Domaine du Pelican Arbois Savagnin Ouille 2024

The Land

Domaine du Pélican's Savagnin comes from two Arbois parcels, Au Barby and Grand Curoulet, both on old soils rich in Jurassic marl and what the Jura calls terre de gryphées, marl packed with the fossilized shells of a prehistoric oyster. The distinction matters: the marl in Burgundy is white, while the Jura's runs grey and blue, and the two regions' limestones formed at the same moment before an ancient rift valley split them apart along the Saône. Grand Curoulet faces north on a hillside above the town of Arbois and the plain beyond, exposed and windy, and it ripens later than anything else the estate farms. Cold winters, a short season, and marl that stays wet: this is Savagnin's home ground.

The Wine

Ouillé is the whole point of this bottle. Most people meet Savagnin as vin jaune, aged a minimum of six years and three months in a barrel deliberately left unfilled so a veil of yeast forms across the surface, giving the nutty, curry-spiced, oxidative character the Jura is famous for. Ouillé means the opposite: the barrels are topped up throughout aging, no veil ever forms, and the grape arrives fresh and direct. Here the fruit ferments in 500-liter barrels and ages ten months in neutral 350-liter barrels. Green apple, quince, lemon pith, crushed hazelnut, white pepper, and a hard saline edge, with acidity that lands closer to Riesling than to white Burgundy. 2024 was brutal in the Jura: April frost, a wet spring and summer, and constant downy mildew pressure that pushed yields dramatically low. What survived is concentrated and taut.

The People

Domaine du Pélican started with a blind tasting. Guillaume d'Angerville, whose family runs one of Volnay's benchmark estates, had a standing request at a Paris restaurant: pour me something blind, anything but Burgundy. The sommelier brought a Jura Chardonnay, d'Angerville called it Burgundy, and he went looking for vineyards in the Jura. In 2012 he leased Château de Chavanes in Montigny-lès-Arsures, gaining five hectares of biodynamically farmed vines replanted a decade earlier, and added another five that had never seen chemicals. In 2014, when Jacques Puffeney announced his retirement, d'Angerville took over four hectares of his holdings. That sequence is why this domaine had a serious Arbois vineyard portfolio almost immediately.

Food Pairing

Comté, ideally 18 months or older, is the reflexive Jura pairing and it works because the wine's salinity meets the cheese's crystalline crunch head-on. Chicken thighs braised with cream, mushrooms, and a splash of the wine itself get a lift from the acidity that a richer white would not provide. Grilled trout with almonds and brown butter is the freshwater version of the same idea. For something less Alpine, sear scallops hard and finish them with lemon, or work through a platter of raw oysters. Non-oxidative Savagnin like this is the bottle to keep in the door of the fridge for the nights you actually cook.