Vignerons Les Matheny Arbois Rouge Poulsard 2022 750ml

While the entire scope of Les Matheny’s production possesses the power to dazzle—Emeric’s Chardonnay, for instance, is a master class in thoughtful voile-management—the 2022 Poulsard deserves a spotlight of its own. From meager-yielding vines in Arbois planted in 1943, Emeric produces but a single cask of Poulsard even in a full harvest like 2022—a 15-hectoliter barrel whose grungy exterior (it has been used for almost 40 vintages, after all) belies the enchanting wine held within. Vinification and aging are straightforwardly anti-tech: full de-stemming, spontaneous fermentation with no temperature control, three-week maceration, aging for 18 months, and bottling without fining or sterile filtration.  

Poulsard tends to get characterized as a pale, light-bodied wine, and while many do fit that mold and are produced in a manner that emphasizes it, Emeric’s—like Puffeney’s before him—has real depth, real texture, and a rarely encountered boldness. It is the product of ancient vines, wild fermentation, and long maceration, and, like its distant cousins to the west in Burgundy, it combines grace and power in seemingly paradoxical fashion. I was sold on Emeric’s 2022 Poulsard from the nose alone: cardamom, rose petals, roasted root vegetables slathered in cinnamon; earthy but pure, and overflowing with the kind of spice whose siren song led men to treacherous sea voyages in centuries past. The palate, sappy and succulent, echoes the nose in its complexity, yet it glides, lifts, and swells effortlessly, leaving clinging, cleansing stoniness in its wake.