Blick’s rare audience in the French Jura: visit to the legendary Domaine Macle

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Despite the pouring rain, gray skies and chilly five degrees, the French Jura is unfolding its own magic this Friday afternoon. The reason for this is to visit the legendary Domaine Macle winery in the picturesque village of Château-Chalon. Owner and winemaker Laurent Macle offers Blick a private audience and opens the doors to his historic cellars.

Macle is the fifth generation to cultivate nearly ten hectares of vineyards, seven of which are planted with Chardonnay and the rest with Savagnin. A few vines are planted with dark Trousseau and Poulsard varieties, but Macle makes the resulting wines solely for his own use. Macle’s most famous Jura specialty is Vin Jaune, a white wine made from the Savagnin grape variety that matures for several years under a layer of yeast, thus gaining complexity.

Vin Jaune as a figure

Macle leads me into the winding cellar system, where numerous old wine barrels are stacked together. “This is our oldest barrel, it’s 150 years old and it’s still in use.” Many barrels have small taps from which barrel samples can be taken. This is because the barrels of the wines selected for Vin Jaune can neither be opened nor refilled for several years.

In the case of Château-Chalon, Macle spends at least seven years where the wines mature in sealed barrels under a very thin layer of yeast. Yeast cloudiness usually occurs in the first summer months after fermentation, when the temperature in the cellar increases slightly due to the season. In winter, temperatures drop to eight degrees. These temperature fluctuations are crucial for the development and preservation of the tiny yeast layer on the surface of the wine in the wooden barrel.

Also, as Macle explained to me, in this type of winemaking, some of the wine (about six percent) evaporates through the tiny barrel pores each year. “Seven years later, just over 60 centiliters of wine remain from a liter. This is why Vin Jaune is bottled in traditional 62 centilitre bottles called Clavelin bottles.”

Huge aging potential

Macle, which has been certified organic since 2015, also bottles some of its wines a little earlier, such as Côtes du Jura Sous Voile, which matures under the yeast layer for about two years. The result of the recently released 2018 vintage is a highly characteristic Chardonnay with notes of dried apple, ginger, lemon peel, bread crust and almond. Refined with approximately 20 percent Savagnin, Côtes du Jura Tradition 2018 also presents itself perfectly. “Both wines pair perfectly with scallops,” explains Macle.

Macle then serves his two newest Château Chalon wines. An intricate masterpiece is the 2015 model of a warmer and sunny vintage. Dried mountain herbs intertwine with flowers, bread crust, ginger and a little curry. With an intense pressure on the palate and an endlessly long finish, 2015 will offer drinking pleasure at the highest level for at least half a century. The slightly fresher and less broad-shouldered 2016 was also generally convincing. Only 4,000 bottles of both vintages will be available.

Later tasting of historical wines showed that Macle wines that matured under a layer of yeast could age for a very long time. The 1977 Château-Chalon smells wonderfully of dried flowers, apples, hay, white truffles and hazelnuts. The 1983 Côtes du Jura was even more fascinating. What pours out of the glass is incredible: white pepper, dried flowers, lemon peel, oriental spices, herbs and a hint of tangerine peel. The wine dances elegantly and delicately on the tongue and ends with a captivating finish.

see in the future

It would be too boring for Macle to rest on the laurels of the past. Each year he makes a different natural wine without added sulfur. “Curiosity is one reason, but I also really enjoy drinking natural wines in my personal life, especially from the Beaujolais region,” says Macle. He also experiments with amphoras. One of them involves Savagnin from the birth years of his three daughters, Carmen (2000), Athénaïs (2006) and Jeanne (2010).

Macle’s eldest daughter, Carmen, recently completed a wine internship in New Zealand and will soon complete her degree in oenology at the Lycée Viticole in Beaune. He would later support his father in the family winery and increasingly contribute with his own ideas. Thus, breathing clean air is guaranteed. And after a freeze-ridden 2021 vintage with nearly 70 percent crop failure, the Macle family is looking forward to two world-class harvests in 2022 and 2023.

Source : Blick