The Mythical Clos Joliette

After nearly a century of ultra-rare truly unicorn status, Clos Joliette's new owner, Lionel Osmin, issued the first public release of Joliette's private library stocks which we are honored to now represent exclusively in the US with France+Western. 

First planted in 1929, Maurice Migné cleared a single hectare of forest in Jurançon’s Chappelle de Rousse, a complex terroir of rounded “pouddinges” stones, silica, limestone, and clay, with a subsoil rich in iron, in a southeast-facing amphitheater that sets it apart by allowing a perfect slow ripeness. Migné planted his Clos exclusively to ungrafted vines of Petit Manseng, which made little sense during this period when wines were not yet estate-bottled. By the 1980s it had achieved cult status — with wine legends like Jean-Claude Berrouet of Château Petrus describing it as “the quintessence of an exceptional terroir,” and Bertrand de Lur Saluces saying it was the one estate whose wine could rival his own Château d’Yquem.

Despite Jurançon being the rainiest wine region in France, the warm air from the Pyrenees makes for one of the longest growing seasons, and moelleux wines free from botrytis and consequently greater acidity.

Famous for sweet moelleux wines since the Middle Ages, the French poet Colette called Jurançon séduction du vert galant and wrote, “I was a girl when I met this prince; aroused, imperious, treacherous, as all great seducers are,” causing local producers to advertise with slogans such as, “Manseng means Jurançon means Sex.”

While Jurançon’s vins doux were granted early AOC status in 1936, the Jurançon Sec appellation was only created in 1975 after the Migné family could not produce sweet wine at Clos Joliette in the 1974 vintage. Despite the notoriety of Joliette, after Monsieur Migné’s passing at the end of the 1980s his widow Jeanne failed to turn a profit. Eventually, she sold the estate to a Parisian wine merchant named Michel Renaud, who for the next 25 years kept producing Jurançon with the same artisanal care of the Migné family, but other than selling a few bottles a year to top French restaurants, never publicly released a single vintage.

After Renaud died in 2015, his family hired Jean-Marc Grussaute of Camin Larreyda to manage the fabled 1.8-hectare Clos Joliette and vinify the 2016 and 2017 vintages. Then in 2018, Lionel Osmin was chosen by the family to take over from Grussaute, and (after a long legal battle) eventually purchased the Domaine. Originally from Pau, Osmin was managing the Domaine Barrère (a historic Jurançon estate run by two sisters, who Robert Chadderdon championed, and whose tiny estate includes the two walled sites, Clos de la Vierge, and Clos Cancaillaü).

Since taking over, Osmin has caught the attention of the French press, had Clos Joliette elevated to third-star status in La Revue du Vin de France, and been awarded a perfect 100-point score by Robert Parker’s The Wine Advocate.

We are thrilled beyond words to represent Lionel’s work at this truly “unicorn status” legend of Southwest France. Patiently awaiting our first shipment of his new releases, we also get perfectly cellared library releases from the Renaud period, which Lionel generously offered in mixed-vintage collectible six-pack cases.