Representing the only wine of its vintage from Foulaquier or Les Tonillieres to have already been bottled when I visited in April, Blandine Chauchat's tank-raised 2009 Coteaux du Languedoc Pic Saint-Loup Les Tonillieres - 50-50 Syrah-Carignan - is scented with ripe blackberry, cedar, walnut oil, and elder flower, all of which persist on a compact, faintly chewy palate whose finish happily preserves considerable primary juiciness. This ought to be deliciously versatile over the next several years, and perhaps serve as a sort of barometer for the eventual bottle evolution of Jequier and Chauchat's other 2009s. 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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