Date: 15 Feb 99 - 16:50
Message #: 103002
Author: Robert Callahan
Thread #: 9314
Subject: TN: Touraine - three great growers (long)
To: All
Good things are happening in the Touraine, even if the best growers from time to time need to send watered-down samples to the A.O.C.
tasting boards to ensure that their "atypically" good wines are allowed to carry their appellations on their labels. It was possible to taste dozens
of terrific Touraines at this year's Loire Salon in Angers, but I'll content myself to review what I consider the three best growers bottling primarily
under a "Touraine" A.O.C.: Clos Roche Blanche, Clos du Tue-Boeuf, and Robert Denis.
The proprietors at Clos Roche Blanche, Didier and Catherine, are earnest but human - earthy, sweet people completely dedicated to their craft
but not obsessed with it to the point that their whole personalities are lost under wine-geekhood. They're well-liked - Catherine particularly, it
seems, whose magnetic combination of warmth and gentle irony had us joking that she's well on her way to becoming the queen of the Loire.
While many growers had difficulties in the Loire in 1998 relative to the previous three years - Muscadet and Anjou in particular had difficulties
with poorly timed rain, the latter developing rampant rot in the sweet-chenin vineyards - we found much to like all over, if not always with the
atypical size and flamboyancy of the 97s. Among these Touraine growers, there's nothing middling about the quality. Clos Roche Blanche
started our Salon with a stunning array of 98s samples.
Didier poured their 98 Arpent first. This dry white blends chenin and arbois (a strain of menu pineau, which is itself a lower-acid chenin variant)
to good effect, showing a doughy, yeasty thing on the nose with summer pit-fruit and and quince charm. It finishes well and dry, with medium
weight.
There were only two versions of their outstanding sauvignon blanc this year. Yields were in the 30s (in hl/ha; this is normal for them, though the
gamay runs a little higher and the ct runs lower), and natural alcohols run from 13-13.8%. They've again gone into the red-fruit range this
variety shows on limestone at higher ripenesses - ripe citrus with a cassis-strawberry tinge, though the wines are still chalk-driven on the palate.
A Buster bottling of 13.8% sauvignon adds octane but also extra grapefruity drive, while the regular version follows the superb pattern CRB has
set in the last two vintages. If there is better cheap sauvignon than this house's, I haven't met it, and I get around.
This year's pink is more classic in profile than last year's 14% titan. Weighing in at 12.4%, the 98 Pineau d'Aunis retains the red-fruit-and-spice
flavors of the 97, with the same mineral detail, but it slims the weight to something more suitable for summer. I'll be drinking it then and so
should you - it's a pink with real depth and personality, and it's as long on the palate as good wines of other colors.
Moving into red, Clos Roche Blanche also has one of the Loire's best gamays. It's forward and lightish in style, but the 97 and 98 have a bit
more size and concentration than is common. The 98 may be the best yet, oddly, with its ripe cherry and cocoa aromatics and deep, gently
tannic groove on the palate. Poorer and cleverer consumers will enjoy debating the relative merits of the 97 and 98 over the next decade.
Ct is the insider's star at this house. Very old vines - most centenarians - on a limestone hill give a dense, concentrated wine these growers
present in undeflected, primary form, releasing it young to clients anxious to hide it in their cellars. In 98 the grapes were completely
physiologically ripe at just below 12% alcohol, so it terms of size this year's wine will be a shade lighter than the previous three, but no less
concentrated. It embeds in the palate with dark berry fruit after crushed dried-spice aromatics spray from the glass. This year it comes off as
more Cahors-like than previous editions, though this has more native intensity than just about any Cahors you'll find.
If the proprietors wanted to earn big points in the magazines, they could easily have chaptalized this ct by a degree and raised it in toasty new
wood. It would blow first growths off blind-tasting tables, cost a lot more, and be even harder to find. But it wouldn't be better wine - but rather a
less-impeccably balanced wine. Better to remain true to the wine, I would say, and I'm delighted to find growers who agree.
