Florent Cosme, 2018 Update
I wrote in my recent report on a fantastic Vincent Carême Retrospective, featuring wines from his first ever vintage, 1999, through to the most recent, that Vincent Carême had helped to revolutionise the appellation of Vouvray. He achieved this not only through his own presence here, and the quality of his own wines, but also through the mentorship and tutelage of a number of young up-and-coming vignerons in the appellation. One such young acolyte is Florent Cosme (pictured), who I first visited back in the summer of 2014. When I was last in Vouvray I was delighted to be able to catch up with Florent once more, and to taste two of his most recently bottled wines, from the 2017 vintage.
When I first visited Florent he was taking the fruit from his two principal parcels, La Motte and Les Champs Rougets, and putting them into his sparkling wines, in the case of the former, and into still wines, from sec through to moelleux if the vintage warranted it, in the case of the latter. These he did under trendy ‘brand’ names such as Coup de Fougue, Utopia and Audace. On this occasion I was glad to see he has switched to naming his wines for the parcel of origin.
He poured his 2017 La Motte first, an attractive, classically formed wine with bright acidity made from vines planted on clay and flint soils, with some pieds approaching eighty years of age. Vinified more or less dry (it certainly feels dry, although it does have 6 g/l residual sugar), with a cool and restrained style, this probably needs a couple of years in the cellar to open up and show its best. As for the 2017 Champs Rougets, this feels more immediately approachable now, its 20 g/l residual sugar providing a cushion on which its taut structure can rest. Having said that I suspect it will do better in the cellar given time, and I would not shy away from hiding one in the cellar for five or ten years to test that theory. (25/1/19)
