About Pouilly Fuissé
Way back when I was in my early twenties, Pouilly-Fuissé was all the rage. The restaurant I was working at had three on their wine list. One of the greatest points of being a chef at such a young age was that I got to experience many great wines early on.
Drinking good wine didn’t mean I knew anything about wine, but I did know that Pouilly-Fuissé was the finest Chardonnay I had ever experienced by that point. And like all guys in their 20’s, I spouted off my knowledge with the same level of aplomb as the Phillie Phanatic shooting pork bullets from his pneumatic hotdog gun.
While Pouilly Fuisse has a lot more competition in the Chardonnay market today, it hasn’t lost any of it’s luster. A few salient facts: Pouilly Fuisse is the AOC (AKA wine region) for a few towns in southern Burgundy. The wines must made with 100% chardonnay. This particular wine comes from vineyards surrounding the town of Vergisson, although other surrounding towns ( Fuissé, Solutré-Pouilly, and Chaintré) can also call their wines Pouilly Fuisse.
Evening Land Vineyards
We have used Evening Land wines at the wine school, but with a bit of hesitation. Their business is very different from a traditional winery, and I am not sure it’s a good direction for the wine trade. The “Evening Land” brand is owned by an investment group that started purchasing wineries in California, Oregon, and France in 2005.
Their goal was to produce great Pinot Noir and Chardonnay worldwide under the “Evening Land” label. They did manage to do that, but the project never really caught on with wine consumers. In fact, it seemed to confuse the marketplace. Some of the wineries have been sold off in the past few years; the firm’s founder (Mark Tarlov) left in 2012.
Wine Reviews
Sourced from old vines, this wine is mostly aged in a tank, with a quarter of the juice aged in oak barrels for less than a year. This makes for a lovely fruit-dominated white Burgundy with fresh peach and seafoam on the nose. The palate pushes toward red fruit and veers back to ultra-ripe pear with an undercurrent of toasted spices. The bright minerality moves forward into the finish with a refreshing, bright note of orange oil. Medium-bodied with a dose of buttery luxury, this wine is a great alternative to a Napa Chardonnay.