Les PervenchesChardonnay ‘Les Couchant’ 2020 (750ml)

Mike and Véronique of Les Pervenches have been growing grapes and making wines outside of Montreal – a most serious boundary region of viticulture – for over 20 years. They are the OGs of the Montreal wine scene; their wines are coveted and poured at the best restaurants of this amazing city: Joe Beef, Nora Gray, Le Vin Papillon, etc. Les Pervenches has, more or less singularly, led the group of young winemakers who are experimenting with both hybrid and vinifera vines, including Pinard et Filles and Domaine du Nival. Yet Les Pervenches is different; these wines are some of the most quietly, subtly complex wines I have ever had: intricate puzzles etched on the head of a pin. The wines seem to me able to have a dialogue with any of the great wines of the ‘old world,’ relating most obviously to the cooler climates of Europe. The best of them feel as if they were made in an ancient European winemaking tradition that doesn’t exist: Chablis dropped in the coolest vineyards of the Saar? From where or why or how this unique-ness comes about, I don’t know, but I do feel it, profoundly.

“Le Couchant,” which means “the sunset,” is the top white wine of this estate, and probably one of the top wines of Canada. These are among the oldest Chardonnay vines in Quebec, improbably planted in this border region in 1992 – which is sort of unfathomable if you really think about it. Either way, these old vines are a viticultural treasure and it’s reassuring in a very human way to see Mike and Véro labor over these beloved vines. “Le Couchant” is superb, it’s the wine that made me deeply want to represent these wines in the U.S. It is a lavishly austere Chablis from the Canadian Saar, given in many years a generous élevage, so that there is a creamy citrus plushness to the wine, however gossamer and silken the wine is. At 12.3% this is not a shy, reserved Chardonnay, but it isn’t flashy either, the creamy-nuttiness of the wine woven with spiced lime zest and green citrus, a saline mineral and a complex arctic sous bois. Please try and find a bottle of this wine and approach it like you would a foreign relative that you dearly love, yet don’t share a common language with. Patience, you’ll understand each other soon enough.