Back to Blot and La Butte, 2026
Following on from my recently published report on a visit to meet Jean-Philippe Blot and check out the vines and wines of Domaine de la Taille aux Loups, I noticed a few gaps in my tasting notes for the wines of Domaine de la Butte, the Blot family’s vineyard in Bourgueil.
This was something of a surprise, as for some years I have made endeavoured to make an annual appointment to taste here, with the late Jacky Blot up until 2023, more recently with his son Jean-Philippe. So I donned my deerstalker, grabbed my magnifying glass, and began sleuthing my way through a collection of tasting notebooks and electronic spreadsheets. Somewhat to my surprise, my search returned some positive results.
I uncovered two small collections of Bourgueil notes. One set, it turned out, had already been published in Breton’s Brilliance, last year’s tasting report on more than 80 wines from the Bourgueil appellation. But that still left a small handful of notes previously overlooked. These pertain to the 2023 and 2022 vintages, of considerable interest given that the 2022 vintage in Bourgueil is rich in ripe, dark, brooding and cellar-worthy wines, while those of 2023 meld ripe fruit with a more classical restraint which will appeal to more traditional palates. I would rate both above other recent vintages, specifically 2021 and 2024.
To my even greater surprise I also stumbled across a slightly larger set of tasting notes from Montlouis-sur-Loire, here also turning the spotlight on to the 2023 vintage. Again this is a noteworthy vintage, with more polish and harmony than 2021 and 2024, and perhaps less extreme origins than 2022 (although some whites from 2022 have a surprising degree of freshness). There are certainly worth adding to my online database.
