Maison Valette Pouilly-Fuissé 'Tradition' 2018
The Wine
A benchmark for this wonderful estate, if you have the patience and a good cellar, you can keep them almost forever! From 60-year-old vines; aged for 30 months in older barrels : Pouilly-Fuissé produces the grandest wines of the Mâconnais and its best wines can age for many years. This terrific wine offers a riveting combination of rich, roasted hazelnuts and grapefruit with bright acidity and deep, powerful minerality; it's medium to full-bodied, textural and concentrated, with a bright spine of acidity and a long, saline finish. This 2018, bottled in 2023.
Vinification is all natural: no sulphur, no cultured yeasts, no chaptalization, no acidification - no augmentation at all. Elevage is for twenty-four months on fine lees in tank (20%) and older barrels (80%). The way Philippe Valette works is similar that of Claude Maréchal in the Cote de Beaune which is to say meticulous care of the vineyards and a way of making wine with minimal intervention in a natural manner. The result is extravagant but very elegant Chardonnays. All graceful, delicate and exciting with beautiful fresh acid and without the flatness and boredom that wine from this region can often possess. - Andrew Guard
The Details
Variety - Chardonnay
Country - France
Region - Burgundy
Sub Region - Macon
Extra - Cork
Year - 2018
Volume - 750ml
About the Wine Maker 
The Valette's are known for their specific style, wines raised with thorough lees-contact and without racking. They have remained true to this style of winemaking since the 1950s. It is a sort of family-tradition that requires accuracy as well as painstaking detail knowledge of the indigenous yeasts and the wine’s proneness to develop reductive flavors. Again, an art.
When working their vineyards, the Valettes respect long standing local traditions. In every second row of vines there is dense ground vegetation that protects microorganisms living in the upper soil-layers. It also naturally rivals the vines’ top-soil roots for nutrition. This way, the vines are forced to quickly root into deeper soil layers in order to secure a steady supply of minerals and nutrients.
During the summer months, workers constantly attend the upper layers of the vineyard soil. They use a self-constructed machine that rearranges the top 5 cm without actually plowing the ground. By doing so, a sufficient amount of oxygen is introduced into the soil, without affecting the microorganisms living deeper down.
This procedure is repeated 3 to 4 times a year in all of Domaine Valette’s vineyards. Philippe explains the advantage of this approach by showing that the soil becomes more resistant to erosion. It can compensate much larger volumes of rainfall than conventionally treated soils.
Grapes are harvested during a descending moon at optimum ripeness (I can vouch or that as I ate plenty off the vine!) by hand into 5kg cagettes and taken to the winery where they are whole bunch pressed and fermented using ambient yeast in either tank (Macon-Villages) barrique or demi-muid of various ages. Depending on the origin of the grapes the élevage can be anywhere from 2 years to 6 years and the wines are kept on the fine lees and bottled with just a dab of S02.
Like the top wines of Raveneau or Ganevat, these wines have a level of concentration that gives the wines an extraordinary intensity, levity and persistence, and it also goes some way to protecting them in bottle.
Needless to say, these are very special wines that are cherished for their multi-dimension, refinement and most of all for the pleasurable sensations they provide – they are stimulating to drink!
