Loire notes 2.08
Melon and Chenin, some other stuff
Your intrepid correspondent once again braved all the hazards of a winter trip to the Loire valleytedious schnooks, badly tailored striped suits that are popular among young French sommeliers in training, reheated canned confit at dinner, dubious rillette sandwiches at lunch, fake baguettes at breakfast, widespread norovirus pandemics, ice-cold showers, slow diesel cars, the works. The compensation of seeing old friends, tasting the wines, and of course telling all of you about the best so you can buy the scarce ones before I remember to is plenty to motivate me out into the cold rains of an Angevin February.
It was another tricky vintage in 2007, and the winemakers all showed the effects. No lingering beach vacations last summer for most of these pallid Northernersthey were out in the rain spraying their vines, battling a great variety of fungal infections throughout the summer deluges. An accelerated spring put the vines in most spots several weeks ahead of their normal cycle by the end of a very hot April (as warm in many places as July would prove to be). But in May, the rains set in. It rained often throughout May, June, July, and the first half of August. The immature grapes retain plenty of antifungal phenolics (the molds dont like bitter green grapes any better than you do), but the leaves are a delectable salad course for mildew, and some growers reported having to spray weekly or more to keep leaves on the vines. Those who lost this battle were sunk entirelyI was told that Guy Bossard, one of the best growers in the Muscadet, applied to the organic authorities (I presume Demeter) for permission to spray more than the usual quota of the ironically organic allowed copper and sulfur Bordeaux mixture, and the organic bureaucrats dithered on the question for a couple of weeks. By the time they gave him the go-ahead, his crop was gone and he has no production at all this year. And thus, presumably, next to no income. Mathieu Baudry told me that he and his father had been in Bordeaux in May and had seen the mildew in the vineyards there. Knowing that Chinon is typically a couple of weeks behind Bordeaux in maturation, they headed home and tried to keep ahead of the mildew for the rest of the summer.
It was not as dire as it could have been. Fortunately, the weather stayed cool through the rains, slowing the fungal blooms. And the warm spring gave the vines a bit of a jump on maturity. In mid-August, more or less, the sun came out, and the rest of the fall was quite nicesunny, reasonably warm, and in good conditions for maturation of the grapes. Good conditions, that is, if there were enough leaves left on your vines to benefit from the photosynthesis. So what could have been a catastrophic vintage in the end of the day produced many good wines. People who had preserved enough foliage and who could wait a few weeks to harvest produced some very fine wines. But one person who had visited the valley in early August reported to me that there were many desperate vignerons at that time.
A few wild-ass generalizations about the wines in this vintage. Please dont attempt to apply these deductively to the glass in front of you, but think of them as a mnemonic, or a collation of particularly memorable anecdotes, or some such. 2007 produced many rather classic Loire whites, in contrast to 2005 and 2006, which tended farther in the direction of ripeness and richness than is historically typical, although who knows what the future climate holds? It is silly to generalize about the global climate from a little patch of far-western Europe, but as I walked through the vines at Clos Roche Blanche in the cool valley of the Cher a couple of days ago in the first week of February, there were flowers blooming between the vines (Veroniques), and a few mosquitoes followed us. French warming, at any rate, seems to be real. Chikungunya may be only the first of the brave new European pathogens.
But I digress, this is not the insect-borne diseases board. The vintage also produced somewhat lean, refreshing reds that owe their structure more to acid than to tannin. They may not be big with the pointy crowd, and they may not be reds to cellar for generations, but they are in many cases quite ripe and satisfying, and their lower alcohols and more restrained structures were often quite welcome to this observer. I wasnt personally a big fan of the 14+% alcohol whites of 2006 and sometimes 2005, nor of the rs that was left behind in the hopes of balancing those wines, nor sometimes of the hard tannins in some reds of those vintages. In 2007, were back to much more classic winesLoire wines, theyre whats for dinner.
