From, as usual, half each Grenache and Syrah, and tasted assembled from tank (in fact, its two cepages were already vinified in the same concrete tank), Pierre Jequier's 2009 Coteaux du Languedoc Pic Saint-Loup L'Orphee offers a complex array of scrub-like and resinous herbal shadings to its scents and flavors or ripe, bitter-edged cassias and black raspberry. Walnut oil, black pepper, pan drippings, and meat stock on a rich though finely tannic palate add mouthwatering complexity accentuated by salinity. Like other of Jequier's 2009s, this long-finishing cuvee displays an admirable measure of bright, fresh fruit character, as well as harboring noticeable CO2, whose retention he promotes in an effort to minimize the sulfur added after racking. Of course, the presence of CO2 - though I also tasted after having purged this of gas by hand with a severe shaking - leaves a certain degree of ineradicable uncertainly as to the eventual profile of the wine from bottle. But I would expect this to benefit from at least two years there, and to then drink well for another half dozen. Swiss former-architect Pierre Jequier's Mas Foulaquier - and the Les Tonillieres estate-within-an-estate of his wife and formerly Loire winemaker as well as former member of France's Assemblee Nationale Blandine Chauchat (about both of which one can read more in my issue 183 report) - represent one of the six or eight most exciting and consistently excellent sources in the Languedoc. Jequier is another partisan of the 2010 vintage but he managed formidable yet charming success with his early-harvested 2009s, a vintage he compares with 2007 - high praise at this address - and in which he finished harvesting the smallest crop in his career already September 1. -But despite the early harvest,- observes Jequier, -it's fantastic how mature the 2009s' tannins turned out to be- - in most instances, I would add. The relatively cool 2008 growing season coincided with this estate's largest harvest, and as had happened here once before, in 2002, picking extended into October, with excellent results (if at the price of a Les Calades bottling). Jequier, incidentally, is among those expressing a concern on which I have touched in general introductions to my Languedoc and Roussillon reports but fear that by the time my next ones appear two years from now I'll have to harp, namely the aesthetically and historically unfounded, seemingly arbitrary insistence of I.N.A.O. authorities as well as regional grower associations on treating Syrah as a virtual benchmark of quality - and so, for example requiring under current proposals 50% Syrah by surface area and 30% or more by volume for Pic St.-Loup. What worries Jequier is not merely the number of Foulaquier cuvees (not to mention those of other over-achieving estates) that would fail this requirement, but the fact that it ignores the widespread, mysterious - and at this estate increasingly acute - viral malady that has since early this decade been killing-off Syrah vines from here to California. Next year, incidentally, this estate will bottle its first white, from an interesting mixture of traditional cepages to which some mature black grape vines were grafted-over.Importers include Metropolis Wine Merchants, New York, 001 212 581 205 and Ansonia Imports, Wilmington, DE (215) 922-5169
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