Nicolas Joly, 2024 Update
Given that more than thirty years have passed since I first travelled – with wine glass in hand, naturally – along the length of the Loire, and more than twenty years have passed since I first called in on the Nicolas Joly and family at the Château de la Roche aux Moines, you would think I have come to know the wines of this estate, and of Savennières in general, rather well.
And you would be half right.
Half right because few appellations have changed as dramatically as Savennières has in the past two or three decades. The appellation gradually shook off its image as a source of traditionally Angevin moelleux styles, even though many of its viticulteurs did not immediately shake off the moelleux methods. It was still common to pick late, so that sugar levels and potential alcohols were high, sometimes introducing botrytis into the mix as well. It was with each new arrival into the appellation – Claude Papin, Eric Morgat, Damien Laureau, Thibaud Boudignon and one or two others – that the wines have more convincingly shifted to a style representative of the region’s potential for dry Chenin Blanc.
Of course, during this time the wines of the Joly family also changed. Nicolas Joly took over the running of the estate from his mother, and soon a philosophy of non-intervention and biodynamics took hold, giving us an array of individual and occasionally idiosyncratic wines. Some love them. Others certainly don’t.
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