So lets consider a few perhaps representative wines. Of course, my journalistic heroism does not extend to tasting the run of the mill industrial production that dominates many AOCs in the Loire on your behalf. Im sure that 2007 was a tough year for industrial producers as well, and that the producers of systemic fungicides probably had a banner year. Machine harvesting was probably less detrimental in 2007 than in a vintage with late rains like 2006, because many more of the grapes came in healthy. But I flag for you that my little collection of anecdotes remains quite biased towards quality producers, and also towards those practicing various forms of organic viticulture.
To begin as usual at the end of the river, a group of us visited Marc Ollivier, which is always a fantastic time. In this vintage, we had good wines, too. Marc had to do most of the vineyard work by hand, it was too wet to bring tractors into the vineyards. But he said that the weather was great after mid-August, so he had a month before he started harvest on September 13th. He had a very tough time in 2007 with Eden and Moulin de Gustaie, since those sites have more clay and consequently poorer drainage. The reduced crops are to be combined with the Pepiere, comprising about 25% of the final blend. From my tasting of that component, they will bring somewhat more apparent fruit to the mix, but the Pepiere is usually a later developer, fruit-wise. The Pepiere vintage is a very solid one, with excellent minerality, fine acid balance, resembles a slightly riper 04 more than it does the very ripe 05 and 06. Marc was one of a couple of growers I heard suggest during the trip that natural yeast populations would vary significantly by vintagea very wet summer like 07 would give a different population than a hot, dry year like 03.
The 2007 Clos des Briords had a nice balance of rocks and fruit, with fine length. It has less toasty/roasty skin minerality than 03 or 99, but its solid vintage that Marc thinks is classic Briords. Marc did only 25 hl/ha, but got 11.9% natural alcohol (CdB is never chaptalized), with 6.2 g total acid (of course he doesn't acidify). He harvested Sept 18th, 20th, and 22nd. Marc had 43 pickers this year. He sometimes ships the gang out for a day or two in the middle of harvest, which allows him to keep the gang together and paid steadily while his vineyards ripen, and also allows certain of his neighbors to have a prestigious hand-harvested cuvee.
The old-vines section of Pepiere that makes the Granite de Clisson bottling is the real deal in 07. Mouthcoating minerality at this stage, deep and long. The old vines gave 20 hl/ha. Marc thinks it will grow to be as rich as the 2005, but will be livelier from somewhat higher acid. This was his final harvest, on September 26th, and its 12.2% natural. Thrilling stuff. For those of you whove been under your granite rock for the last couple of years, a group called 3rd wave is organizing grower groups in particular special terroirs in the Muscadet, organizing short pruning, extended lees aging, and so on. Interestingly, hand harvest is not required, although of course Marc hand harvests all his vineyards.
Marc is always in action, and hes let go some vineyards in 07 and added others. All Marcs vineyards are now within 1 km of the river on slopes. One that hes added is in the neighboring hamlet of Chateau Thebaut, and Marc expects to make a special Granite de Chateau Thebaut bottling from it. He and the other owners are negotiating now on the exact specs for the wine. Marc wanted 40 hl/ha, the other growers were aghast at the loss in yield. He thinks they may end up at 45, or more likely the 47 that is typical of the other small quality groups. Marc also has 2 new ha in the Gras Mouton vineyard. He has given up a portion of Pepiere.
Marc also made delicious reds in 07, bright and juicy, with special mention for the Granite bottling.
Some comments on older wines tasted in a vertical:
2006 CdB seems a little closed to me right now after the young wines. I might be inclined to let mine rest for a year.
2005 CdB is in a great place right now, as is the Granite de Clisson. The wine that could have been Granite de Clisson in 2006 was bottled as Pepiere since Marc didnt have enough wine.
1999 CdB continues its evolution into a more classic wine. Its possible that what I call the toasty/roasty minerality of this and the 2003 are not just due to a different character of sun-roasted skins, but may also reflect a different yeast population, but I cant prove it.
