Touraize Arbois Chardonnay Les Voisines

André-Jean (“A-J”) Morin is the eighth generation of Morin to tend the vine in Arbois, beginning with his ancestor Etienne in 1704. André-Jean’s approach in the cellar is adamantly non-interventionist: he never adds yeasts, never chaptalizes, never adds sulfur before malolactic fermentation is finished, never pumps the wines, never fines, never filters, and keeps sulfur additions between 10 and 20 milligrams per liter. Despite a relative absence of controls, however, A-J’s wines are unfailingly clean, precise, and expressive—a reflection of his exacting, fastidious working regimen.

 “Les Voisines” (“the neighbors”) comes from 2.35 hectares of Chardonnay spread among four parcels in Arbois: Curoulet, En Flandre, Les Corvées, and La Platière, with soils ranging from gravelly marl to calcareous marl to blue marl. The fruit is pressed whole-cluster and undergoes alcoholic and malolactic fermentation in well-used barrels of varying sizes, where the wine spends 18 months on the fine lees and is bottled without fining or filtration, and with just 20 milligrams per liter of sulfur (added after malolactic finishes). The barrels are kept full, in the ouillé style, and the finished wine displays bristling minerality unaccented by oxidative elements. Despite its recognizable varietal character and its purity of fruit, however, this is a forcefully saline, chiseled iteration of Chardonnay that could be produced nowhere else but the Jura.