Nicolas Joly, 2012 Update
Regular readers probably won’t need reminding that I was unable to attend the annual Renaissance tasting in Angers this year. This two-day taste-fest of all things organic and biodynamic is usually held the weekend before the Salon des Vins de Loire, and as a consequence one trip to the Loire gives me five days of tasting opportunities. Not this year though; the two events were separated by an intervening week, and unable to attend both I elected for the Salon. I know others opted for the Renaissance tasting instead, and so it was unsurprising that visitor numbers to the Salon were down significantly (I’m sure other factors, such as disruption to travel caused by the terrible weather, also played a role through).
I was reminded of this at the recent RAW Wine Fair; one of the key figures in the Renaissance movement, alongside Mark Angeli and Lalou Bize-Leroy, is Nicolas Joly, and having missed out on the tasting in Angers I haven’t encountered his wines so far during 2012. At the Renaissance tasting Nicolas (or these days you are just as likely to encounter his daughter Virginie) would have been pouring his 2010s, and as a consequence of my absenteeism this is a vintage I have not yet tasted. So when I saw the name of Clos de la Coulée de Serrant on the line-up at RAW, I made a beeline for his stand, hungry for my first taste of this vintage.
I greeted Nicolas and Virginie with a smile and explained how disappointing it had been for me not to be able to taste their wines in February this year. “We didn’t move the dates“, was Virginie’s reply, delivered before I had even finished speaking. Ouch! I think I touched a raw nerve with my statement, certainly not my intention, which was only to convey how pleased I was to see them and taste their wines in London having missed out on Angers. I suspect there has been a lot of debate, perhaps peppered with accusations and criticism, around the timing of the two events; this would certainly explain Virginie’s peremptory response. Nevertheless, I think anybody who cares already knows full well that it was the Salon that moved. The motive for the move might be up for debate (or maybe not, but I will let you fill in this perhaps unsavoury part of the story yourselves), but little else is. As François Chidaine was reported to have said, upon resigning from the InterLoire executive in January this year, the body has become “a big bureaucratic machine“, with the organisation of the annual Salon coming in for particular criticism.
