The first set of notes is here.Loire notes part 2
Mostly not chenin and melon
I didn’t quite finish the chenin section of the last writeup, so let me use Belleviere as a transition into a mix of whites and reds.
Eric Nicolas is maniacally committed to making wines of the highest quality from his revived old-vines plots in Jasnieres and Coteaux du Loir (not the Loire, but the tributary that joins the larger river near Angers). Eric’s vineyards are at the true northern edge of viticulture, well north of Tours. Or at least where that border has historically been drawn.
We tasted a series of wines, and as usual they are exemplars. The ’06 L’Effraie (CdL) underwent MLF, is pale yellow, moderately ripe, earthy, with a decently acidic mineral finish. The ’06 Rosieres also went through MLF, has some botrytis on the nose, is simultaneously more open and more slaty on the palate. Again, good but not great ’06 acids. The ’06 VV Eparses (CdL) mostly didn’t go through malo. It is an assembly of different plots. Nice aromatics, great acids, a solid mineral finish. A fine vintage of this wine, mostly dry. ’06 Caligramme VV (J) has a bit of botrytis on the aromatic and ripe CB nose, big acids, and my note says “Pow!”, a rich full texture with a bit of rs, a very long mineral finish. I’ll be getting a few and losing them in the cellar for a good while.
In reds, there is an interesting and important progression here. I’ve been a little unhappy with some recent vintages of Eric’s reds, feeling that he has extracted more tannin than I at least wanted to see in the wines, and not really having the confidence in pineau d’aunis as a grape for aging. Eric reports that in the series from 2005 to 2007, he has been doing less and less pigeage. He used to use Volnay barrels, and now uses used barrels from his own whites. All of these moves will lower the tannin in the wines, and will all be moves in the right direction IMO. Parenthetically, I’ve always wondered where Volnay got the reputation for silky, easy wines. The best names in that appellation all make some pretty hard wines, IME.
The ’06 Rouge Gorge has a potent peppery/sweaty pineau d’aunis nose, with lovely fruit. I like it a lot, but find it just a little drying in the finish—why not a little less extraction? The ’07 prompts another comic book note: “zing!” much less plush than 2006, leaner, linear, zippy acid, it’s a very different wine than 2006 but I like this version too.
Back to some whites, the L’Effraie ’07 (ex-barrel) is still cloudy, with a fair bit of rs, still working. It is clean, with good fruit and great acid, but Eric expects it to go dry when fermentation resumes as the vines reawaken. So it’s promising but I am not confident to judge it fully. Similar comments apply to the Rosieres, and the Eparses. They all have great ’07 acid and are pristine at this point, but still a ways from finished.
It was very interesting to visit Clos Roche Blanche, and not just because it’s always a delight to see Catherine and Didier. I was there in the first week of December, and the wines have come a long way since then, all of it good. I think even Didier is pleased, and he’s not a guy who gushes.
The ’07 Terre Blanche is chard, and I think is not imported into the US. It’s still cloudy but has gone dry. Nice and crisp, it retains the CRB limestone signature in its mineral finish. It’s from vines just south of the cave, and in ’07 has good acid and 12* abv. Nice.
The ’07 SB #2 is the only SB at CRB in ’07, the reduced crop not allowing for a separate #5. They had to treat the vines 5 times in ’07, but not all of these included copper. This wine is back! Penetrating mineral SB nose, a little pink grapefruit, a little jalapeno, and a delightful stony savory finish. It is much more classic at 12.8* (the ’05 was 14*). It’s great to have the wine back. The ’06 is riper, resolved, but big and rich, shows a little alcohol. Yields were low, even from the reduced crop of grapes—ordinarily they find that 1.3 kg of grapes gives a liter of wine, but in ’07 they needed 1.9. Didier has a new pneumatic press that has him very pleased—he finds the juice much clearer, and that at this time of year he previously would have expected a little oxidation and a little bitterness from stem and seed tannins.
The ’06 SB #5 is much rounder and very full, 14*, powerful wine that Didier says will age, and I believe him. Shows some heat on the finish.
The ’07 pineau d’aunis rose is great wine this year—ripe, peppery exciting nose, crisp, rocky, great balance and long finish with refreshing acidity. Interestingly, in 2007 Didier decided in the vineyard at harvest to make the rose from the old vines, and the red L’Arpent from the younger pineau d’aunis, since he expected better color extraction from the latter.
The ’07 L’Arpent is a worthy successor to the scrumptious 2006. Either the last couple of vintages have favored this wine, or Didier is really finding his spot with it. The balance and extraction have provided refreshing red pineau d’aunis, which I didn’t used to believe in. But here’s the evidence.
2007 is a classic vintage of the gamay here. Great pretty CRB gamay fruit, nothing resembling Beaujolais, but much earthier and more mineral, with light balance and perfect acid. A dark rose or a light red, you’d call it. A long calcareous mineral finish. Great stuff. Get your hands off. Didier was quite dubious about this wine in early December, but it’s come along quite nicely.