The 97 has always been an unusual beauty, with its proportion of botrytis-affected grapes. Its showing really well today, but I think its evolution is headed towards a more prominent display of the botrytis over the other qualities of the wine, and Im putting out the drink in the next few years flag on these.
Nothing beats the 96. The 95 is also in fine shape with a long run ahead.
89 CdB has the grace of maturity, and a hint of caramel adds complexity. No need to hold, but no panic either. I wont taunt you with the very old wines except to mention that we had a fine 75, and the 73 wasnt as fine as last years bottle.
The next morning, I had my first chance to visit Luneau-Papin. M. Luneau remains an extraordinarily sunny and cheerful host. The operations could not be more differentLuneau is a large, shiny, purpose-built winery, and is kept in a state of high polish. Luneau was a pioneer in the region for bottlings by terroir, and spoke at length about the different parcels. He notes as a general matter that the soils of the Loire valley become less calcareous after Angers, heading more in the direction of schists, granites, and the like. Like Marc, Luneau does a hand-harvest with a triage in the vineyard, uses whole clusters in a soft pneumatic press, with aging in underground vats at 12-13*C.
I wont go through all the wines, since many of them will find destinations that will be out of reach of most of you.
Ill mention that Clos des Allees is more of a Florida Jim Muscadet than a Luca Muscadet in 2007. It came in at 11.2 natural and was chaptalized to 12*. Some among us found it just a little weighty in consequence, but its got a ways to go before it hits the market.
I am compelled by my nondisclosure agreement to do no more than mention that Luneau is in the process of acquiring a new vineyard with an unusual soil geology for the region, but since the deal is not yet done, they dont want any of you trying to dive headfirst into the bidding and I can say no more at this time.
The Pierre Blanche (pure schist, 60 y.o. vines, 25-30 hl/ha in 07) is more powerful at 11.8 natural, but this is never quite my favorite from these guys.
They had frost in Clos de Poyet last spring, cutting yields to 25-30 hl/ha. Interestingly, the frost affected this old selection-massale vineyard vine by vine. Certain vines were either more advanced in their cycle and thus vulnerable, or were more resistant and unaffected. This wine has an interesting mineral grip to it that has a different texture than you get from granite sites. They may not keep this for extended lees maturation, but I like it quite a bit, with its yellowfruits on top of a rocky base. A bit of a small still life.
The bit of granite in the Claretieres site becomes evident in a change of minerality on the next wine. This usually finds its way into the L dOr, but is also bottled sometimes under its own name for small cavistes in France who want a differentiated product from them. It has a pleasing grapefruit pith quality, and should be quite interesting.
The schist site Clos des Noelles has 60 y.o. vines, and is also the subject of 3rd wave bottlings as many of you know quite well. The 3rd wave crew specifies 18 months of lees aging, but Luneau does 30. He did 35 hl/ha, although the 3rd wave standard is 47 and the AOC allows 55. The wine will be released in late 2010. I wonder if it might not be just a mite shy in the acid department, but well see.
Luneau had some interesting general comments on economic conditions in the Muscadet. Only 20% of the harvest is bottled by producers, the rest goes to negoce. A planted vineyard in a good site on a good slope with old vines, perhaps imperfectly trellised sells currently for 8000, a good index of the sorry state of the area.
We tasted some older wines, and I wont be universal, but some thoughts:
I didnt love the 03 Noelles Excelsiorthe toasty/roasty 03 thing is apparent here, and the wine is excellent for 2003, but its a little low in acid and I dont need it. YMMV.
The 02, OTOH, is excellent wine, more evolved and 2* from the aging and lees, savory with nice balance and remarkable length. Its fully open for business.
The 01 is leaner, plus classique,, showing very well indeed, still rich and long. The wine to serve if you have Florida Jim and Luca to the same dinner.
The 99 L dOr is ripe, rich, has the roasty skin thing, but its well integrated into a round, ripe, mineral wine. Will the 03 head this direction?
