Rafling
⏳ Drinking Window
2022 - 2025
🍽️ Food & Wine Pairings
roasted pork belly, grilled sea bass, mature goat cheese
✨ Technical Specifications
Frédéric Cossard's Rafling is a compelling cross-regional creation that marries the high-toned terroir of Alsace with the minimalist, natural winemaking expertise of Burgundy. Sourced from biodynamically farmed Riesling vineyards in Alsace, the fruit is brought to Cossard's cellars in Saint-Romain. There, it undergoes wild yeast fermentation and aging in non-interventionist vessels without any added sulfur. The name Rafling is a whimsical play on Riesling, reflecting the wine's energetic and unconventional personality. It offers a brilliant tension, combining Riesling's classic electric acidity and petrol-tinged minerality with a textured, unfiltered purity that is signature Cossard.
🍾 About the Producer
Established in 1996 by former dairy technician and wine broker Frédéric Cossard, Domaine de Chassorney emerged from the high-altitude, limestone-rich enclave of Saint-Romain in the Hautes-Côtes de Beaune. Expanding from his core estate vineyards into an adventurous micro-négoce under the Frédéric Cossard label, he works across Burgundy, the Jura, Beaujolais, and beyond. Cossard champions a holistic, self-devised 'homeopathic' viticultural method grounded in biodynamic preparations and rigorous soil health. In the cellar, his philosophy is strictly non-interventionist and uncompromisingly clean, relying on negative-ion oxygen sterilization instead of sulfur dioxide. White grapes undergo extended pressing and long spontaneous fermentations without temperature control, while red and macerated cuvées see gentle whole-cluster infusions in open wooden vats, concrete eggs, or qvevri. Known for benchmark skin-contact expressions like 'Feel Good' and 'Rafling' alongside pure expressions of Saint-Romain and Savagnin, Cossard's wines are renowned for their electrifying vitality, textural purity, and luminous clarity.
🍇 Grapes
Riesling