I tasted the Cabernet a couple of times during the trip, and found it a little reduced and a little hard to judge at this stage. It’s 30% sauvignon, with good structure and acidity, but it’s hard to tell what the flavor profile will be.
In 2007, Didier combined the young and old vines of cot, and pulled off a major coup. When we visited in December, he was resigned that this wine would never come around. They had mildew problems with the cot during the wet summer, and it was hard to get it ripe by harvest due to lost leaves. When I first tried it, it was hard, a bit green, an ungenerous wine. Didier knew that the practice in the region 70 years ago was to do a 3-month maceration of the cot, essentially until Christmas. In this vintage, he was inspired to do a daily pumping-over for about that amount of time. The wine has rounded out a lot. It retains a bit of an herbal/green note, but one that is pleasant to my taste and that I predict will recede more into the background as more fruit flavors come up. It remains a lighter vintage of this wine, atypically pale, but it’s a lot of fun and a tribute to Didier’s winemaking instincts.
We tasted some ‘06s as well. The gamay is a much bigger wine than the ’07, darker, riper, more intense, more structured, showing more alcohol. The Cabernet Franc is characterful and tasty. As it often does, the Pif is a little hard to me, but rich dark and full. It needs some time. In contrast, the ’06 Closerie (cofermented Gamay, CF, Cot) is ripe, sweet, savory, with bright fruit. It is currently more approachable than some recent vintages. The ’06 vv cot is rich and dark and full, with good acid, it’s vin de garde.\
Thomas-Labaille was also a good tasting for the ‘07s, a return to a much more classic style of Sancerre, one more to my taste. Amusingly, the report from Jean-Paul is that their French customers prefer ’05 and ’06 for their richness and power, and that their UK and US export markets prefer ’07 for its typicity.
The ’07 L’Authentique (sporadically available in the US) has a bit of CO2 now that it won’t at bottling this month. More balance, less alcohol, good acid, classic Sancerre flavors without the minerality of MD bottlings, but you can still taste the limestone. Or, should I say you can still taste the effect of the basic limestone soil on the secondary metabolism of the vines. There. Feel better? Nice crisp grapefruity wine, from lower slopes in Chavignol. “should keep like ’92 or ’96 with a bit less ripeness.”
The ’07 classic MD will be bottled in April, and has a cheesy modern label called “Aristides” for Europe. It is more MD than SB, more about minerals than fruit, light on its feet in the midpalate, a refreshing mineral finish without evident alcohol. Good wine.
The ’07 Buster, from 75 y.o. vines in MD, is expansive and powerful, and the 13.8% does not come across the way it did in ’05 or ’06. He grows grass between the rows, it helps with water at harvest. This has the best balance of this wine in several vintages.
All the ‘06s were finished quite dry. The ’06 Authentique is rich but lacks structure in the finish—drink them up. The ’06 MD shows its ethanol, but also the signature of its site. The ’06 Buster is too much for me, but finishes well.
We tasted some old wines, from his indifferent storage. The ’00 MD has evolved SB aromatics, is a pretty big wine in a good way, ready now. The ’96 MD was analytically similar to the ’07, although the latter is a bit less ripe. It has a more herbal/veggie nose, with fine minerality on the finish.
Jean-Paul is pretty happy about ’07 for his reds, he likes the structure. We tried ’06, which had a pure PN nose, toasty, not pushed too far, quite pretty. A good argument for a restrained style of Sancerre rouge, most of which I rather think would be better as rose.
We didn’t visit Breton this year, depriving us of the chance to taste a bunch of cold wines standing outside in the wind and rain. Oh, well. But we had some wine at the Salon with them. The ’07 Avis du Vin Fort (the pun is vent (wind)/vin (wine)—when the strong wind warning is up, you stay in port where there is nothing to do but drink) had a week’s maceration, and is quite pale, but clean and tasty. Glug, glug.
The ’07 Trinch is from young vines in gravel, and its 2 week maceration gives more color and structure, but it’s open fresh, clean and tasty.
They harvested 10/1-5. The grapes were just mature, but they had the beginnings of rot and couldn’t wait. They had 50 pickers, amazingly. The above wines were unusually light, but were cleaner than some previous vintages. We’ll see in bottle.
Pierre feels that ’06 is a classic vintage for his reds, without the harder tannin of ’05. The ’06 Galichets is quite pretty, with nice balance, good harmony. The Chinon Beaumont was bottled late in September. The Bretons buy grapes from a clay/limestone site and vinify in steel. As usual, it has more color, but is now quite primary, with good acid. The ’06 Nuits d’Ivresse currently has some nice fruit and some clear Brett. Not too much for me, but I know people who won’t go for it. ’05 Perrieres is a rock and roll wine. 14.7%, but who knew? ’04 Picasses spent 30 months in barrel instead of the usual 24, since it’s a dark and classic vintage. It’s the last vintage of this chez Breton, and is currently quite tannic. Decant if you must drink it now.