The Cabernet (franc) was presented last this year. It still shows signs of recent wood, which won't be evident by the time the wine arrives on the
market. Again, this is a remarkably complete 98, with alcohol in the middle 12s, good size and fruit intensity, with ripe tannins shaping the
finish. Spice and floral accents on the nose and a more open fruit structure distinguish this from the ct. Clos Roche Blanche here has another
ridiculously cheap, ageworthy cabernet, in character much like a hillside Chinon, but better than most of those.
While far too much of French life seems to me to involve a sort of childish "rebelliousness" involving coolness and cliques and absurd bouts of
social chain smoking, I have to recognize some people work this sort of high-school cool extremely well in their adult lives. I have in mind, in this
French-wine- scene context, the universally admired and seemingly universally known brothers Puzelat of the Clos du Tue-Boeuf. Their
approach may be contrasted with that of Vouvray's Christian Chaussard.
Mister Chaussard approaches his small-production, bio-circle, quality-oriented young-guy smoking cool by sitting at his stand at the Salon -
where, in un-French fashion, smoking is not (generally, except at the numerous fumeur spots) allowed - smoking while people try to taste. He
takes visitors in his self-important way, but he's always hanging around his stand, rebelling like a 13-year-old against the "insupportable"
minimal no-smoking policy. Unsurprisingly, while he's passionately liked by a small circle of friends, he tends to piss off most people, to the
point where no one will rent him any vineyards. A smart, basically sweet guy like this who makes terrific wines could do better by himself if he
would only grow up.
The Puzelats never smoke at their Salon stand, but they're frequently away from it. They're off visiting other stands (including Chaussard's) and
they're constantly outside enjoying convivial, somehow-to- them-conspiratorial smokes. In this way, they're never annoying anyone too seriously,
they're taken to be both serious and supercool, and they're getting to know tons of people without forcing those people to brave their own
defiantly smoky turf. Everyone loves them, even the present asthmatic.
Oh - we were talking about wine. The Puzelats, like the folks at Roche Blanche, poured only 98 samples, since they had a long-sold short crop
in 97. Again, the results are exciting.
Puzelats make softer, plumper wines than Didier and Catherine, even if the bottom-end Tue-Boeufs are lighter and crunchier. At the high end
they go for more-extreme, tiny-production items from varieties like chardonnay musqu and pinot gris and chenin. They're always honest, pure
wines, and that's the commonality. Yields are similar to those seen at CRB, with similar exceptions at the high and low ends. Though they carry
no certification like the CRB wines, they're also naturally made and unchaptalized.
All the many 98s we tasted were worth buying, including the Primeur (light, bright young-vines gamay with good mineral kick), with the possible
exception of the merely satisfying Cheverny Ros.
The basic Cheverny white is a ripe, gently dry (there's a touch of r.s.) chardonnay-sauvignon blend. Just bottled, it came off as generous and
doughy, with fine citrus and floral nuances.
Jumping up, the 98 Buisson Pouilleux Touraine Sauvignon is a superb big wine (13.2%) from 45-60-year-old vines. Its deep sauvignon fruit still
has a leesy edge. Structurally it's rich but dry and smooth, with sound acids and real complexity.
Another version of big Touraine sauvignon from slightly younger vines hadn't finished fermenting. This had a more overt citrusy thing happening.
It should be classic once it finishes working.
The 98 Touraine Ormeau des Deux Croix is a chenin grown on silex-clay soils. At this point it has 11.8% and a good dose of residual sugar
and lots of summer fruits. It's hard to say what it will be like in its anticipated off-dry final form, but the material is very good - no 98-chenin
difficulty in this one.
A variation on that theme but bigger, the 98 Touraine Brin de Chevre is a future demi-sec that now has 12% and 40 g.l. of sugar. Menu pineau
gets a beautiful treatment here, with dough, quince, and gentle floral substance carrying mineral twinkles.
Into vin-de-pays territory, we followed with a dry wine - a 13.5% Chardonnay Musqu from tiny yields that is, like the smaller-yield pinot gris
below, very limited in quantity. The musqu aspect is pronounced here, as it was last year, giving a floral top end to big, leesy chardonnay base
fruit. Rich and fragrant, this is an irresistible oddity and better than almost any chardonnay you'll find in the $15 range. Then again, you'll have a
hard time finding this wine at all.