The aroma from the 97 L dOr jumps out of the glass and grabs you by the schnoz, its ripe and sweet, delicious zippy balance and length. Woo woo.
The 95 is less OTT than the ripe 97, but it has solid bright acidity, classic and mineral, long and satisfying.
But the 76 from magnumI may have mentioned this before, but it was 6 years sur lie and it is insanely good. Luneaus oenologist at the time told him that his lees were overripe and would add nothing to the wine. He thought they were clean and healthy and thought hed experiment with longer aging. Good idea, Pierre. The wine has layer after layer of honeyed maturity, is still fresh, and goes forever. This is the wine to serve if you have me to dinner.
For the sake of completeness, Ill note here that I tasted with Jo Landron at the Salon, but that it was at the very end of a long day and I mistrust myself. I really liked 05, 02, and 00 Fief du Breil, but I wasnt enamored of his 07s or 06s. I wouldnt take that view too much to heart.
I will comment briefly on some older wines that were served at a lunch with some growers, but I will try to draw conclusions rather than your attention to specific bottles, since most of them are not likely to be items of commerce. Thats a zeugma in the last sentence, btw. The lunch included spectacular becasses, which are either woodcocks or woodchucks depending on who you ask. In any case, their legs were confited and their breasts roasted, and they had a wonderful woodsy gaminess about them. Marc shot each one personally for our delectation.
If you have any 98 LArpen from CRB in the cellar, its in a fabulous texture. A blend of the lost vines of menu pineau and chenin blanc at CRB, its got great crunchy minerality, good acid. Zowie reads my note.
Cazin brought an 84 Cour-Cheverny, from a difficult vintage (frost in the spring, rain at harvest, locusts, the works). It has a wonderful honeyed old romo nose and a crazy mineral acidic finish. It is not an easy wine even now, but it remains extremely interesting. The 89 is not as aromatically expressive as the 84, but it is really nice and earthy, with less acid and its dry, with
Melon and Chenin, some other stuff
Your intrepid correspondent once again braved all the hazards of a winter trip to the Loire valleytedious schnooks, badly tailored striped suits that are popular among young French sommeliers in training, reheated canned confit at dinner, dubious rillette sandwiches at lunch, fake baguettes at breakfast, widespread norovirus pandemics, ice-cold showers, slow diesel cars, the works. The compensation of seeing old friends, tasting the wines, and of course telling all of you about the best so you can buy the scarce ones before I remember to is plenty to motivate me out into the cold rains of an Angevin February.
It was another tricky vintage in 2007, and the winemakers all showed the effects. No lingering beach vacations last summer for most of these pallid Northernersthey were out in the rain spraying their vines, battling a great variety of fungal infections throughout the summer deluges. An accelerated spring put the vines in most spots several weeks ahead of their normal cycle by the end of a very hot April (as warm in many places as July would prove to be). But in May, the rains set in. It rained often throughout May, June, July, and the first half of August. The immature grapes retain plenty of antifungal phenolics (the molds dont like bitter green grapes any better than you do), but the leaves are a delectable salad course for mildew, and some growers reported having to spray weekly or more to keep leaves on the vines. Those who lost this battle were sunk entirelyI was told that Guy Bossard, one of the best growers in the Muscadet, applied to the organic authorities (I presume Demeter) for permission to spray more than the usual quota of the ironically organic allowed copper and sulfur Bordeaux mixture, and the organic bureaucrats dithered on the question for a couple of weeks. By the time they gave him the go-ahead, his crop was gone and he has no production at all this year. And thus, presumably, next to no income. Mathieu Baudry told me that he and his father had been in Bordeaux in May and had seen the mildew in the vineyards there. Knowing that Chinon is typically a couple of weeks behind Bordeaux in maturation, they headed home and tried to keep ahead of the mildew for the rest of the summer.
