Gérard Boulay, 2015 Update
During my ongoing rediscovery of Sancerre I don’t think I have yet come across any wines as exciting as those of Gérard Boulay. From the entry-level wines with their bold yellow labels, up to the more refined appearances of the single-vineyard cuvées from all the top sites of Chavignol, I have yet to find any wines that match these for complexity of flavour and minerally confidence. These are wines of considerable merit, true grands vins which, while they drink well young, will also surely age nicely too.
Since first encountering them I have been trying to keep track of Gérard’s wines. Unfortunately during a recent flying visit to Sancerre I didn’t have time to call in on him, instead using my time in the region to visit some domaines I had never visited before. I have started publishing my reports on these other visits, having begun with my Domaine Thomas-Labaille profile this week, and I will continue with more new profiles in the immediate future. In the meantime here are my thoughts on the latest releases from Gérard, all wines tasted at home.
The Wines
I decided to take a look at four wines, in order to fill in a few gaps in my tasting experience. This meant starting with the 2013 vintage, largely a difficult year along the length of the Loire, although things worked out rather better than you might imagine in Pouilly-Fumé and Sancerre, as they did in Muscadet, largely down to the earlier ripening of Melon de Bourgogne and Sauvignon Blanc. Even so the harvest was certainly challenging, the damp conditions being quite conducive to rot. All the same, although on the whole this seems to be a successful vintage for Sancerre, it certainly lags behind the wonderful 2012 vintage, and I would say it is probably behind 2014 too, based on my early tastes.