Similarly big and more viscous, the 98 VDP Pinot Gris has the incense note of ripe examples of the variety, with a firm mineral core to keep all
that weight vertical. Pinot gris is rarely a wine for acid freaks, and this is no exception, but this does have a nicely defined density to it that
makes it very appealing to me. The fruit is varietal peach and pear with an earthy turn, waiting for age to develop smoke.
The basic Cheverny red is always a light, refreshing pinot-gamay blend and so it is this year. Except it won't be called Cheverny. It's Vin de
Table. The A.O.C. was denied. Apparently the wine wasn't chaptalized enough or dosed recognizably enough with cultured yeasts to be
considered "typical". Perhaps it was deemed to lack sufficient weediness. Anyway, whatever it's labeled, it's a youngish-vines mix of 55%
gamay and 45% pinot noir at 11.6% natural (higher than most Nuits 98s), unchaptalized, and it's full of cherries and minerals. It's not
"important" - just good, honest wine that gives plenty of pleasure.
Tue-Boeuf's VDP pinot noirs reach for more and get it. First came a 98 from silex soils: fat and juicy pinot fruit with a touch of smoke and earth,
this was just round and delightful - everything west-coast pinot should want to be and never is. Deeper and longer, the second 98 pinot comes
from silex and limestone soils and adds darker aromatics, firmer structure, and a more-prominent mineral core. This is very serious pinot. It will
be a great bargain for those lucky enough to find it.
The Puzelats finish with their Guerrerie, a regionally traditional blend of 45% ct, 35% cabernet franc, and 25% cabernet sauvignon. It's dense,
tight, and long, with dark flavors and firm tannins. In this style I prefer the reds at Roche Blanche, but this is certainly terrific wine and still a fine
value. It's more open aromatically and marginally lighter than the 97 was.
Both these estates have consistently outstanding 98s, and both attributed their success in a difficult harvest season to hard work and to low
yields. Neither resorted to chemical treatments or machine harvesting, and indeed all the chemical and mechanical aids in the world couldn't
help the region's overproducers. They made miserable, rotten wines, while these crazy organic kids made clean, lovely wines. Conventional
wisdom slips in the mud again.
Last in this triplet of Touraine producers, Azay-le-Rideau's Robert Denis is no young turk. Rather he's an old turk, now retired. Since 1996, he
has been taking for his own vinification 20% of the production of his vineyards (effectively giving him less than a hectare's juice) from a young
local farmer who irritates the old patron. The new kid has no stomach for the hand farming that built Denis's reputation. He prefers to ride in on
a tractor and to do a lot of spraying. Denis looks queasy when he discusses it.
The kid's first vintage was 96, which was a lucky thing. Conditions were great and Denis's impeccable vineyards were still in perfect shape.
Both the white 96s are worthy additions to any cellar, including Robert's. Our sample of the Sec had the faintest edge of corkiness (we were in
the tasting room, it was cold, and we didn't ask Denis to get another bottle). What was clear was a strong citrus-floral nose, with plenty of
ripeness and length. We got a few sips before the cork really altered the aromatics much. However, the 96 Demi-Sec was intact and glowing.
Citrus, pollen, and hawthorne, building nectarine on the palate, this could provide days of olfactory captivation to patient sybarites. The
sweetness is gentle and well-founded in the structure of the wine.
Both of Denis's last-vintage 95s seem to me more concentrated if slightly less immediate. The 95 Sec has a healthy, clean honey and earth
aspect not present in the 96, with a longer finish and more fervid mineral call and response with the fruit. His 95 Demi-Sec follows a similar
pattern - more mineral and primary-citrus than the 96, with the sweetness still-less prominent. It's all of a piece and it finishes only because the
time comes to do something else.
Denis doesn't fit the fashionable search for extremes that dominates the wine marketplace now, except so far as he makes unusually
concentrated wines for which he guarantees fifty years of cellar potential (and for the better vintages, 100 years). He hasn't made exceptionally
big wines, exceptionally sweet wines, exceptionally woody wines. His style of optimally ripe, restrained, stony dry wines and understated
demi-secs has few great practitioners now.
Does anyone else make such dense, long-lived ros as Denis, particularly from the grolleau gris? The 93 pink here, with its Champagne-like
red-fruit-and-chalk personality, has hardly budged in the two years since I first tasted it. It's still fresh and vivid and long, still a baby.