It was not as dire as it could have been. Fortunately, the weather stayed cool through the rains, slowing the fungal blooms. And the warm spring gave the vines a bit of a jump on maturity. In mid-August, more or less, the sun came out, and the rest of the fall was quite nicesunny, reasonably warm, and in good conditions for maturation of the grapes. Good conditions, that is, if there were enough leaves left on your vines to benefit from the photosynthesis. So what could have been a catastrophic vintage in the end of the day produced many good wines. People who had preserved enough foliage and who could wait a few weeks to harvest produced some very fine wines. But one person who had visited the valley in early August reported to me that there were many desperate vignerons at that time.
A few wild-ass generalizations about the wines in this vintage. Please dont attempt to apply these deductively to the glass in front of you, but think of them as a mnemonic, or a collation of particularly memorable anecdotes, or some such. 2007 produced many rather classic Loire whites, in contrast to 2005 and 2006, which tended farther in the direction of ripeness and richness than is historically typical, although who knows what the future climate holds? It is silly to generalize about the global climate from a little patch of far-western Europe, but as I walked through the vines at Clos Roche Blanche in the cool valley of the Cher a couple of days ago in the first week of February, there were flowers blooming between the vines (Veroniques), and a few mosquitoes followed us. French warming, at any rate, seems to be real. Chikungunya may be only the first of the brave new European pathogens.
But I digress, this is not the insect-borne diseases board. The vintage also produced somewhat lean, refreshing reds that owe their structure more to acid than to tannin. They may not be big with the pointy crowd, and they may not be reds to cellar for generations, but they are in many cases quite ripe and satisfying, and their lower alcohols and more restrained structures were often quite welcome to this observer. I wasnt personally a big fan of the 14+% alcohol whites of 2006 and sometimes 2005, nor of the rs that was left behind in the hopes of balancing those wines, nor sometimes of the hard tannins in some reds of those vintages. In 2007, were back to much more classic winesLoire wines, theyre whats for dinner.
So lets consider a few perhaps representative wines. Of course, my journalistic heroism does not extend to tasting the run of the mill industrial production that dominates many AOCs in the Loire on your behalf. Im sure that 2007 was a tough year for industrial producers as well, and that the producers of systemic fungicides probably had a banner year. Machine harvesting was probably less detrimental in 2007 than in a vintage with late rains like 2006, because many more of the grapes came in healthy. But I flag for you that my little collection of anecdotes remains quite biased towards quality producers, and also towards those practicing various forms of organic viticulture.
To begin as usual at the end of the river, a group of us visited Marc Ollivier, which is always a fantastic time. In this vintage, we had good wines, too. Marc had to do most of the vineyard work by hand, it was too wet to bring tractors into the vineyards. But he said that the weather was great after mid-August, so he had a month before he started harvest on September 13th. He had a very tough time in 2007 with Eden and Moulin de Gustaie, since those sites have more clay and consequently poorer drainage. The reduced crops are to be combined with the Pepiere, comprising about 25% of the final blend. From my tasting of that component, they will bring somewhat more apparent fruit to the mix, but the Pepiere is usually a later developer, fruit-wise. The Pepiere vintage is a very solid one, with excellent minerality, fine acid balance, resembles a slightly riper 04 more than it does the very ripe 05 and 06. Marc was one of a couple of growers I heard suggest during the trip that natural yeast populations would vary significantly by vintagea very wet summer like 07 would give a different population than a hot, dry year like 03.
The 2007 Clos des Briords had a nice balance of rocks and fruit, with fine length. It has less toasty/roasty skin minerality than 03 or 99, but its solid vintage that Marc thinks is classic Briords. Marc did only 25 hl/ha, but got 11.9% natural alcohol (CdB is never chaptalized), with 6.2 g total acid (of course he doesn't acidify). He harvested Sept 18th, 20th, and 22nd. Marc had 43 pickers this year. He sometimes ships the gang out for a day or two in the middle of harvest, which allows him to keep the gang together and paid steadily while his vineyards ripen, and also allows certain of his neighbors to have a prestigious hand-harvested cuvee.
