Resurrecting the Mystery: Clos Joliette

BY NEAL MARTIN | JANUARY 28, 2020Abbey Road, Dark Side of the Moon, Unknown Pleasures, London Calling and Screamadelica:
albums whose cover art defined an artist as much as the music itself. Likewise,
a wine label design can mold preconceptions of the wine. A handful of labels
are iconic and act as irresistible, subliminal magnetic forces upon the
inquisitive wine-lover. Think of the unmistakable black and white typeface of DRC,
the eye-catching bold yellow and red of Figeac – and add to that list Clos Joliette.
I have no inkling who designed the label; what I do know is that when I first laid eyes on it, with its distinctive,
almost childlike italic capital lettering and, underneath, the simple drawing
of a vineyard laborer looking over his vines with Pyrenean peaks in the
background, it triggered a feeling of acute anticipation. There was something
enigmatic about that label; a priori,
the wine must surely be special. And so it proved, though over the years, bottles
were rarely encountered. When I composed a Cellar Favorite for the <a target="_blank" href="https://vinous.com/articles/cellar-favorite-1978-jurancon-moelleux-le-clos-joliette-may-2018">1978</a>,
information on this Jurançon icon was frustratingly negligible and vague.
Trawling the Internet unearthed such sketchy historical details that I could
not even verify whether Clos Joliette still existed. It appeared to be in a
confusing state of limbo, a wine estate not confirmed dead but seemingly
comatose.

This
article fills in some gaps, including the current state of proprietorship and
what may follow, plus a handful of tasting notes with respect to wines now
coming onto the market. Expect answers to questions, but also more unanswered
questions! Earlier this year, Lionel Osmin invited me to a private tasting of Joliette
in London. I was unfamiliar with his name, and I’ll explain how he fits into
the Joliette jigsaw puzzle later on. Let me first summarize the history of Clos
Joliette. <img alt="" src="https://s3.amazonaws.com/images.vinous.com/uploads%2F1580226003514-joliette+labels.jpg"> History 

Clos
Joliette is regarded as the first producer in the Jurançon, in the southwest
corner of France. In 1929, the Migne family cleared forest in a natural
southeast-facing amphitheater to plant about a hectare of vines. Back then, the
go-to grape variety was Gros Manseng but, intentionally or not, the Mignes went
against received wisdom and cultivated Petit Manseng. Jurançon’s wines enjoyed
local demand, though according to Osmin, a bottle would cost little more than two
francs. Nevertheless, Clos Joliette gradually built a modest if niche reputation
as the region’s leading producer, even if it never sold for much more than
around 12 euros in today’s money. With limited income, investment was minimal. Maurice
Migne was in charge of Clos Joliette in the Sixties and Seventies, and when he
passed away, his widow Jeanne took over production for many years. Apparently
she was the archetypal French paysan,
always attired in her traditional black apron, under which she tied her leather
satchel stuffed with wads of money.&nbsp;

No
records exist of how the Mignes farmed the land or made their wines, though
ancient bottles now fetch hundreds of euros whenever they come up at auction.
Clos Joliette was revered by some of the world’s best winemakers. Legend has it
that the late Didier Dagueneau trespassed into the vineyard in the middle of
the night to take cuttings to propagate for his own Jurançon estate, Les
Jardins de Babylone. In 1989, Jeanne Migne passed away, and with nobody in the
family interested in continuing the estate, the vineyard was auctioned off around
1990 or 1991. The Mignes’ son, who was in the car business, sold off the cellar
of old vintages, which is why old bottles are as rare as hen’s teeth. There
were a few interested parties, including fellow Jurançon winemaker Charles
Hours and actor Gérard Depardieu, who had visited Joliette several times. Most predicted
that Hours would buy the estate; however, the successful bidder was Parisian caviste Michel Renaud. It seems that Renaud treated Clos
Joliette as a part-time hobby instead of devoting himself fully to the estate,
using pickers from his Armagnac vineyard to conduct the harvest; leaving
barrels for five years without racking and topping them up only if necessary; then
selling only a fraction of the production to a few friends and cellaring the
remainder. Renaud
died in 2015, leaving a wife, a daughter and her half-brother, the former a
trained oenologist. It became widely known that Clos Joliette was for sale,
though despite its niche fame, this was no Bordeaux Grand Cru Classé and there
was no queue of prospective buyers. French inheritance laws are complicated,
and when Renaud’s
widow passed away, there was still no outright buyer. Consequently, the estate
entered a transitional period that continues to this day.<img alt="" src="https://s3.amazonaws.com/images.vinous.com/uploads%2F1580226075519-joliette_vineyard.jpg"> The vineyard of Joliette with the snow-capped Pyrenean peaks in the background.&nbsp; 