The 93 Sec in the white is only starting to knit a bit in terms of texture and aromatics. Textbook elements of citrus, quince, blossom-honey, and
minerals fold into one another, if only now in a distinctly young-wine way. There is no exaggeration here, just confident mastery.
In 91 there was a devastating frost. After such frosts, the next year's crop is usually excessively large. Denis cut away half the fruit early on in
92 and still got an exceptionally large (!) chenin harvest of 40 hl/ha. From this he made a honeyed, forward wine ... that is nonetheless evolving
glacially, if only worthy of the 50-year guarantee from Denis.
To contrast, he poured the denser yet equally ample 89 Sec, a 100-year wine ("if it's no good in 100 years, just bring it back"). This is in a
hard-cheese-and-mineral adolescence of the sort great chenins go through. Here air brings an extra spring of yellow fruit, honey waxing the
stones, the exceptional finish driving with more force, all in a subtle, almost deceptively restrained way.
The 88 Sec was moving along similar lines, if it showed a tad lighter and more openly fragrant.
We finished with a sublime 82 Demi-Sec - a towering wine from a "middling vintage". Layers of citrus and citrus blossom and orange zest in a
medium-weight, sugar-neutral format, its summer-breeze high tones perfectly complement a juicy, silky bottom end. The wine hasn't in any
respect degenerated in its 16 years. It has only slowly integrated and improved, and it should continue that process for a long time to come.
While his neighbors over the years chose to cash in on the local tourist trade with facile wines, Denis worked his vineyards to full potential,
making uncompromising Touraines. When the neighbors went to mechanizations and chemical treatments to give them easier, larger harvests
and more time in the local cafs, distancing themselves from their vineyards, Denis remained an "ecologist without knowing it", remaining
personally and corporeally connected to his craft. His reward has been - beyond the satisfaction of having done things well - consistently
outstanding wine, just as it is the reward for the younger Touraine iconoclast leaders at Tue-Boeuf and Roche Blanche. More, it's our reward, if
we're willing to claim it.
Message #: 103002
Author: Robert Callahan
Thread #: 9314
Subject: TN: Touraine - three great growers (long)
To: All
Good things are happening in the Touraine, even if the best growers from time to time need to send watered-down samples to the A.O.C.
tasting boards to ensure that their "atypically" good wines are allowed to carry their appellations on their labels. It was possible to taste dozens
of terrific Touraines at this year's Loire Salon in Angers, but I'll content myself to review what I consider the three best growers bottling primarily
under a "Touraine" A.O.C.: Clos Roche Blanche, Clos du Tue-Boeuf, and Robert Denis.
The proprietors at Clos Roche Blanche, Didier and Catherine, are earnest but human - earthy, sweet people completely dedicated to their craft
but not obsessed with it to the point that their whole personalities are lost under wine-geekhood. They're well-liked - Catherine particularly, it
seems, whose magnetic combination of warmth and gentle irony had us joking that she's well on her way to becoming the queen of the Loire.
While many growers had difficulties in the Loire in 1998 relative to the previous three years - Muscadet and Anjou in particular had difficulties
with poorly timed rain, the latter developing rampant rot in the sweet-chenin vineyards - we found much to like all over, if not always with the
atypical size and flamboyancy of the 97s. Among these Touraine growers, there's nothing middling about the quality. Clos Roche Blanche
started our Salon with a stunning array of 98s samples.
Didier poured their 98 Arpent first. This dry white blends chenin and arbois (a strain of menu pineau, which is itself a lower-acid chenin variant)
to good effect, showing a doughy, yeasty thing on the nose with summer pit-fruit and and quince charm. It finishes well and dry, with medium
weight.
There were only two versions of their outstanding sauvignon blanc this year. Yields were in the 30s (in hl/ha; this is normal for them, though the
gamay runs a little higher and the ct runs lower), and natural alcohols run from 13-13.8%. They've again gone into the red-fruit range this
variety shows on limestone at higher ripenesses - ripe citrus with a cassis-strawberry tinge, though the wines are still chalk-driven on the palate.
