700 feet
above the Columbia River, 25 miles south of perpetually snow-clad Mount Adams. Four decades later, Steven Thompson, fresh from a stint as Christophe Baron's right hand at Cayuse, was searching for a place
to put down vine roots, fell in love with the Columbia
Gorge, and jumped at the chance to lease (and rechristen) Dragonfly. "I thought to myself, 'There's no
way those grapes will ever ripen enough in this site to
produce a good red wine,'" recalls Thompson. So he
set his sights on méthode champenoise (fortuitously,
as it turned out), but determined to disgorge only
when he, not the bank, said "It's time." Meanwhile,
Thompson bottled most of his whole-cluster-pressed,
barrel-fermented base wine as Atavus Vineyard Rosé.
Now that half a dozen vintages can be surveyed, it's
evident this silken, richly nutty wine delivers some

illustration by Vivian Ho

Label any rosé "pinot noir" and a bit of that grape's mystique rubs off on it. But if you
crave an intriguing wine that testifies to terroir, consider Sancerre. And don't expect
"rosé" or "pinot" to be on its label.

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Wine & Spirits - August 2017