A Cracking Petit Chablis from Patrick Piuze

For those of you who have read my blog before, will know I’m far more of a fan of the new world than of the old, so I thought I better try and rectify that a little and write about something from France.

Earlier in the year my sister asked me to do a tasting for her and some of her friends from work, which under normal circumstances wouldn’t really have been that much of a problem, but she lives in New York, and it’s a little far to go just to do a tasting. So we came up with a cunning plan (sorry for the Blackadder reference) and did it using the joys of Skype, which actually proved to be quite good, the hardest part was actually finding wines that we could both get in the UK and US, which proved to be harder than you may think.

After several hours of trawling over web pages of stores from New York I managed to find several wines for us, the first was the Dr L Riesling, Seghesio Zinfandel, which you’ll be able to read about in my next post, and the 2010 Patrick Piuze Petit Chablis, which is what I want to talk about in this post.

Patrick was originally from Canada, who when 18 met Marc Chapoutier, and sparked his interest in wine making, and helped him to visit wineries in Australia, South Africa and Israel. After going back to Quebec and opening a wine bar, his realised his real passion lay in making wine and he headed of to Burgundy, where he went to work the harvest for Olivier Leflaive in Puligny-Montrachet, after a short course at the Beaune CFPPA, he was entrusted with their Chablis winemaking. After a successful stint with Olivier Leflaive he went to work at La Maison Verget, when after a year he was then offered the position of Cellar Master with Jean-Marc Brocard, until he decided to go it alone and produce wine under his own name, from various Grand and Premier Cru sites around Chablis.

The 2010 Petit Chablis Cuvee Speciale Juliette Anais, I have to say finally showed me that you can get a great French wine without paying stupid amounts for it. In the glass it had a bright pale lemon yellow colour, with stunning, crisp aromas of citrus and slightly delicate floral characteristics coming through. On the palate you got these aromas with a hint of crisp green apples and a real minerality coming through, which was just stunning, it’s starting to make my mouth water just writing about it. To go along with these flavours you got a real nice amount of acidity to cut through the flavours and bring them all together and really balance the wine perfectly.

I have to say this was an absolutely stunning glass of wine, that if you ever come across any of his wines I would highly recommend that you try them. I definitely will, as long with a few more from burgundy.