Domaine de la Butte, 2017 Update
Continuing my assault on various red wine domaines of the Loire Valley, spurred on by top quality in the 2015 vintage (with some excellent wines in 2014 and also 2016, I think), I come now to Domaine de la Butte. This is an extraordinarily reliable name, the estate run by Jacky Blot (pictured) who is perhaps better known for his work in Montlouis, at Domaine de la Taille aux Loups.
His success in part is down to his meticulous approach to the fruit at harvest-time, hand-picking, sorting over a table de tri, destemming and then with the option to sort again, all in the vines, before the fruit drops down into the troglodytic cellars below, descending in a chute tunnelled through the rock. While the approach might not sound particularly 21st-century, it is surprising how many domaines in the Loire Valley take a more relaxed view to sorting.
The Wines
Jacky and his son Jean-Philippe poured a quartet of wines from the 2015 vintage, and there was something of value in all of them. There was little to distinguish between the 2015 Pied de la Butte and the 2015 Haut de la Butte, the cuvées from the foot and summit of the slope respectively, both wines showing supple substance, keen structure and very classic Cabernet Franc perfume, with notes of sweetpea, violet and pencil shavings. Indeed, these floral and perfumed aromatics were carried through into the more upmarket cuvées, the superior 2015 Perrières and the excellent 2015 Mi-Pente, the former from a famed lieu-dit, the latter the mid-slope counterpoint to the first two cuvées. The difference here was the added bonuses of texture, substance and structure.