So
where does Osmin come in? Born in the city of Pau, he tasted many old Jurançon
wines from his father’s cellar and trained at Charles Hours before establishing
his own distribution business, focused on Jurançon. In 2017, during a telephone
call with a friend, Osmin serendipitously discovered that Joliette was seeking
a buyer after Michel Renaud’s
passing. He immediately contacted the family to see if they would sell him
their “precious jewel.” Negotiations proved difficult and petered out, yet three
months before she passed away, Renaud’s widow called Osmin out of the blue and informed him
that it had been decided that he would take over running the estate. The
five-year contract gives Osmin the right to farm the vineyard and make the
wine, and control over distribution of new vintages as well as the accumulated
stocks of vintages spanning Renaud’s
20-year tenure – hence this tasting. As eagle-eyed readers might spot on the
label, Osmin is allowed to use the Joliette name but not Clos Joliette. This is because Clos Joliette pertains to the
vineyard, ergo it comes under Jurançon appellation rules that stipulate a
minimum level of residual sugar at around 50–60g/L for “Moelleux” wines and a
maximum for “Sec.” Clos Joliette’s residual sugar levels tend to fall between
the two, which meant that it had to either change style or forgo Jurançon AC
status. Osmin opted for the latter, and so henceforth “Joliette” is classed as
a Vin de Table de France. When the five-year contract comes up, Osmin is
confident that he will finally be able to take possession of the estate by
buying out Renaud’s
daughter and her half-brother, but of course, that cannot be guaranteed.

Remarkably,
some might say foolishly, Osmin signed the contract without having ever tasted
any of the bottles in Joliette’s cellar and, like virtually everyone else,
knowing little about Renaud’s modus
operandi. In the vineyard, he found that apart from the original 1929
plantings at the top of the amphitheater, Renaud had extended the vineyard with terraces
populated by vines in the region of 20 years old to bring the total vineyard to
1.5 hectares (not 1.8 hectares as I incorrectly stated in my Cellar Favorite). Not
all of those terraces can be used, since parts of them do not receive
sufficient sunlight hours, and there are some patches where vines are missing, so
yields will always be limited. Interestingly, Osmin found that Migne had
propagated vines using marcotage,
burying the vine branch back into the soil. He also found that the vineyard’s steepness
makes it prone to erosion, and that this in turn reveals some areas with pockets
of unstable bedrock underneath, like on the limestone bedrock in Saint-Émilion.
When I inquired about vineyard husbandry, Osmin said he had no doubt that for
years the previous proprietors had dumped a lot of chemicals and herbicides
onto the vines, though since converting to organic just a year ago, he has
already found increasing biodiversity. At some point he may undertake a soil
analysis, although it depends on how things turn out apropos of ownership. Osmin
determined that historically, picking took three or four days, although he has
no idea whether that was consecutive or spread over a longer period of time.<img alt="" src="https://s3.amazonaws.com/images.vinous.com/uploads%2F1580226114367-joliette+lionel+osmin.jpg"> The current guardian, aiming to resurrect Joliette, Lionel Osmin. 

Venturing
into the cellar, although Migne’s and Renaud’s techniques will never be known, to
his astonishment Osmin discovered that neither paid much heed to the style or sweetness
of each barrel, and that Renaud had never practiced any assemblage to create a uniform blend. Every barrel differs wildly
in terms of sweetness. And when Osmin tasted random bottles in the cellar bins,
he discovered that again, every bin tasted different, leading him to believe
that each 300-bottle bin corresponds to an individual barrel (but those
expecting a bin to be uniform should remember that there would be differences
depending upon whether the wine was run off from the top or the bottom of the
barrel). All this explains why my aforementioned 1978 tasted sweet but came
without “Moelleux” on the label. Essentially, back then it was like playing
Russian roulette: all old bottles of Clos Joliette indicate is “Jurançon,” and
even then, 90% are technically illegal because they rarely reached the residual
sugar levels stipulated by appellation rules.

“The
wines should all have been dead when you looked at the cellar,” Osmin told me.
“The juice from the old press must have been very oxidized. It went against
everything that I had been taught at oenological school. Barrels had been left
empty, so I cannot use those, and I was obliged to buy new barrels, which
raised the question of whether I should pursue a more modern style. But I
bought two or three used barrels from Suduiraut.” Of course, browning the juice
prior to fermentation is now viewed as a means of preventing premature
oxidation, so maybe Migne and Renaud were just unwittingly ahead of their time.

