Les Cavarodes - Meandres Blanc 2018

A super rare and interesting wine from Jura.

From the difficult 2018 vintage, this is actually declassified Lumachelles cuvee. The wine went through a long, difficult fermentation and required some creative winemaking. 

To finish ferment the nearly completed wine was macerated with grapes from 2020, helping to get the wine through to dryness. Overall the wine went through a very long elevage process in topped up old barrels.

It is a touch on the wild side for people that love a little natural nuttiness and some more lifted apricot notes. Quite savoury and crying out for food. Some people have found this a little reductive on opening but blows off pretty quick. If you like natural wines you should love this, however not for everyone.

Regular drinkers of Etienne's wines will be relieved to hear that the labels are indeed a little peely, as is tradition.

THE ESTATE

Les Cavarodes is the estate of Etienne Thiebaud, who first started making wine in 2007. The winery is based in the village of Cramans in the the Northern Jura.

The holdings are small, however the cuvees are plentiful with many different wines produced. This does mean that the wine is hard to get hold of with only a few bottles making their way to us. 

The vineyards are all farmed organically and wines handled naturally.