i Vicini Barbera Reserve Red 2017

i Vicini Barbera Reserve Rouge 2017,

Jean-Yves Peron

Jean-Yves Péron began his career studying biochemistry, but he quickly became drawn to the vine and trained as an oenologist in Bordeaux. 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—no less so. He lives in Chevaline, but his current vineyard, three hectares of which have been biodynamic since the beginning, is divided between Conflans, near Albertville, and Fréterive, a little further downstream in the Isère valley.
Jean-Yves 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 to his work as a winemaker, allowing him to multiply the terroirs and deepen his experiences in winemaking and aging.
Jean-Yves Péron's winemaking follows the principles of minimal intervention. 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. Once vatted in whole bunches, the grapes, both red and white, undergo a semi-carbonic maceration which allows the extraction of 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 rebirth of this beautiful vineyard. In 2017, Jean-Yves Péron decided to expand his range by harvesting organic grapes in the heart of the Italian Piedmont. This resulted in several vintages, including this 100% Barbera red. The second most widely used red grape variety in Italy after Sangiovese, Barbera produces full-bodied, colorful wines with notes of red fruits. The "reserve" qualification indicates that this Barbera has been macerated for longer than Jean-Yves' classic Barbera: fermentation with long and patient punching down is followed by three years of aging. It is therefore more structured, more powerful, deeper, offering evolving notes (chocolate, cocoa, etc.), more in the style of Pas de l'Ours. It therefore presents a fairly classic style for a Barbera. A wine that is both serious and joyful.