Bourboulenc.  You may not have heard of this grape.  It quite honestly doesn’t get out much.  This is an ancient white grape found in Southern France in Provençe and the Southern Rhône. We find the first mention of this grape in literature from the early 16^th century.

It is perhaps most well known in Languedoc where it is blended into white wines in La Clape. In this marine region, the grape is delicate with finesse and elegance, they note garrigue flowers and mineral notes on the nose.

Hmm…so different from the wine I tasted.

I spoke with Jason Haas earlier this year for a piece on Regenerative Agriculture and snuck in a question about the at that time, newly released Bourboulenc.  Here is a bit of what he had to say.

“It’s really a wine that we are working without much of a roadmap because it’s not like at Beaucastel they ever bottled it on its own.  Usually, they don’t even have enough to ferment it on its own.

I don’t believe that I’ve ever tasted a 100% Bourboulenc from France. So when we were picking it, we were like, what numbers should we pick it at?  I don’t know?  What should we do in the cellar?  I don’t know, let’s try to do something fairly neutral so that we’re letting it show what it thinks it wants.  We ended up with it coming in, and we don’t know if this is because it was the 3^rd leaf, first harvest and there wasn’t a lot of canopy or whether it was something about the way that we trained it, but we’d obviously exposed the clusters to a lot of sun and it came in very golden, so when it came out of the press it was almost orange.  We were like “oh, that’s weird”.  Sometimes Roussanne is like that and we’re used to not being freaked out about it when it’s Roussanne, but bourboulenc, we hadn’t read in the literature anywhere, that this was potentially something that happened.  So “well, let’s see happens as it ferments” and a lot of that color did drop out, but it’s still a deeper gold than we were expecting it to be. And there’s this textural component that feels to me almost like a skin-fermented white.  It’s got a richer texture and almost an almondy character to it. But bright acids it’s like citrus and almonds and pretty rich texture.  I think it’s really cool. But we don’t know if it’s representative of what’s it’s going to be like moving forward or whether it was a function of the vintage. “

Jason Haas, September 2020

Tablas Creek Vineyard planted the bourboulenc in 2016 and 2019 was the first year they were able to harvest it.  They picked 2.15 tons and, as Jason said, the juice came out a very orange color. (click through to see their photo of the juice)

The golden yellow color of the 2019 Tablas Creek Bourboulenc

While much of this orange color dropped out during fermentation, this wine was still a rich golden color when I poured it.  It reminded me of an aged Roussanne in color.

This was picked on a night pick and then fermented in Stainless Steel and went into neutral barrels to do its malolactic fermentation.

This wine was popular! They made just 145 cases and set 80 aside for the wine club. They sold the other 65 cases within 6 weeks.

Baked Coquilles St. Jacques

I looked to the Tablas site for a recommendation for what to pair.  I mean this is kind of a new animal.  They suggested Baked Coquilles St. Jacques or Mussels Marinière.  Hmmm…I went to look up what Coquilles were.  They are scallops!  Their recipe called for small bay scallops.  I only had larger scallops, so we made do.  I adjusted the recipe slightly as I just needed enough for Michael and me.  Small ramekins each held 3 of my medium to large scallops, they were covered with bread crumbs mixed with parsley and drizzled with melted butter then baked until bubbly.

Ingredients for Baked Coquilles St. Jacque

Baked Coquilles St. Jacque