My tasting at Baudry was interrupted by work, so I didn’t get through everything. As so many folks did, they had a long, tough summer, spraying weekly from the beginning of May to the middle of August to hold back mildew. But the warm April advanced ripeness. As a general matter, the Baudrys are concerned by the quantity and quality of tannin in their wines, and have made some pretty big changes lately. I spoke to Mathieu about a ’96 Grezeaux I’d enjoyed the week before going to France, and he was concerned that ones from his cellar are still a little hard. He finds more recent vintages more elegant, and they are still on the case. For instance, they’ve bought a new conveyor to bring grapes into the vats so that they don’t crush seeds—they destem but don’t pump so they get whole grapes with more delicacy, and the change in tannin is pretty dramatic. It is partially the vintage, of course, with ’07 being a bit less structured. But I always found tasting the ’04, ’05, and ‘06s at Baudry to be one mouthful of tannin after another, and found it quite difficult to evaluate the wines. They are also taking more care with the frequency of pumping over.
The ’07 rose had no malo, and is quite young, still estery and slightly sweaty. It has bright acid and refreshing austerity, but I’d expect it to round out before its anticipated April bottling.
The Granges in ’07, from a gravel/sand site, is almost blue, leafy nose with bright fruit, and some clear carbonic character to the nose and fruit. It is a combination of stylistic and vintage departure, but will be easy near-term drinking, which is after all the purpose of this bottling.
The Clos Guillot is up the hill, darker young purple, nice fresh redfruits, the structure is more from acid than tannin, and is good easy stuff.
The Grezeaux is in gravel with more clay, and 50 y.o. vines. More complexity here in the still-primary nose, but big fruit. A 5-7 day cold maceration, with pumping over only every day or two, tasting to moderate the tannin. There is some sense of carbonic character to this wine currently, but the tannins are there in a good way. A solid medium-term wine is my best guess at this point.
The Croix Boissee is an 8/10 for color depth. The shallow clay over limestone site gives the deepest wines in this stable. It’s quite closed now, but you can taste the depth and the persistent intensity of this wine. The limestone minerality is very evident. Very good stuff. I asked about my ‘96s, and he suggested waiting a few more years.
The Baudrys still have their franc de pied vines from the sandy half of the plot—the vines in clay have succumbed to phylloxera. The ’07 has very pretty aromatics, mouth-watering acidity, moderate tannins. It’s a little herbal in a good way, but very fresh. 12% abv. Nice vintage of this.
After the fair, we visited the old cellars at Clos Rougeard, where I took a bunch of really terrible pictures. The ‘07s are a lighter-framed vintage, with good acid, clean and correct. Nadi reported that the yields at the coop were down 20% in ’07. He also had a small crop, but nothing catastrophic. The ‘06s are warmer and riper, a touch lower in acidity as well. We also tried ’05 Bourg, which is a wine that will garner serious points in my guess, and will be subject to the modern wine market—probably hard to get and expensive. Worth it, though.
In the freshly bottled ‘04s, both bottles of the Clos that we tried were odd, and neither was as fresh as I expected.
The Poyeux, though, was lovely—medium weight, moderate richness, good acid, proper suave tannin, the real deal. Nadi feels that ’04 gave him the “real vin de Loire.” The ’04 Bourg is showing some NFO, but it’s also a great wine with delicious fruit and refreshing acid. A second bottle showed less oak and more fruit.
We tried ’03 Poyeux and Bourg again—my preference remains strongly for the Bourg, whose older vines and water-retaining clay soil sustained it better through the hot summer. The Poyeux is still a bit overripe on the nose, and the tannin is a bit hard. The Bourg was 30 months in NFO, but the aromas are in the background. There is deep, fully ripe fruit, the tannins are slightly hard, it’s starting to close and should IMO be socked away until at least 2016.
As a ripe year comparison, Nadi opened ’97 Poyeux from mag. He characterized the vintage as similarly sunny and ripe, but with more acid in ’97. The wine is maturing into a very good place now. Time for me to pull a bottle or two.
We had a couple of good whites in the house style, and then the ’90 Coteaux du Saumur. Astonishing wine, a huge botrytis chenin nose, amazing aromatic intensity at arm’s length, amazing acidity, endless length. Is it warm in here? 30 months in NFO, 200g rs, 8 grams of acid. Picked as individual grapes or partial clusters, this is monumental and very, very young.
I’ll pause this installment here, work interferes again.
Joe
Edited by - SFJoe on 04/02/2008 10:54:41
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More 2008 Loire notes, mix of grapes
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Posted - 02/12/2008 : 11:45:16
