Nicolas Faure of the Jura?

Hey Everyone,

I know a lot of you including myself are big fans of Faure, Berthaut-Gerbet and Lachaux! So I wanted to put Benjamin Benoit of Cellier Saint Benoit on everyones Radar.

We are lucky to be almost the sole importer in the US. Wasserman has some up in Oregon as does Advintage in SC. The production is tiny, most of the wines are 2000, 1000, 900, 300 bottle production!

It’s funny, with producers like Overnoy and Ganevat and really just Jura overall, I prefer the whites over reds. So when I first heard of Benjamin making single vineyard Ploussard, Trousseau, Pinot and just two whites, I was curious but scared of the mouse-y-ness of the Jura rouge. To my surprise the wines were different then anything I’ve seen! Clean Clean Clean.

Benjamin is just 25. And 19 is the first vintage of the wines and I have to say its an amazing effort for a first vintage. As you go through the range, I see a lot of inspiration from whom he has trained under. The Pinot reminds of Charles Lachaux, the Ploussard makes me think of Nicolas Faure and the Trousseau of Amelie Berthaut. Really fascinating.

Like most wines that Wasserman handles, and especially those with tiny production - Pedres,Faure,Lachaux now Les Horees. The Benoit wines will quickly add onto that list!

I attached a producer profile below. They are landing next month!! We are super excited.

https://thatcherswineconsulting.com/pages/benjamin-benoit-cellier-saint-benoit

So what is the correlation?
Basically zero production and Wasserman??

lol well beside the zero production and Wasserman.

Most of viticultural practices stemmed from Nicolas. We spent a lot of time chatting with him and also Charles. They both mention how impactful Nicolas was on their now ethos in the vineyard. Nicolas didn’t really come from a wine making family, but I remember chatting with Charles as they were in school together and he mentions how he was truly the most focused on viticulture. I think its also the reason that Berthaut-Gerbet has exploded in quality. The Nicolas is managing all of them.

His use of whole cluster in his Pinot is super clean, not green or stemmy, really reminded me a lot of the Charles Lachaux -negoce project wine. I feel like Benjamin got a lot of inspiration in wine making from Amelie but he pretty much just talks about his vineyards how he wants to move more to little to no till, regenerative farming.

He is trying to remove as much sulphur as possible in the wine making but at the same time, 19 and now 21 it might be bit aggressive to go full on no sulphur especially with the push to have substantial cover crop and minimal tilling.

Obviously they are mostly different grapes, but the sort of ripeness that the Faure’s wines can achieve without it feeling modern and flashy with oak, I see the similarities in his wines. I am excited to taste 2020s as the PH is a bit lower.