originally posted by Jonathan Loesberg:
Since I don't know Montlouis wines at all and barely know Vouvray (although I have liked the Huets I have tasted and will gladly have more), this may be my ignorance, but there is a clear failure to engage going on here. Pierre-Alain persuasively, at least for me who hasn't tasted the wines, makes the case that something interesting is going on in Montlouis, and it may be going on beneath the radar of people here (certainly it is going on beneath my radar). That clearly doesn't have as a consequence that nothing good is going on in Vouvray or that because there are no young Turks, therefore there is no good wine. It may have as a consequence that Montlouis may be more interesting to follow right now for some people. This comes under my much abused category that being accurate is about the least interesting thing a critic should do. The variant is being reliably good in the same way can get to be so last Tuesday. But not everybody feels this way about wine (although my position is logically unexceptionable of course with regard to critics).
I agree with you that there is a failure to engage. Though in fairness to the disordered, Pierre-Alain, himself, is deliberately being a provocateur.
We can agree that most of Vouvray is crap. Most producers are complacent, satisfied with mediocrity, over-cropping, dosing their moelleux by 2 degrees, etc. For obvious reasons, namely the cost to rent a hectare of vines, there are more young turks in romantic pursuit of real wine in Montlouis than across the river in Vouvray; all of whom might choose to be in Vouvray if they could swing it. Some of these young producers have achieved admirable success with the wine (perhaps owing to their training in concert hall administration). Riding the hipster wave, and at the same time under the financial pressure of a start-up operation, they have also had some success in pricing their wine beyond the Montlouis norm. Kudos.
The young turk in Montlouis who has done the most to battle the complacency of the old guard, who has consistently done the best work in the vineyards and the cellar, working harder than everyone else, is Franois Chidaine. The work he has done in recent years to re-establish Les Barnais as a vineyard, that alone sets him well ahead of the new band of heroic young turks. Okay, so he has been at it for twenty years now - he must be pushing almost forty. He is no longer a young turk, but he is still the one pushing the Montlouis movement.
If we accept, for the sake of argument, that "Grand Cru" by definition is tired and sleepy, in Vouvray the stakes of young-turkism are higher, the odds are longer. Just ask Annick-Marie Lemaire. The hippest young turks have departed Vouvray for the Coteau du Loir and Jasnires. And dealing with the generational complications of vineyard rights can be insurmountable (speak to La Dilettante). So, there have been several would-be young-turk Vouvrays that simply didn't make it; not for lack of trying. (Perhaps we should also overlook Thierry Puzelat, the interloping negociant from Les Montils, despite his unique hipster credentials.) But still, why no mention of Vincent Carme?
