Savagnin

Savagnin makes the strangest famous white in France. In the Jura, east of Burgundy, it is barrelled and then deliberately left unfilled: as the wine evaporates, a film of yeast called the voile grows across the surface and protects it while slowly changing it. The wine sits that way for at least six years and three months. The result is vin jaune, and it is sold in a squat 620 millilitre bottle called a clavelin, the volume said to be what a litre becomes after the years under the veil.

The taste is closer to a light fino sherry than to a still white: walnut, curry spice, bruised apple and a long salty finish, but with no fortification at any point. Château-Chalon is the appellation that makes nothing else. The wine is famously long lived, and a bottle from the middle of the last century is not a novelty.

The same grape also makes an ordinary dry white, and the Jura calls that style ouillé, meaning topped up. Those wines are taut, high in acid and stony. Savagnin is a member of the Traminer family, so it is a close relation of Gewürztraminer, but it carries none of the lychee perfume.