Jousset “Éxilé" Rosé Pétillant 2022

The Gamay and Grolleau vines for this wine were planted in 1976, perhaps why this wine tastes like a good disco track, and the land in Tourraine in which they thrive is tended by friends of Lise and Bertrand Jousset, the esteemed winemakers for Éxilé. Lise and Bertrandt–a talented husband and wife team who sought an affordable region where they could produce organic wines–started their winemaking journey in 2003.Their focus was to produce natural wines, without a direct mentor or vinification program, that expressed their unique style and philosophy of winemaking with respect to the living soil, land, and environment as they state below.

"We want to make wines that express their character and their origins, in other words 'living wines.' For this we need living soils with great microbial activity and living vineyards with a balanced animal and vegetal life in our parcels. This firmly excludes herbicides that kill the soils, fertilizers that maintain the plant by "feeding-tube" deprived of its natural nourishment and pesticides and fungicides that pollute our environment. And for us, no "cooking" in the cellar! We let our wines make themselves naturally without the use of oenologic products - sometimes a little sulfur and only what's necessary! Fermentations are with wild yeasts, of course - they are the soul of our wines as they transmit their origins, the terroir and the vintage. Our wines age slowly in barrels in a careful exchange with the air - we don't wish to "oak" our wines thus we mix the size and age of barrels in our different cuvées."

Éxilé was born from a need to produce wine after a 5-year period of serious frost damage when the Joussets lost 70% of their crop yield to frost. It's definition–"a person who lives outside their own country either from choice or because they are forced to do so" (Cambridge Dictionary)– is a pithy reference to their resilience in discovering they can be négociant and still produce organic wines within their controlled ethos yet beyond their vineyards. A Négociant is a wine trader purchasing grapes from vineyards for winemaking, and Lise and Bertrand sourced organically-farmed grapes from environmentally like-minded friends. This gave them the resilience necessary to increase their creative bandwidth by allowing them to experiment with new varietals and terroir.

From T Edwards Wines, "Spanning 11 hectares across Montlouis and Touraine, their vineyard comprises 27 plots with an average yield of 30HL/ha. The Joussets prioritize a hands-off approach, eschewing additives like yeast, chaptalization, acidification, or enzymes to focus on the intrinsic quality of the grape and emphasize meticulous vineyard work."

The blend of this may seem unique, Grolleau still being a grape off the beaten path. (It's become one of my personal favorites, especially this time of year, for its tart, sour berry profile, which I find balances heavy, hearty dishes.) During Loire’s wine making history, especially in the '90s and '00 decade, expert wine critics have suggested (sometimes demanded) that Grolleau be ripped from the earth and replaced with more notably market-friendly grapes like Gamay and Cabernet Franc. Thank goodness some obstinate Loire-situated vintners ignored that superciliousness and allowed Grolleau to keep its place in the wine cosmos. Its name is French for “Black Crow,” and it is an early-budding, mid-ripening grape which means it builds a fair amount of acidity early on and makes it a productive, less expensive grape to produce. It produces light-hued red wines with a low-alcohol, light body. The high acidity along with its flavor profile lends a lovely tartness to most blends and in the singular vintages.

Gamay, as you likely know, is a light-bodied grape, a cousin to Pinot Noir, that expresses floral, earthy, dark fruit, and tart red fruit. It also thrives in cooler climates.

If you have Karaoke at any holiday gathering, open this bottle of Pet-Nat rosé–even use it as the microphone–and notice the delight this [and your rendition of 80s hair rock] gives the loved-ones with whom you're spending time.