Domaine du Haut Bourg, 2015 Update
Following on from my recent Muscadet Côtes de Grandlieu celebration, when I looked at some older vintages from a number of this appellation’s leading domaines, it is time to take a look at some younger wines. In this case, some of the wines are only marginally younger, as Nicolas and Hervé Choblet of Domaine du Haut Bourg have a penchant for long periods of lees-aging, with two of their cuvées regularly seeing five and ten years sur lie respectively. And the results are, on the whole, pretty smart; of all the top wines in the Muscadet Côtes de Grandlieu tasting, more than one or two were wearing the Domaine du Haut Bourg label.
I stopped off to taste more fully with Nicolas (pictured above – apologies for using this image again, but it is easily my favourite picture of Nicolas) and Hervé, working my way through the brut de cuve samples from the 2014 vintage, including both Muscadet and vin de pays cuvées (my notes on which can be found in my Muscadet 2014 report, and in my Domaine du Haut Bourg profile) before moving onto the bottled wines, on which I report below. Here I started with the 2013 vintage, first an attractive domaine cuvée, which shows appealing aromatics, the lightly iodine-salty streak particularly enticing, and then the 2013 Le Pavillon, a cuvée parcellaire which had richer notes of pear skin and powdered minerality.
Thereafter there were just the two more aged cuvées, Signature du Haut Bourg and Origine du Haut Bourg, to taste. The incredibly astute reader might note that the names of these two wines have be subtly rearranged since I tasted them last (when they were simply Signature and Origine). This is a consequence of legal action taken by a South African winemaker who objected to the use of the word “Signature”, which hardly seems credible nevertheless Nicolas was forced to engage the services of a lawyer to sort it out, and then pay yet more fees to register the names Signature and Origine across Europe. He is now free to use both terms, but only in this slightly rearranged format.
