Renardat-Fache Bugey Cerdon
This stuff is just great fun….it doesn’t matter who I pour a glass for, they just love it….it’s just delicious drinking……vital, insanely perfumed and heady….kind of like carbonated fresh grape must, though that’s probably doing it a bit of a disservice.
It’s not exactly from the Savoie, but from the neighbouring department of Ain. Bugey was classified as a VDQS….Vin délimité de qualité supérieure….the second highest level of French wine, but from May 2009, Bugey won the right to AOC classification. It’s an obscure little region, 170 hectares in all, midway between Geneva & Lyon….it’s mountainous with vineyards tucked away, South-facing between green pastures and contented cud-chewing cows.
It is a blend of Gamay (90%) & Poulsard (10%)….a demi-sec (half-dry) sparkling rose that might be hard to come by, but is certainly worth hunting down. The Cerdon Methode Ancestrale is the star of the region….the ancestral method rolls like this.
The grapes are harvested by hand, pressed and fermented in vats at a cool temperature until the alcohol reaches around 6 degrees. A light filtration leaves most of the active yeast in the unfinished wine. The wine is then bottled and the secondary fermentation continues in bottle, finally reaching its final alcohol of around 7 – 8% and retaining a fair wack of its original sugar.
Lack of dosage or yeast prior to the second fermentation leads to a wine that is über-grapey and vinous….it’s a fairly fragile beastie, requiring good shipping and storage but I know for a fact that the importer over delivers in this aspect so the main issues will be at the hands of retailers, restaurants, etc.
Bright salmon-pink in the glass with a fairly course mousse but you’re not here to ponce around and pontificate over it….you are here to drink it and have some fun.
Head-spinning grapey and fresh must aromas with intense redcurrant, strawberry and raspberry fruits with some red apple thrown in for good measure. Bursting with personality with hints of flowers, spice, a touch of stalky goodness and just a dab of Poulsard funk.
In the mouth it is energetic and lively…..off-dry yet pure and refreshing with vivid grapey goodness, redcurrant and raspberry fruits, spice and almost an apple brandy or calvados-like note on the back palate. For the amount of sugar in the wine it finishes clean and zippy with a wicked mid-palate creaminess and the bottle never seems to last long enough.
If I owned a 1971 Plymouth GTX van…..I think I’d have a fridge full of Renardat-Fache Bugey Cerdon between the seats….it’s the only way to travel….and possibly a mattress in the back.
Price: $45
Closure: Cork
Alcohol: 7.5%
1971 Plymouth GTX
Hi Dave
Great wine to have found all the way over there when so little is produced! Have still not made it to visit this guy yet… I tried once, but he’s not very receptive to visitors.
To be pedantic, not sure about your figures. Bugey has around 500 hectares, but Cerdon may well be about 170 hectares. (And it’s only in books and occasionally for bureaucratic convenience that Bugey is linked with Savoie).
Happy New Year!
Wink
Cheers Wink!….I think we get around 30 cases over here so the allocation is very small indeed!
Thanks for the additional info…..I just had a peek at the Bugey producers website and it looks like there is 250 hectares under production now….not sure how up to date this is though.
I hope you guys have a great New Year also and I look forward o catching up when I’m next in France!
Dave
The Bugey Syndicat make a real effort with their website (though I might suggest/pitch doing a translation one day). But how confusing! The link you gave me does indeed say 250ha but on the “Le Vignoble” page it states 500ha! Possibly to do with Vin de Table made in the same vineyard area – I need to check, certainly. The vineyard of Bugey is ‘confidentiel’ as they say here, anyway.
Hi Wink!….I agree…it is a great website for such a small region….some confusion certainly over the figure though!
Fantastic review. I run a sparkling bar, where we go through about a case a week of this. I have had about 5 rose sparklings from the region. Besides the Kermit Lynch selection this is my favorate. HaPPY PINK DRINKS!
It’s a cracking wine Marcus….always one in the fridge at my place!