Château La Roche en Loire: Tasting & Drinking
My experience with the wines of Château La Roche en Loire began when I first met Louis-Jean Sylvos, back in 2012. During the course of the years that followed I tasted with him many times, and I was frequently convinced by how his wines showed; they spoke to me of well-tended, organically managed vineyards and sensible winemaking, allowing the varieties and their origins to shine through. The Sylvos calling card was a portfolio of wines with good forward flavours, appealingly defined fruit and clean lines, and I always felt they should have broad appeal. Even the Cuvée Céline, with its bruised-apple aromatics, seemed to be clean and fresh on the palate.
I was more taken, however, by the Cuvée Louis, which managed to combine fruit intensity with purity and definition on the palate, without any of the over-ripe corpulence that can come hand-in-hand with such strident fruit expression in warmer climes. Louis-Jean Sylvos may have considered himself ‘self-taught’, but he had clearly achieved much with his teachings.
For this reason I was personally saddened to learn that in 2022 he had sold the property, and moved on to enjoy a viticulture-free retirement. The domaine is now in the hands of Emmanuel and Baptiste Pousset, and while they have continued with the biodynamic commitment in the vineyard, they have naturally reworked the portfolio of wines. At first glance the Pousset style seems to be a touch more austere than I experienced with Louis-Jean’s wines, but I look forward to seeing how things evolve here. (16/1/13, updated 19/11/23, 1/3/25)
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