Jacques Puffeney Arbois AC Poulsard 2006
A very pale burnished copper-tinged (almost amber) red.
Not a complex nose, but very pleasant sweet and sour cherry (at perfect ripeness), old Alpine strawberry, even some rhubarb, and a slightly lactic note.
Medium weight, bright acidity and gentle yet decidedly present astringency, earth, a faint whiff of damp old cellar wood.
Not complex or intriguing, but the more I drank, the more I enjoyed it.
Jacques Puffeney Arbois AC Savagnin 2004
A pure lemon colour, with good clarity... and yet it amost looks "creamy".
It smells of lemon pith, and it's got that oxidative character of Sherry - the ethyl acetate is there but it's not outdone by the huge "saltiness" this wine also smells of. I know that doesn't make sense, because you can't technically smell salt, but I mean it kind of smells as if a wind at the seaside suddenly shot ocean spay into your nose. Nice! There's a bit of a crushed dried white flower smell too, which is not unattractive, but unusual and interesting. And yet there's a kind of creaminess to it on the nose too. Intriguing.
On the palate, it has lovely acidity, it really zips around in there but it's not sharp at all, in fact there's a kind of creaminess to the mouthfeel, and at the same time quite of lot of the kind of flavour you get (if you can imagine it) off a really sour lemon without it actually tasting sour. It's almost seems a wine of contradictions.
This is a lovely wine IMO. It's light on the palate and yet still creamy, it's got really well balanced acidity and "different" aromas (it's not about ripe fruit, it's about oxidation, near-underripeness and salt!).