Jean-Baptiste Senat Arbalete & Coquelicots

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From Grenache and a third Cinsault, macerated only briefly, and bottled already in March, Senat's 2010 Arbalete & Coquelicots evokes a riot of juicy, ripe fruits including mulberry, black raspberry, and cherry. Soft in texture - an impression reinforced by low sulfur - it finishes caressingly if simply, and with a faintly bitter herbal accent. This is one to enjoy within the next 9-12 months. (The name, "Crossbows and Poppies" is, explains, Senat, this Frenchman's homage to "Guns and Roses.") Jean-Baptiste Senat's 15 immaculately-tended, geologically-complex, wind-exposed hectares around Trausse in western Minervois are devoted entirely to black grapes - predominantly head-pruned Grenache, Carignan, and Mourvedre, along with a bit of Syrah near the boundary of the appellation. Even the Mourvedre vines here are three decades old, this having been one of the sectors of Minervois penetrated by a surprisingly early awareness of that grape's potential. "West of the village it's too cool for it to ripen," notes Senat, "and anyway in the garrigue it's too dry. On the plain the soil is too rich and you get Mourvedre with huge bunches. The sole place where it succeeds is in one sticky clay-rich sector near the village. The big problem in the Languedoc is that the different cepages get planted and treated analogously with famous growing regions, so you have people trying to make Bandol from their Mourvedre; Grenache as it if were Chateauneuf; and Hermitage out of Syrah, which I believe is daft. But unfortunately, we lack an historical reference point. Our ancestors cannot tell us how to approach the task of rendering great Languedoc wines." Whatever is lacking, the passionately quality-conscious and candidly self-critical Senat seems well on his way to remedying by means of imagination, experimentation, and hard work. "I'm interested in capturing more than the sucrosity of fruit," he explains. "I also look for a positive vegetal dimension, for bitter elements, and for digestabilite and freshness, (to) capture nuance and achieve an arbitrage between ripeness and freshness." It would be hard to more succinctly characterize the profoundly and distinctively delicious results he is achieving. Senat opined that the dry, hot 2001 and 2003 vintages served as excellent training for how to achieve these ideals in 2009. But there is no question that 2008 and 2010 are better-suited to his aesthetic ideals, and in addition to the wines on which I was able to offer notes below, the as yet unassembled lots that will for the most part inform his 2010 Le Bois des Merveilles cuvee were riveting and mouthwatering. By the way, Senat likes his wines to kick into malo-lactic transformation on the heels - or even before the completion - of alcoholic fermentation. They appear to need little encouragement in that regard, and it's hard to argue with the results. Besides having a chance to visit his vineyards and absorb considerable lore in the process, I was able to taste wines going back to Senat's 1996 arrival at Trausse (where his ancestors were not vignerons) after having grown up and trained academically in Paris but then gotten the urge to "work with his hands."Importer: Weygandt-Metzler, Unionville, PA; tel. (610) 486-0800