The Red Bear's Step 2018

Le Pas de l'Ours Rouge 2018,

Jean-Yves Peron

Based on nature and minimal intervention, Jean-Yves Péron skillfully combines committed viticulture and merchant winemaking, both based on nature. He lives in Chevaline, in Savoie, near Lake Annecy. His current vineyard, three hectares biodynamic since its inception, is divided between Conflans, near Albertville, and Fréterive, a little further downstream in the Isère Valley. His Mondeuse reds are magnificent, as are his whites made from old local grape varieties—Jacquère, Altesse, Bergeron, and Persan.
Initially destined for a career in biochemistry, Jean-Yves quickly fell in love with the vine and trained as an oenologist in Bordeaux. 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. 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 that allows fresh fruit aromas to be extracted. 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 oaky sensation), followed by blending and resting in vats. No sulfites are added, or as little as possible, and the wines are neither fined nor filtered. Savoyard wine has long suffered from a somewhat flimsy image, not taken seriously enough. Yet, what treasures its soils with their varied pedology and its many ancient grape varieties produce! Jean-Yves Péron embodies the rebirth of this beautiful vineyard.
The plot known as "Le Pas de l'Ours" is planted with forty-six-year-old vines on limestone. Jean-Yves uses the finest grapes to create this vintage. The harvest macerates for two to six months, and this vintage is generally aged for twenty-four months. On the nose, citrus fruits are clearly discernible. On the palate, it is more the acidity of the red fruits that is felt. The wine is persistent, with some herbaceous notes in the mid-palate.