The old-vines section of Pepiere that makes the Granite de Clisson bottling is the real deal in 07. Mouthcoating minerality at this stage, deep and long. The old vines gave 20 hl/ha. Marc thinks it will grow to be as rich as the 2005, but will be livelier from somewhat higher acid. This was his final harvest, on September 26th, and its 12.2% natural. Thrilling stuff. For those of you whove been under your granite rock for the last couple of years, a group called 3rd wave is organizing grower groups in particular special terroirs in the Muscadet, organizing short pruning, extended lees aging, and so on. Interestingly, hand harvest is not required, although of course Marc hand harvests all his vineyards.
Marc is always in action, and hes let go some vineyards in 07 and added others. All Marcs vineyards are now within 1 km of the river on slopes. One that hes added is in the neighboring hamlet of Chateau Thebaut, and Marc expects to make a special Granite de Chateau Thebaut bottling from it. He and the other owners are negotiating now on the exact specs for the wine. Marc wanted 40 hl/ha, the other growers were aghast at the loss in yield. He thinks they may end up at 45, or more likely the 47 that is typical of the other small quality groups. Marc also has 2 new ha in the Gras Mouton vineyard. He has given up a portion of Pepiere.
Marc also made delicious reds in 07, bright and juicy, with special mention for the Granite bottling.
Some comments on older wines tasted in a vertical:
2006 CdB seems a little closed to me right now after the young wines. I might be inclined to let mine rest for a year.
2005 CdB is in a great place right now, as is the Granite de Clisson. The wine that could have been Granite de Clisson in 2006 was bottled as Pepiere since Marc didnt have enough wine.
1999 CdB continues its evolution into a more classic wine. Its possible that what I call the toasty/roasty minerality of this and the 2003 are not just due to a different character of sun-roasted skins, but may also reflect a different yeast population, but I cant prove it.
The 97 has always been an unusual beauty, with its proportion of botrytis-affected grapes. Its showing really well today, but I think its evolution is headed towards a more prominent display of the botrytis over the other qualities of the wine, and Im putting out the drink in the next few years flag on these.
Nothing beats the 96. The 95 is also in fine shape with a long run ahead.
89 CdB has the grace of maturity, and a hint of caramel adds complexity. No need to hold, but no panic either. I wont taunt you with the very old wines except to mention that we had a fine 75, and the 73 wasnt as fine as last years bottle.
The next morning, I had my first chance to visit Luneau-Papin. M. Luneau remains an extraordinarily sunny and cheerful host. The operations could not be more differentLuneau is a large, shiny, purpose-built winery, and is kept in a state of high polish. Luneau was a pioneer in the region for bottlings by terroir, and spoke at length about the different parcels. He notes as a general matter that the soils of the Loire valley become less calcareous after Angers, heading more in the direction of schists, granites, and the like. Like Marc, Luneau does a hand-harvest with a triage in the vineyard, uses whole clusters in a soft pneumatic press, with aging in underground vats at 12-13*C.
I wont go through all the wines, since many of them will find destinations that will be out of reach of most of you.
Ill mention that Clos des Allees is more of a Florida Jim Muscadet than a Luca Muscadet in 2007. It came in at 11.2 natural and was chaptalized to 12*. Some among us found it just a little weighty in consequence, but its got a ways to go before it hits the market.
I am compelled by my nondisclosure agreement to do no more than mention that Luneau is in the process of acquiring a new vineyard with an unusual soil geology for the region, but since the deal is not yet done, they dont want any of you trying to dive headfirst into the bidding and I can say no more at this time.
The Pierre Blanche (pure schist, 60 y.o. vines, 25-30 hl/ha in 07) is more powerful at 11.8 natural, but this is never quite my favorite from these guys.
