Domaine de Bablut, 2024 Update
In this, the final instalment in a series of three Anjou updates this week (after my tasting reports on the latest releases from Domaine des Baumard and Domaine des Rochelles), we come to Domaine de Bablut.
Like Domaine des Rochelles this is another source of top-notch Coteaux de l’Aubance, the crème de la crème here having been, for many years, Christophe Daviau’s Vin Noble cuvée. The Lebretons might win hands down in the minerality, elegance, acidity and balance stakes, but if you are looking for the purest expression of botrytis along the river bank, then you may well start (and end) your hunt with Daviau’s Vin Noble, perhaps – if you have the opportunity to visit – encountered in the tasting room beneath the Daviau family’s old stone windmill.
At least that was certainly true in years gone by. Sadly (to my mind and palate, anyway), like many others in the region, Christophe and Antoine Daviau (the latter pictured below) have shifted their focus away from sweet wines, and are concentrating more on dry white and sparkling cuvées. The most recent vintage of Vin Noble I have seen with my own eyes (and tasted, naturally) was 2002, although I believe there was some bottled in 2005 (and perhaps there were small quantities released in more recent vintages which slipped under my radar).
More commonly sighted cuvées such as Sélection and Grandpierre were continued, the latter produced in most vintages, culminating in 2009, 2010, 2011 and then 2014. At this point, however, these other labels also bit the dust, the three sweet wines amalgamated into a single cuvée named – appropriately enough – Unique. This was the name Christophe would previously have used in more challenging vintages when he combined all his moelleux crop into a single cuvée, but now Unique is his sole sweet label.
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