Alphonse Mellot, 2017 Update
The modern face of this domaine may well be Alphonse Mellot Junior, who I met and tasted with back in January 2017, but there is no indication that Alphonse Mellot Senior has any plans to slow things down. Having met up with the septuagenarian senior at the cellars in the heart of the hilltop town of Sancerre in July 2017, he cantered from one curiously shaped barrel to the next in his usual whirlwind style. It was just as difficult to keep up with him as it was on my first ever visit here, which was more than a year or two ago. But, you know, I don’t think I would have it any other way.
Generalising, the first of these two tastings with Alphonse Mellot Junior featured mainly samples of the 2014 vintage, taken from cuve and which were just about to be bottled, while the second tasting with Alphonse Mellot Senior (pictured above) featured some of the same cuvées from 2014 after bottling, as well as a first opportunity to taste wines from cuve and barrel in the 2016 vintage. It made sense therefore to amalgamate my notes, and so I present below my notes on wines from both tastings ordered by vintage, looking at 2016 first, then 2014.
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