L’Affût, 2020 Update
Just a year on from tasting Isabelle Pangault’s first vintage from her Sologne vineyards I returned to taste with her again. This was an opportunity to revisit the 2018s, the first wines she made, now in bottle, as well as checking out the first samples of the 2019 vintage. Alongside the two cuvées bottled in 2018, Instinctive and Nebula 1894, Isabelle has added a second red, Orchestrale, a curious blend of four varieties.
The Wines
We started with the two white wines. Instinctive is Sauvignon Blanc in style and spirit, although in truth it includes a small percentage of Chardonnay, 8% in 2018 and 15% in 2019. This is perhaps not surprising; the Sologne is home to the unsung Cheverny appellation, surely the only (except Valençay, Isabelle reminds me) appellation to dictate a blend of Sauvignon Blanc (typically 60-85%) with Chardonnay (the balance). Isabelle’s wines don’t have that appellation, but the vineyards clearly carry this identity. I asked Isabelle (pictured) what benefit she thought the Chardonnay brought to the blend, if any; “I find the Chardonnay works well with the Sauvignon Blanc”, she replied, “producing a wine with less Sauvignon caricature and perhaps a more gastronomic feel”.
The desire for this sort of ‘gastronomic’ style was what prompted Isabelle to leave the fruit on the vine at the end of the 2019 growing season; “I was waiting for the thiols to develop, so I could get away from a very herbaceous expression”. A good plan, but there was another unlooked-for secondary effect. “At the time the weather was hot , and while the thiols never really came, the sugars climbed”. This explains why the 2019 Instinctive has a rather robust 15% alcohol. While I reserve definitive judgement on brut de cuve samples tasted at this very early stage, I think I was more taken with the idiosyncratic apple and pear fruit of the 2018 vintage than the rather warm and bold style of the 2019 vintage.
