Your intrepid liquor reporter was out at a fancy holiday soirée last week, and the wine list was entirely French.
Now, your humble narrator enjoys French wine as much as the next person, even though the labels can be somewhat inscrutable to the uninitiated, so you frequently don’t know what you are getting until the bottle has been opened for that first taste.
To my delight, the wine paired with the first course was an Auxerrois, one of the more obscure white grapes that wine snobs just love to ramble on about, which I proceeded to do with those guests lucky enough to be seated at my table.
Auxerrois is a grape that goes by many names, including Mâconnais, Melon Blanc, Chardonnay Blanc, Weiss Silber, and dozens of others. Genetically, Auxerrois has the same parents as the Chardonnay grape, making the two siblings, although not identical twins.
The true origins of the Auxerrois grape are lost in the wine-soaked mists of time, but most of the people who track that sort of thing believe that Auxerrois was born in the Alsace-Lorraine region of France, right up against the border with Germany.
Unsurprisingly, most of the Auxerrois in the world is still grown in the Alsace region, a rich cornucopia of vineyards that has been passed back and forth between France and Germany with the rise and fall of empires over the centuries.
It is rare to see a bottle of white wine labeled explicitly as an Auxerrois, because it is usually blended with Pinot Blanc, forming a rich symbiosis that improves both grapes.
Auxerrois adds body to Pinot Blanc and provides a spicy character that helps balance the crisp green fruit flavours that tend to dominate in Pinot Blanc, resulting in a more complex finish.
So, although Pinot Blanc is one of the top white grapes worldwide, it is almost always blended with some portion of Auxerrois before bottling.
Additionally, due to some historical oddities in French wine labeling laws, blended wines that contain any Pinot Blanc must be labeled as Pinot Blanc. So, that Pinot Blanc you like so much might be 99% Auxerrois, or even some other white grape. Indeed, French wine labeling laws could drive a person to drink!
Fortunately for the winemaker, Auxerrois thrives in limestone soils, and ripens a few weeks earlier than Pinot Blanc, avoiding a mad rush at harvest time by spreading out the picking over time.
Auxerrois seems at home in the cool climate wine region of Alsace. Unsurprisingly, Auxerrois also grows well here in Canada, particularly in the Okanagan Valley of British Columbia.
Most Auxerrois is blended with other white grapes, but when bottled as a single varietal, Auxerrois has notes of citrus fruits, paired with a rich and musky aroma, and hints of honey and spice on the finish.
Our local wine market is blessed with a few Canadian wineries bottling single-varietal Auxerrois, and your humble narrator makes a point of seeking them out.
At the northern end of the Okanagan Valley, the venerable Gray Monk vineyard has been planting Auxerrois for decades, far longer than has been fashionable in the Canadian market. Originally planted as a blending grape for their flagship Pinot Gris wines (Gray Monk being a common nickname for the Pinot Gris grape), the family-owned vineyard is now on its second generation of winemakers, with the legendary pioneers of the first generation recently passing the torch to the children to carry on the family legacy.
Gray Monk bottles a 100% Auxerrois varietal, made in the old-world style with a new-world twist. Your humble narrator visits Gray Monk on every visit to the Okanagan, and never fails to be impressed. The Gray Monk Auxerrois has plenty tangy citrus and spice on the nose, balanced with notes of peach and rhubarb on the tongue.
My personal favourite is the Gehringer Brothers Old Vines Auxerrois, near the southern end of the Okanagan Valley in BC. An eminently food-friendly wine, it pairs well with seafood or dishes with cream sauces. Not as crisp or astringent as a Pinot Blanc, the Auxerrois oozes a rich and mellow finish that keeps me coming back for more. With bottles priced at under $15, do your bit to support our Canadian wine industry by picking up a local Auxerrois today!
