Obscure French Grape Varieties: Mondeuse
Posted On January 7, 2010 at 8:36 pm in Savoy
Vineyard in the Bugey AOC
I spent the New Year’s weekend with friends who had recently escaped Paris to move to the hills of the Jura Mountains outside of Geneva. To get the weekend started, we picked up some local wines made from a red grape I had tried before but knew little about, Mondeuse.
Mondeuse is grown mostly is the Savoy region of France. Only around 400 acres are currently planted but it’s an ancient varietal cultivated in France or Gaul even before the arrival of the Romans. After phylloxera wiped out the vineyards very little Mondeuse was re-planted with grafted root stocks.
Jancis Robinson calls it ” juicy, peppery wines are powerfully flavoured and coloured and are some of Savoie’s few to respond well to careful oak ageing”. I found it to have a deep ruby-red color with spicy and peppery notes, good tannins and balanced acidity with a dry finish.
Its produced recently delimited Bugey AOC and most of the wines are estate bottled by small producers and sold locally leaving only 4% to be exported. A quick search on wine-searcher.com reveals that you can find it in the US. Its a wine well worth trying.
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