They had frost in Clos de Poyet last spring, cutting yields to 25-30 hl/ha. Interestingly, the frost affected this old selection-massale vineyard vine by vine. Certain vines were either more advanced in their cycle and thus vulnerable, or were more resistant and unaffected. This wine has an interesting mineral grip to it that has a different texture than you get from granite sites. They may not keep this for extended lees maturation, but I like it quite a bit, with its yellowfruits on top of a rocky base. A bit of a small still life.
The bit of granite in the Claretieres site becomes evident in a change of minerality on the next wine. This usually finds its way into the L dOr, but is also bottled sometimes under its own name for small cavistes in France who want a differentiated product from them. It has a pleasing grapefruit pith quality, and should be quite interesting.
The schist site Clos des Noelles has 60 y.o. vines, and is also the subject of 3rd wave bottlings as many of you know quite well. The 3rd wave crew specifies 18 months of lees aging, but Luneau does 30. He did 35 hl/ha, although the 3rd wave standard is 47 and the AOC allows 55. The wine will be released in late 2010. I wonder if it might not be just a mite shy in the acid department, but well see.
Luneau had some interesting general comments on economic conditions in the Muscadet. Only 20% of the harvest is bottled by producers, the rest goes to negoce. A planted vineyard in a good site on a good slope with old vines, perhaps imperfectly trellised sells currently for 8000, a good index of the sorry state of the area.
We tasted some older wines, and I wont be universal, but some thoughts:
I didnt love the 03 Noelles Excelsiorthe toasty/roasty 03 thing is apparent here, and the wine is excellent for 2003, but its a little low in acid and I dont need it. YMMV.
The 02, OTOH, is excellent wine, more evolved and 2* from the aging and lees, savory with nice balance and remarkable length. Its fully open for business.
The 01 is leaner, plus classique,, showing very well indeed, still rich and long. The wine to serve if you have Florida Jim and Luca to the same dinner.
The 99 L dOr is ripe, rich, has the roasty skin thing, but its well integrated into a round, ripe, mineral wine. Will the 03 head this direction?
The aroma from the 97 L dOr jumps out of the glass and grabs you by the schnoz, its ripe and sweet, delicious zippy balance and length. Woo woo.
The 95 is less OTT than the ripe 97, but it has solid bright acidity, classic and mineral, long and satisfying.
But the 76 from magnumI may have mentioned this before, but it was 6 years sur lie and it is insanely good. Luneaus oenologist at the time told him that his lees were overripe and would add nothing to the wine. He thought they were clean and healthy and thought hed experiment with longer aging. Good idea, Pierre. The wine has layer after layer of honeyed maturity, is still fresh, and goes forever. This is the wine to serve if you have me to dinner.
For the sake of completeness, Ill note here that I tasted with Jo Landron at the Salon, but that it was at the very end of a long day and I mistrust myself. I really liked 05, 02, and 00 Fief du Breil, but I wasnt enamored of his 07s or 06s. I wouldnt take that view too much to heart.
I will comment briefly on some older wines that were served at a lunch with some growers, but I will try to draw conclusions rather than your attention to specific bottles, since most of them are not likely to be items of commerce. Thats a zeugma in the last sentence, btw. The lunch included spectacular becasses, which are either woodcocks or woodchucks depending on who you ask. In any case, their legs were confited and their breasts roasted, and they had a wonderful woodsy gaminess about them. Marc shot each one personally for our delectation.
If you have any 98 LArpen from CRB in the cellar, its in a fabulous texture. A blend of the lost vines of menu pineau and chenin blanc at CRB, its got great crunchy minerality, good acid. Zowie reads my note.
Cazin brought an 84 Cour-Cheverny, from a difficult vintage (frost in the spring, rain at harvest, locusts, the works). It has a wonderful honeyed old romo nose and a crazy mineral acidic finish. It is not an easy wine even now, but it remains extremely interesting. The 89 is not as aromatically expressive as the 84, but it is really nice and earthy, with less acid and its dry, with