Wines: Demi-Sec & Moelleux
For me the archetypal Vouvray cuvée is demi-sec. The division of the harvest into wines of different must weights, by running several tries through the vineyard and by careful selection, is a very welcome manipulation (because it gives us those savoury sec cuvées, and of course the fabulous sweet wines), but what the vineyard would give us if taken as a unified whole is probably a demi-sec wine. Demi-sec cuvées are thus perhaps the truest expression of Vouvray, no matter how delicious the other styles might be; thus, by extrapolation, if you don’t know the appellation’s demi-sec wines, then you don’t know Vouvray. Here I look at the demi-sec wines of Domaine Huet, followed by the highly desirable moelleux cuvées, and then other ‘special’ cuvées.
The concentration of residual sugar in a demi-sec cuvée is traditionally in the order of 10-20 g/l, although in practice – as with the sec cuvées – the typical figure has been creeping up in recent years. But what counts is balance, and these wines certainly achieve that. Put together the right combination of sugar and acidity and you have a rich and balanced wine, rather than an overtly sweet one. With age this becomes even more pronounced, the wines becoming drier and yet, paradoxically, more honeyed with increasingly advanced maturity.
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