Domaine de l’Ecu, 2012 Update

It’s been too long since I provided any update on Domaine de l’Ecu; until today the most recent words I wrote on this estate were published last year, in a combined Bossard-Landron update. Those words might be a year old, but the tasting notes were in truth a little older, as they featured wines tasted with Guy Bossard (pictured below) and Jo Landron in 2010. Sadly today’s update has a similarly belated feel to it, as the wines tasted below are not the still-embryonic 2011s but from the 2010 vintage instead, wines which I tasted last year in Angers. Unfortunately I haven’t yet tasted any of Bossard’s wines from the 2011 vintage; normally I would do so at the annual Renaissance Tasting, a Joly-Angeli biodynamic wine-fest held each year on the weekend immediately preceding the Salon des Vins de Loire. This year, in a triumph of disorganisation, poor communication and more than a hint of let’s-shoot-ourselves-in-the-foot, the 2012 Salon was held a week later than usual and as such I wasn’t in Angers at the right time for the Renaissance tasting.

Despite not having tasted Bossard’s 2011s this is still a good time to provide an update, and not simply because I am focusing on the top domaines of Muscadet – having started with Domaine de la Pépière a week or two ago – at the moment. No, it is a good time to update things simply because there have been some important developments at Domaine de l’Ecu. This is yet another domaine that has seen the arrival of new blood. Taking on an ‘associate’ seems to be de rigueur in the Sèvre et Maine region at the moment; my recent Pépière tasting was led by the affable Rémi Branger, Marc’s new partner, and at other domaines new arrivals, such as Frédéric Lailler at Domaine Brégeon, promise continuity as older vignerons look towards retirement. Here at Domaine de l’Ecu it is Frédéric Niger who has saved the day.

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