Skin Contact Rafling
⏳ Drinking Window
2022 - 2025
🍽️ Food & Wine Pairings
spicy Southeast Asian cuisine, roasted pork belly, aged alpine cheeses
✨ Technical Specifications
Frédéric Cossard’s 'Skin Contact Rafling' is a captivating expression of his négociant work, where he sources exceptional organic fruit from trusted growers outside of Burgundy and applies his signature natural winemaking philosophy. The name 'Rafling' is a playful nod to Riesling, the grape variety used for this cuvée, sourced from organic vineyards in Alsace. Cossard subjects the grapes to skin-contact maceration, a technique that coaxes out deep amber hues, complex phenolic structures, and an exotic aromatic profile. Fermented with indigenous yeasts and bottled entirely without added sulfur, this orange wine beautifully marries the high-toned, electric acidity of Alsatian Riesling with the savory grip, dried stone fruit notes, and herbal complexity of skin-fermented white wines.
🍾 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