Macle Cotes du Jura Ouille 2017

“2016 was not produced because it developed veil, so we jumped to the 2017 Côtes du Jura Ouillé, a very clean and powerful wine from a warm and ripe vintage aged one and a half years in barrel (when the 2015 aged for three years). It’s from a good year for ouillé wines and has a good alcohol level but more important, a good pH that gives the wines it’s freshness. It’s fresh and young and was bottled without filtration. The wine is bright and clear, as the vintage produced wines that were naturally clear pretty soon. Only 900 bottles were filled in April 2019. Drink: 2019-2024. 93 points

Tasting chez Macle in Château Chalon is always exciting. Laurent Macle seemed in top form, happy and full of energy, so he proposed that we start with some younger wines, taste the bottled and current releases and work our way down to some older wines, including a wine vinified by his grandfather!

So, I tasted quite a lot of experimental wines, like an oxidative Chardonnay from 2014 that was aged in the oldest barrel they have, over 100 years old, and the wine had all the curry (sotolon) and morel mushroom aromas the sous voile and will eventually make it into a small new cuvée. Also a 2016 Chardonnay that started ouillé and later developed a veil of yeasts, so it has a faint Jura twang, very subtle but with the roundness of Chardonnay; the veil came later and seems to have had a rounding effect on the wine.

There is a small solera started in 2015 with Chardonnay that now has been blended with 2017 and next year will get wine from 2018; the idea to age the wine for some six years, and it already had a great complexity. There is also a 2012 that contains 50/50 ouillé and veil wine, labeled with a white label; 2012 was a concentrated year, and the wine felt a little oxidative (from the ouillé wine, according to Laurent Macle).

As for the Château Chalon, the last good vintage in volume was 2011, and the next one is possibly 2018. I was relatively disappointed with the performance of the 2010 compared with the previous 2009, and even in the context of the 2011. As for the older wines, I didn’t want to make a separate article here like I did last time; so, I included the notes here even if they are not necessarily available and might distort a bit the rest of notes for the current releases. But I thought the information was worth it.”

Luis Gutierrez, Wine Advocate (243)