Happy Friday!

Welcome to our fold the crème de la crème of my recently adjourned French class. If you're just joining us (or need to catch up) you can find all the previous J&Js here. Bienvenue!

Hope this pairing brings you into the weekend with some new things to taste and listen to...

Juice

I can’t order a pure cabernet franc when I’m sharing wine with some of my favorite people -- its distinctive aromatic profile and style mean that it’s not for everyone. But for those of us who love and embrace its unique contrasts of intensity and subtlety, there could be worse things than keeping a bottle to ourselves!

Cab franc is never more itself than in Loire Valley. Manoir de la Bellonnière “Les Battereaux” Chinon 2021 is a quintessential example of how this place and grape come together so beautifully. The wine is redolent of fall leaves on a forest floor and possesses graphite-like minerality. Dark fruits underpin and weave through these flavors in tight counterpoint.

After some time open, an almost classical restraint gives way to a softer, more relaxed expression, and these elements find fuller voiced harmony.

The careful vineyard work and free winemaking technique Bellonnière uses involves spontaneity and minimal intervention. The result? The wine is wild, but never unwieldy.

I’d love for you to find this bottle ($20ish) but if not, try to find yourself another Chinon, or a cab franc from another Loire appellation.

Jazz

Keith Jarrett, pianist, composer and improviser extraordinaire, is a distinctive flavor. In his performance style and personality the listener is reminded that true greatness often comes with quite a bit of quirk.

His technique is dazzling and his output reflects both improvisational freedom and a simultaneous love of order. I spent an afternoon listening to the live album “La Fenice” (ECM, 2008)* and it was transformative.

Most of the music on this double disk is entirely improvised, and all solo. Part VII is one of these spontaneously composed pieces, and struck me by the way Jarrett creates a feeling of structured meter even as he resists, pulls and warps it -- a enthralling tension of invention and composure.

The depth of Jarrett’s dusky harmonies and the sense of restriction make the looser intimations of swing and freedom found two-thirds of the way through all the more delicious.

Part VII may be today's pairing, but if you can set aside 15 minutes, listen to Part VI. It’s phenomenal.