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| Ganevat “Kopin!” Vin de France NV $63 Ganevat “La Colline des Dames” Vin de France $83 Renardière Ploussard Arbois 2021 $51 Ganevat “De Toute Beauté” Vin de France 2022 $60 Bonus (1 bottle only): Labet “Les Varrons” Côtes du Jura 2021 $75 |
| “Unicorn” wines are the wines we rarely, if ever see. While the production of unicorns may be minuscule, the thirst for them is unabating. This begs the question of whether a wine’s quality is a function of its scarcity, or is it scarce because it is such a delight that everyone clamors for it? Does Pierre Overnoy’s 2008 poulsard merit a price tag of nearly $1,000, or does the Clos Rougeard “Brézé,” a unicorn of which the domain produces only a few hundred bottles a year, fetch such an admittedly painful tariff because there’s just not a lot to go around, or are such wines scarce but also just so damn delicious you really must know it (spoiler: the latter)? I do not know the cognitive bias that undergirds the FOMO anxiety upon which the unicorn rests, but there certainly must be one. To be sure, a wine’s scarcity provides zero guarantee that it is delicious and worth your while; not every unicorn wine offers a profound journey. And yet there are certainly unicorns that drinkers seek because they do just that. And there is also an undeniable psychological gain to working with unicorns. Unicorn dealers feel superior for tendering such goods to the handful of the deserving elect who get (understand, are allotted) the wines, and the elect in turn feel self-congratulatory for getting their hands on a prestigious bottle or two.
France’s Jura region is a location responsible for an unusual number of unicorn wines. It’s a region with challenging vintages and delicate grape varieties, and recently frost and humidity have meant zero yields for some unfortunate vigneron there, so there’s a built-in scarcity quotient. Tonight, we’re tasting four wines (plus one bonus wine—first come, first served) from this region, including two from a Jura Ur-unicornista, Fanfan Ganevat. We are fortunate to get our hands on a few bottles of Ganevat wines each vintage and rather than hoard them greedily and dole them out bottle by bottle to the deserving elect, we want you to try them and see if they are for you. Please note that some of the wines we are pouring are very limited, so we may be unable to fulfill your request for a given bottle if you chose to buy one. We have several other Ganevat wines in stock that we won’t be able to pour but as a consolation, we are offering 10 percent off not only of all Ganevat wines, but any other Jura wine on the shelves. |