Boniface Jacquere

If you run your eating and drinking get-togethers like we do then you’ll know exactly what we’re talking about when we say that for those big nights it’s often good to start with a warm-up wine for the warm-up wine.

A wine so easy, so refreshing, so built to get you into the mood to eat and drink, that it’s almost forgotten about both during and after consumption except for that annoying feeling that you just left something really good behind. Produced from 100% Jacquere, this dry, crisp, unoaked, uncomplicated, delicately balanced breath of fresh air does indeed act as the perfect prelude to a fantastic evening or any number of poolside/outdoor patio applications and makes for a deceptively more interesting drink than the genre suggests.

2008:

- 89 Points Robert Parker's Wine Advocate, Issue #184

“The 2008 Apremont Les Rocailles is as fine as any of the score of vintages I have tasted, with the cool summer and strong aromatics that characterize this vintage in much of Europe dovetailing beautifully with the delicacy, refreshment, and mineral nuance that are generally this wine's strong points. Pear, lemon, and floral aromas lead to an invigorating, salt- and pear skin-tinged palate impression and a savory finish of greater grip than I have come to expect from this versatile wine. Enjoy it over the next 9-12 months. $15. –D.S.”

2007:

- 89 Points Hanes Wine Review, May/Jun 2008

"Brightly sparkling in the glass, green-gold straw in color, fades around the rims yet hard to notice with the shine across the surface. High degree of minerally smoke in the nose, buffered some by apple an lemon notes, some flower petals as well, the peach and apricot scents develop as it warms and lends a creamy bottom as if topped with whipped cream. Medium-bodied, both the tenacious acidity and slight fizziness imbue it with a cleansing feel, mineral water, fresh stream, wet white pebbles, that kind of stuff. Still has that raw smokiness but not as dominant as in the nose. Fresh, almost juiceless, if snappy, apple, pear, apricot fruit. Lemon peel element fresh too. It’s just a fresh, pleasingly evanescent summer white wine and I am tired of trying to add descriptions to an intentionally guileless wine. Mostly Jacquère, remainder possibly Aligoté, Altesse, Chardonnay, Chasselas. $12.99, 11.5%"

2005:

"Pierre Boniface produced a whopping 65,000 cases (7,500 are coming to the U.S.) of the 2005 Apremont, 22% of the entire appellation (the local coop makes the same amount), a wonderful value. Aromatically rich, it exudes melon, flowers, and white fruit scents. Plump, terrifically balanced, softly-textured, as well as medium-bodied, this melon and pear-flavored beauty was fermented and aged entirely in stainless steel. Drink it over the next year." 88 Points, Wine Advocate, #165

“The equivalent of drinking from a mountain stream running through cool, rocky crevices laced with wine.”
Robert M. Parker, Jr., The Wine Advocate

“This is as fresh as wine gets, the wine version of bubbling, crystal clear spring water. It is light in body, light in alcohol, alive and kicking on the palate, bone dry, and crisp at the finish. It reminds me of green apple, granite cliffs, and alpine meadows inhabited by of-age nymphs.” - Kermit Lynch, Wine Merchant

Light White, Savoie Joy: Spritzy, dry Boniface Apremont from Savoie - bottled joie de vivre - is a find... relish this simple Alpine white’s floral scent, grapefruity flavor and weightlessness. Inquisitive palates will discover pleasures in its unknown grape, called Jacquere. - Howard Goldberg, The New York Times