Hazy and perfumed, delicate and nuanced, it is a wine of rare energy and a highly original marriage of grape and place. Find out more.
About the Wine
An aromatic wine made up of equal parts Gewürztraminer and Pinot Gris. Pouring a hazy shade of amber, the wine simply jumps from the glass with notes of tropical fruits, quince and spice. The heady aromatics are complemented by a fine tannin and nice bitterness on the palate. A wine of wonderful complexity.
Made with grapes from biodynamic vineyards in Alsace, owned by the Humbrecht family. The grapes are picked and brought back to Arbois for vinification where they are fermented as whole bunches for four weeks before being pressed off to cuve to rest until Spring.
About Domaine de l'Octavin
Despite having trained in Bordeaux and Burgundy, Alice Bouvot knew that when it came to start her own domaine, the Jura would be the place. In 2004 she started from scratch, buying a small cellar in the village of Arbois and a couple of hectares of vines in the hills surrounding.
Alice now farms around five hectares of Chardonnay, Savagnin, Poulsard, Trousseau and Pinot Noir, with holdings in some of the region’s very best lieu-dits such as En Curon, La Mailloche, Les Nouvelles and Les Corvées. Vineyard work is done by hand and is both fanatical and fantastic, with biodynamic farming used to great effect in retaining a real biodiversity in the vineyard. These are some of the most beautiful parcels we have seen. After a number of lean vintages, Alice had to look further afield to make ends meet and now harvests grapes at trusted friend’s properties all over France, making an equally exciting range of negotiant wines.
In a good year, she makes a dazzling number of cuvées. There is no recipe and winemaking is dynamic, with decisions being made only once the fruit has been brought to the cellar, where fermentation, vessels and élevage varies from parcel to parcel and vintage to vintage, though nothing is ever added at any stage. It’s a refreshingly free approach that yields individual wines of real character, the common thread being a sort of boundless energy, where each is as nourishing, delicious and exciting as the last.
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