Jonathan Pabiot, 2020 Update
There are a number of vignerons I insist on tasting with every year, familiar names such as Papin, Baudry and Mellot, and one of their number is a young vigneron in Pouilly-Fumé named Jonathan Pabiot. Having returned home to take over a section of the family domaine in 2006, he immediately converted his vines to organic viticulture and was soon producing wines which outshone those made by his father on the larger part of the domaine. It was only a few years before Pabiot Senior had handed over complete control of all the family’s vineyards to his son.
It would not be an exaggeration to say Jonathan Pabiot immediately made waves with the quality of his wines. Some in the press and wine trade immediately likened him to the late Didier Dagueneau, perhaps not entirely without merit, although Jonathan lacked Didier’s iconoclastic presence (not necessarily a bad thing) and, perhaps more importantly, his wines have an entirely different style. While Didier’s son Louis-Benjamin Dagueneau produces wines with a hallmark laser-like focus, Jonathan’s wines are softer and more richly polished, often showing a more exotic and ripe fruit character, together with a creamed weight and occasionally a more gentle seam of acidity which can perhaps be traced back to the partial malolactic fermentation which marks many of the wines.
Happily, having made it out to the Loire Valley earlier this year, before the Covid-19 lockdowns called a halt to travel, I managed to secure my fix of Pabiot wines for this year. Jonathan and I met up and tasted through a selection of recent wines, with a focus on the 2018 and 2017 vintages.
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