SOYHIÈRES, JURA
There’s nothing in the vicinity of Soyhières, a modest little village tucked away in a fold of the Jura barely half an hour from Basel, to indicate that you are close to the property of Valentin Blattner, one of the more significant and interesting people in the landscape of Swiss wine. No signposts point the way, there’s no website, just a telephone number which is answered only fitfully.
It’s for Valentin’s ground-breaking work as a private vine breeder (unattached to any research institution), which he started in this tiny corner of northwest Switzerland with his wife Silvia back in 1991, that he is celebrated. Since then he has been tirelessly creating hybrid wine grape varieties that carry inbuilt resistance to oidium and mildew, two of the biggest threats to vines in these latitudes, as well as to extreme cold. Often known as PIWIs, a portmanteau word that plunders the German name, Pilzwiderstandsfähige Rebsorten, their English name is “interspecific hybrids” (meaning they’re created by crossing different vine species, see page X). This is to distinguish them from the hybrids of old, which gave unpalatable, foxy-flavoured wines.
The second reason to visit the Blattners is that they make and sell wine from their own varieties. This is not simply a vine breeding facility with greenhouses full of propagating trays; it’s also a working winery with four hectares of vines. “We’ve worked for 30 years to produce grape varieties that make wine that’s good to drink”, says Valentin. So the decision to make their own was a logical one. Historically, he observes, there were two kinds of hybrids: the awful ones and the less awful ones. They were designed for maximum yield and maximum alcohol, not for flavour. “We think wine should be for pleasure and our aim is to produce wine that’s a pleasure to drink.”
Seated at a trestle table in the garage, we set about testing the pleasure principle. The wines come from Silvia’s vineyard in the nearby village of Courfaivre and the collection is named Les Mergats, with an appealing label of a sleek black cat. (Un mergat, she explains, is a tomcat, the nickname of the village.) There’s a white, a rosé, a couple of reds, a sparkling wine and a sweet wine.
First came the wine that they have named Ravel Blanc. With Ravel’s Bolero ringing in our ears (“a favourite of mine”, smiles Silvia), we tasted three different vintages, to compare how each had fared. All had a crisp fruitiness reminiscent of Sauvignon Blanc, good as an aperitif but also well equipped to accompany food. Another white, VB-CAL 6-04 (it’s too new to have been christened yet) was similarly Sauvignon Blanc-inflected, with an even more pronounced crisp minerality.
Les Mergats Brut is their sparkling wine, made principally from Ravel Blanc plus a couple more of their white varieties. For this, they make the base wine and send it to the regional sparkling wine specialist who adds the dosage (a mixture of sugar syrup and wine) which provokes the second fermentation in the bottle and gives the wine its sparkle. It has lovely floral aromas – that’s down to the varieties used – fine bubbles and a little roundness from the dosage.
Amongst the many red varieties that have originated here, they make one called Cabernet Jura, which has Cabernet Sauvignon as one parent, the other unspecified. There are two cuvées: one is unoaked, the other gets a spell in barriques, a mixture of new and used so as not to overwhelm the wine with wood. Both are deep ruby-red, with robust, brambly fruit aromas and flavours and a good tannic backbone.
The value of Blattner’s ground-breaking work lies in the fact that these interspecific hybrids do not need to be treated with any kind of fungicide, whether natural or synthetic. Gaining acceptance for those novel varieties, first amongst the growers and then with us wine drinkers, is less obvious and progress is slow. But gradually, as the search intensifies for ways to reduce chemical intervention in the vitisphere, these varieties are beginning to creep into the vineyards. The early adopters are organic and biodynamic growers, who are looking to take their sustainable approach one step further. Others are taking longer and remain sceptical. What came as a surprise to me was how delicious the wines can be. Who knows if one day Ravel Blanc, Cabernet Jura & Company will join – perhaps even one day supplant – the widely planted, well-respected (but disease-prone) Rieslings and Cabernet Sauvignons that we are all familiar with.
|
ADDRESS: Sur La Fin 103 2805 Soyhières CONTACT: Tel. 032 423 32 66 |
WINES TO LOOK OUT FOR: Ravel blanc Les Mergats Brut Cabernet Jura |
|
valentin@domaineblattner.ch |
No prices available |
|
HIGHLIGHTS: Visits by appointment, The hiking trail Via Jura, Route No. 80, goes right past the Blattner winery. |
|