A Buster bottling of 13.8% sauvignon adds octane but also extra grapefruity drive, while the regular version follows the superb pattern CRB has
set in the last two vintages. If there is better cheap sauvignon than this house's, I haven't met it, and I get around.
This year's pink is more classic in profile than last year's 14% titan. Weighing in at 12.4%, the 98 Pineau d'Aunis retains the red-fruit-and-spice
flavors of the 97, with the same mineral detail, but it slims the weight to something more suitable for summer. I'll be drinking it then and so
should you - it's a pink with real depth and personality, and it's as long on the palate as good wines of other colors.
Moving into red, Clos Roche Blanche also has one of the Loire's best gamays. It's forward and lightish in style, but the 97 and 98 have a bit
more size and concentration than is common. The 98 may be the best yet, oddly, with its ripe cherry and cocoa aromatics and deep, gently
tannic groove on the palate. Poorer and cleverer consumers will enjoy debating the relative merits of the 97 and 98 over the next decade.
Ct is the insider's star at this house. Very old vines - most centenarians - on a limestone hill give a dense, concentrated wine these growers
present in undeflected, primary form, releasing it young to clients anxious to hide it in their cellars. In 98 the grapes were completely
physiologically ripe at just below 12% alcohol, so it terms of size this year's wine will be a shade lighter than the previous three, but no less
concentrated. It embeds in the palate with dark berry fruit after crushed dried-spice aromatics spray from the glass. This year it comes off as
more Cahors-like than previous editions, though this has more native intensity than just about any Cahors you'll find.
If the proprietors wanted to earn big points in the magazines, they could easily have chaptalized this ct by a degree and raised it in toasty new
wood. It would blow first growths off blind-tasting tables, cost a lot more, and be even harder to find. But it wouldn't be better wine - but rather a
less-impeccably balanced wine. Better to remain true to the wine, I would say, and I'm delighted to find growers who agree.
The Cabernet (franc) was presented last this year. It still shows signs of recent wood, which won't be evident by the time the wine arrives on the
market. Again, this is a remarkably complete 98, with alcohol in the middle 12s, good size and fruit intensity, with ripe tannins shaping the
finish. Spice and floral accents on the nose and a more open fruit structure distinguish this from the ct. Clos Roche Blanche here has another
ridiculously cheap, ageworthy cabernet, in character much like a hillside Chinon, but better than most of those.
While far too much of French life seems to me to involve a sort of childish "rebelliousness" involving coolness and cliques and absurd bouts of
social chain smoking, I have to recognize some people work this sort of high-school cool extremely well in their adult lives. I have in mind, in this
French-wine- scene context, the universally admired and seemingly universally known brothers Puzelat of the Clos du Tue-Boeuf. Their
approach may be contrasted with that of Vouvray's Christian Chaussard.
Mister Chaussard approaches his small-production, bio-circle, quality-oriented young-guy smoking cool by sitting at his stand at the Salon -
where, in un-French fashion, smoking is not (generally, except at the numerous fumeur spots) allowed - smoking while people try to taste. He
takes visitors in his self-important way, but he's always hanging around his stand, rebelling like a 13-year-old against the "insupportable"
minimal no-smoking policy. Unsurprisingly, while he's passionately liked by a small circle of friends, he tends to piss off most people, to the
point where no one will rent him any vineyards. A smart, basically sweet guy like this who makes terrific wines could do better by himself if he
would only grow up.
The Puzelats never smoke at their Salon stand, but they're frequently away from it. They're off visiting other stands (including Chaussard's) and
they're constantly outside enjoying convivial, somehow-to- them-conspiratorial smokes. In this way, they're never annoying anyone too seriously,
they're taken to be both serious and supercool, and they're getting to know tons of people without forcing those people to brave their own
defiantly smoky turf. Everyone loves them, even the present asthmatic.
Oh - we were talking about wine. The Puzelats, like the folks at Roche Blanche, poured only 98 samples, since they had a long-sold short crop
in 97. Again, the results are exciting.
