FRANCK PEILLOT BUGEY MONDEUSE 2014

Famille Peillot, Vignerons
Mondeuse 2014
Bugey, Montagnieu, France

100% Mondeuse Noir

Astonishingly black garnet in color with scarlet overtones, this lively wine is spicy & herbaceous on the nose. Bright, spicy/dry fruit follow on the palate with a woody, lean expression. Excitingly fresh in the mouth yet rustic, showing fruit such as cranberry, elderberry and violets. Lilting. Lifting. Juicy. Later some black pepper, maybe spruce? A soft start on the tongue makes its way to a zippy dry finish. One unique wine! 

Reminiscent of Refosco or Pinot Noir, the Mondeuse grape (indigenous to Bugey) is not one we often come across ... I was thrilled to experience it! It truly is a startlingly black garnet color, which in other grapes may translate into seriously saturated fruit. Not so here, as location, climate and terroir most likely have lots to do with its zesty, lean expression. The Bugey wine region is a tiny appellation in Eastern France between Lyons and Geneva near the foothills of the Jura Mountains. The small isolated parcels of vines owned and worked by Franck Peillot, vigneron are in the mountains, mostly on extremely steep hills, surrounded by woods and prairies, meeting the edge of the Rhone River. Peillot describes Mondeuse as such, "To me it's an ancestor, it's a Gaul with a big mustache, and just like our ancestors, they are firmly rooted in the past". His vines are very old, some 100 years, dating back two-three generations. He works everything by hand and uses indigenous yeasts, with little intervention in the cellar.

This wine is a Louis/Dressner Selection, imported by LDM Wines, New York, NY. Only a few cases came to us through Devenish Wines and Maine & Loire Wine Shop in Portland. Hopefully there will still be some available in the shop when it reopens sometime this winter, along with their new wine bar, Drifter's Wife (located at 63 Washington Ave., Portland, ME.) See you there!