White Ladies' Cotillion 2019

Cotillon des dames Blanc 2019,

Jean-Yves Peron

In Savoie, in Chevaline, near Lake Annecy, Jean-Yves Péron skillfully combines committed viticulture and merchant winemaking, both with a focus on nature. His Mondeuse reds are magnificent, as are his whites made from ancient local grape varieties—Jacquère, Altesse, Bergeron, and Persan.
Initially destined for a career in biochemistry, he quickly fell in love with the vine and trained as an oenologist in Bordeaux. His current vineyard, three hectares biodynamic since the beginning, is divided between Conflans, near Albertville, and Fréterive, a little further downstream in the Isère Valley. He learned his trade as a winemaker with Thierry Allemand in Cornas, then with Bruno Schueller in Alsace, before spending some time in New Zealand and the United States. His trading business, which he began in 2011, allows him to buy the harvest from organic winemakers close to home, but also in Northern Italy: for him, it is a new dimension given to his work as a winemaker, allowing him to multiply the terroirs and to deepen his experiences in winemaking and aging.
On narrow and steep surfaces, his mountain vines receive no synthetic products, Jean-Yves preferring horsetail and nettle manure. The surrounding vegetation is very rich: it protects the vines and helps to strengthen them. The soils are grassed, mown and reworked with a pickaxe and winch. The harvest is entirely manual. Jean-Yves Péron's winemaking adheres to the principles of minimal intervention. On narrow, steep slopes, his mountain vines are not treated with any synthetic products, Jean-Yves preferring horsetail and nettle manure. The surrounding vegetation is extremely rich: it protects the vines and helps strengthen them. The soils are grassed, mown, and reworked with a pickaxe and winch. The harvest is entirely manual. Once vatted in whole bunches, the grapes, both red and white, undergo a semi-carbonic maceration process that extracts fresh fruit aromas. This maceration time varies between five days and nine weeks depending on the vintage. The day before or two days before pressing, Jean-Yves performs foot-treading directly in the vat. After this fermentation, the musts are sent to barrels for aging on lees for twelve months in five hundred liter barrels of two or three wines (to limit the woody sensation), followed by blending and resting in vats. No sulfites are added, or as little as possible, and the wines are not fined or filtered. Savoyard wine has long suffered from a somewhat flimsy image, not taken seriously enough. Yet, what treasures its varied soils and numerous ancient grape varieties produce! Jean-Yves Péron embodies the renaissance of this beautiful vineyard. This cuvée is built around the local Jacquère grape variety grown on limestone soils, with the addition of Altesse from schistose terrain. The winemaker sometimes adds Roussanne and Mondeuse through direct pressing. The grapes are vinified separately and blended approximately two months before bottling. The idea is to be able to precisely control the evolution of the juice and balance the wine according to the behavior of each grape variety. Maceration, depending on the variety, lasts from ten days to six months, always with punching down. Aging is one year in barrels. This is a complex, elegant, and fruity white, and one of the winemaker's flagship vintages.