Puzelats make softer, plumper wines than Didier and Catherine, even if the bottom-end Tue-Boeufs are lighter and crunchier. At the high end
they go for more-extreme, tiny-production items from varieties like chardonnay musqu and pinot gris and chenin. They're always honest, pure
wines, and that's the commonality. Yields are similar to those seen at CRB, with similar exceptions at the high and low ends. Though they carry
no certification like the CRB wines, they're also naturally made and unchaptalized.
All the many 98s we tasted were worth buying, including the Primeur (light, bright young-vines gamay with good mineral kick), with the possible
exception of the merely satisfying Cheverny Ros.
The basic Cheverny white is a ripe, gently dry (there's a touch of r.s.) chardonnay-sauvignon blend. Just bottled, it came off as generous and
doughy, with fine citrus and floral nuances.
Jumping up, the 98 Buisson Pouilleux Touraine Sauvignon is a superb big wine (13.2%) from 45-60-year-old vines. Its deep sauvignon fruit still
has a leesy edge. Structurally it's rich but dry and smooth, with sound acids and real complexity.
Another version of big Touraine sauvignon from slightly younger vines hadn't finished fermenting. This had a more overt citrusy thing happening.
It should be classic once it finishes working.
The 98 Touraine Ormeau des Deux Croix is a chenin grown on silex-clay soils. At this point it has 11.8% and a good dose of residual sugar
and lots of summer fruits. It's hard to say what it will be like in its anticipated off-dry final form, but the material is very good - no 98-chenin
difficulty in this one.
A variation on that theme but bigger, the 98 Touraine Brin de Chevre is a future demi-sec that now has 12% and 40 g.l. of sugar. Menu pineau
gets a beautiful treatment here, with dough, quince, and gentle floral substance carrying mineral twinkles.
Into vin-de-pays territory, we followed with a dry wine - a 13.5% Chardonnay Musqu from tiny yields that is, like the smaller-yield pinot gris
below, very limited in quantity. The musqu aspect is pronounced here, as it was last year, giving a floral top end to big, leesy chardonnay base
fruit. Rich and fragrant, this is an irresistible oddity and better than almost any chardonnay you'll find in the $15 range. Then again, you'll have a
hard time finding this wine at all.
Similarly big and more viscous, the 98 VDP Pinot Gris has the incense note of ripe examples of the variety, with a firm mineral core to keep all
that weight vertical. Pinot gris is rarely a wine for acid freaks, and this is no exception, but this does have a nicely defined density to it that
makes it very appealing to me. The fruit is varietal peach and pear with an earthy turn, waiting for age to develop smoke.
The basic Cheverny red is always a light, refreshing pinot-gamay blend and so it is this year. Except it won't be called Cheverny. It's Vin de
Table. The A.O.C. was denied. Apparently the wine wasn't chaptalized enough or dosed recognizably enough with cultured yeasts to be
considered "typical". Perhaps it was deemed to lack sufficient weediness. Anyway, whatever it's labeled, it's a youngish-vines mix of 55%
gamay and 45% pinot noir at 11.6% natural (higher than most Nuits 98s), unchaptalized, and it's full of cherries and minerals. It's not
"important" - just good, honest wine that gives plenty of pleasure.
Tue-Boeuf's VDP pinot noirs reach for more and get it. First came a 98 from silex soils: fat and juicy pinot fruit with a touch of smoke and earth,
this was just round and delightful - everything west-coast pinot should want to be and never is. Deeper and longer, the second 98 pinot comes
from silex and limestone soils and adds darker aromatics, firmer structure, and a more-prominent mineral core. This is very serious pinot. It will
be a great bargain for those lucky enough to find it.
The Puzelats finish with their Guerrerie, a regionally traditional blend of 45% ct, 35% cabernet franc, and 25% cabernet sauvignon. It's dense,
tight, and long, with dark flavors and firm tannins. In this style I prefer the reds at Roche Blanche, but this is certainly terrific wine and still a fine
value. It's more open aromatically and marginally lighter than the 97 was.
Both these estates have consistently outstanding 98s, and both attributed their success in a difficult harvest season to hard work and to low
yields. Neither resorted to chemical treatments or machine harvesting, and indeed all the chemical and mechanical aids in the world couldn't
help the region's overproducers. They made miserable, rotten wines, while these crazy organic kids made clean, lovely wines. Conventional
wisdom slips in the mud again.