It
is clear that Osmin wants to maintain the traditional style of Joliette. Fruit
from the 2016 and 2017 vintages was sold to a neighboring estate, and Osmin finally
made the 2018 vintage, albeit at a paltry 8hl/ha that barely filled two
barrels. Going forward, Osmin wishes to indicate the sweetness of bottles while
remaining outside appellation rules. Therefore, bottles with a green wax
capsule are driest, below 10g/L residual sugar; yellow, between 10 and 30g/L;
and orange, above that, normally up to 60g/L. A code on the bottle makes it
easy to work out what you are tasting: “L” followed by two digits relating to
the vintage and then “C” followed by the bin identifier. Osmin told me that
having tasted through all of the roughly 140 bins, they concluded that 24 are top quality. He is currently selling the wines as six-packs of six
different bottles including one from those 24 bins, mindful that all subsequent
releases should have the same average quality. The price will be around €1,200.00 per
six-pack. <img alt="" src="https://s3.amazonaws.com/images.vinous.com/uploads%2F1580226030843-joliette+bottles+group+shot.jpg"> The Wines 

The
first point to make is that among the nine wines, the sweetness levels varied
wildly, ranging from an almost Sercial Madeira character up to a mature
Tokaji/Barsac hybrid. Thank God that Osmin opted for a system to indicate sweetness
level; I have ensured that this is mentioned in the tasting note for readers’
reference. What pleased me about tasting these wines is that despite Renaud’s
seeming indifference toward Clos Joliette throughout his tenure, he may have inadvertently
continued making the Jurançon that attracted those who adore the traditional
style under Migne and will fork out hundreds of euros for the privilege of
experiencing it. There is still that sense of rusticity and that feeling of not
knowing quite what you are going to get. Yet I found that these vintages possessed
the elusive charm that makes Clos Joliette, now Joliette, so special. Taking
the first three drier styles, the 1993
Jurançon L93-C90 was uncompromising, take-me-or-leave-me wine with distinct
flor-like notes that made it compelling. Wonderful! The 1994 Jurançon L94-C53 seemed a bit lopsided and too alcoholic
(15.7%). The 1998 Jurançon L98-C03
reveled in a great growing season, offering a gorgeous, waxy-textured palate
and impressive complexity. I loved the 1996
Jurançon L96-C82 for its entrancing Aszu-like aromas, tension and off-dry
finish; this is far more successful than two other yellow wax capsule
iterations in 2000 and 2007, the latter indicating some error
in the winery in terms of sulfur addition. Osmin believes it might eventually
come around; who knows? There were two orange-capsule bottlings, my pick being the
quite superb 2001 Jurançon L01-C39,
which contains 84gm/L residual sugar and yet manages to convey real nuance and
elegance.

Joliette
or Clos Joliette, whatever you want to call it, remains an enigma. Even after
this tasting and subsequent research, there remain gaps in information that are
unlikely to be filled. I guess that is part of the allure. Joliette is not a
well-known name, and yet its hardcore fans, including well-known winemakers,
speak about it in hushed tones, while collectors pay vast sums at auction for
ancient bottles. Joliette has the intangible magic that wealthy producers build
marketing departments to conjure among cognoscenti, missing the point that magic
is not something you buy. It’s not even necessarily correlated to the quality
of the wine. And it starts with that label.&nbsp;&nbsp;<a target="_blank" href="https://vinous.com/wines?sort%5Bdirection%5D=desc&amp;sort%5Bname%5D=vintage&amp;wf_dirty=false&amp;wf_export_fields=&amp;wf_export_format=&amp;wf_id=&amp;wf_match=all&amp;wf_model=Wine&amp;wf_name=&amp;wf_order=vintage&amp;wf_order_type=desc&amp;wf_page=1&amp;wf_per_page=25&amp;wf_submitted=true&amp;wf_type=WillFilter%3A%3AFilter&amp;wine_filter%5Barticle_id%5D=2508">See the Wines from Youngest to Oldest</a><hr>You Might Also Enjoy<a target="_blank" href="https://vinous.com/articles/2018-burgundy-confounded-expectations-jan-2020">2018 Burgundy: Confounded Expectations</a>, Neal Martin, January 2020<a target="_blank" href="https://vinous.com/articles/a-century-not-out-talbot-1919-2010-oct-2019">A Century (Not Out): Talbot 1919-2010</a>, Neal Martin, October 2019<a target="_blank" href="https://vinous.com/articles/songs-full-of-light-lafaurie-peyraguey-1906-2018-aug-2019">Songs Full of Light - Lafaurie-Peyraguey 1906-2018</a>, Neal Martin, August 2019 <div><a target="_blank" href="https://vinous.com/articles/drink-your-idols-roumier-s-musigny-1976-2008-aug-2019">Drink Your Idols: Roumier’s Musigny 1976-2008</a>, Neal Martin, August 2019</div><a target="_blank" href="https://vinous.com/articles/cellar-favorite-1978-jurancon-moelleux-le-clos-joliette-may-2018">Cellar Favorite:&nbsp;1978 Jurançon Moelleux Le Clos Joliette</a>, Neal Martin, May 2018

Content

Engage

Vinous

Social