Last in this triplet of Touraine producers, Azay-le-Rideau's Robert Denis is no young turk. Rather he's an old turk, now retired. Since 1996, he
has been taking for his own vinification 20% of the production of his vineyards (effectively giving him less than a hectare's juice) from a young
local farmer who irritates the old patron. The new kid has no stomach for the hand farming that built Denis's reputation. He prefers to ride in on
a tractor and to do a lot of spraying. Denis looks queasy when he discusses it.
The kid's first vintage was 96, which was a lucky thing. Conditions were great and Denis's impeccable vineyards were still in perfect shape.
Both the white 96s are worthy additions to any cellar, including Robert's. Our sample of the Sec had the faintest edge of corkiness (we were in
the tasting room, it was cold, and we didn't ask Denis to get another bottle). What was clear was a strong citrus-floral nose, with plenty of
ripeness and length. We got a few sips before the cork really altered the aromatics much. However, the 96 Demi-Sec was intact and glowing.
Citrus, pollen, and hawthorne, building nectarine on the palate, this could provide days of olfactory captivation to patient sybarites. The
sweetness is gentle and well-founded in the structure of the wine.
Both of Denis's last-vintage 95s seem to me more concentrated if slightly less immediate. The 95 Sec has a healthy, clean honey and earth
aspect not present in the 96, with a longer finish and more fervid mineral call and response with the fruit. His 95 Demi-Sec follows a similar
pattern - more mineral and primary-citrus than the 96, with the sweetness still-less prominent. It's all of a piece and it finishes only because the
time comes to do something else.
Denis doesn't fit the fashionable search for extremes that dominates the wine marketplace now, except so far as he makes unusually
concentrated wines for which he guarantees fifty years of cellar potential (and for the better vintages, 100 years). He hasn't made exceptionally
big wines, exceptionally sweet wines, exceptionally woody wines. His style of optimally ripe, restrained, stony dry wines and understated
demi-secs has few great practitioners now.
Does anyone else make such dense, long-lived ros as Denis, particularly from the grolleau gris? The 93 pink here, with its Champagne-like
red-fruit-and-chalk personality, has hardly budged in the two years since I first tasted it. It's still fresh and vivid and long, still a baby.
The 93 Sec in the white is only starting to knit a bit in terms of texture and aromatics. Textbook elements of citrus, quince, blossom-honey, and
minerals fold into one another, if only now in a distinctly young-wine way. There is no exaggeration here, just confident mastery.
In 91 there was a devastating frost. After such frosts, the next year's crop is usually excessively large. Denis cut away half the fruit early on in
92 and still got an exceptionally large (!) chenin harvest of 40 hl/ha. From this he made a honeyed, forward wine ... that is nonetheless evolving
glacially, if only worthy of the 50-year guarantee from Denis.
To contrast, he poured the denser yet equally ample 89 Sec, a 100-year wine ("if it's no good in 100 years, just bring it back"). This is in a
hard-cheese-and-mineral adolescence of the sort great chenins go through. Here air brings an extra spring of yellow fruit, honey waxing the
stones, the exceptional finish driving with more force, all in a subtle, almost deceptively restrained way.
The 88 Sec was moving along similar lines, if it showed a tad lighter and more openly fragrant.
We finished with a sublime 82 Demi-Sec - a towering wine from a "middling vintage". Layers of citrus and citrus blossom and orange zest in a
medium-weight, sugar-neutral format, its summer-breeze high tones perfectly complement a juicy, silky bottom end. The wine hasn't in any
respect degenerated in its 16 years. It has only slowly integrated and improved, and it should continue that process for a long time to come.
While his neighbors over the years chose to cash in on the local tourist trade with facile wines, Denis worked his vineyards to full potential,
making uncompromising Touraines. When the neighbors went to mechanizations and chemical treatments to give them easier, larger harvests
and more time in the local cafs, distancing themselves from their vineyards, Denis remained an "ecologist without knowing it", remaining
personally and corporeally connected to his craft. His reward has been - beyond the satisfaction of having done things well - consistently
outstanding wine, just as it is the reward for the younger Touraine iconoclast leaders at Tue-Boeuf and Roche Blanche. More, it's our reward, if
we're willing to claim it.
