Liquid Gold 2020
Yesterday’s report on the 2016 L’Ancestrale, where I reflected on how the Vouvray appellation has changed over the years since I first visited and tasted the wines, serves as an introduction to the second episode of Liquid Gold. The first episode, in case you missed it, was Liquid Gold 2019, published last year (obviously), and it featured a smorgasbord of wines from the Sauternes and Barsac appellations, from a variety of vintages. I started off with some youngsters from 2013, before heading back through the years to some more mature vintages, finishing up in 1990 and 1988.
In episode two of Liquid Gold I am sticking with more mature wines, as I home in on one vintage in particular, this being 1989. My focus here is not Sauternes and Barsac though, as in this instalment I have moved on to Vouvray.
Liquid Gold Episode 2
The realisation came to me in a flash, in December if I recall correctly. Nearly twelve full months of 2019 had come and gone before it dawned on me that thirty years had passed since the 1989 vintage. My excuse was that I was busy with an extensive overhaul and upgrade of this site, as a result of which quite a few things slipped through the net. Forgetting to include the 2009 Château Chauvin in a tasting report looking at a handful of wines from the 2009 vintage in Bordeaux as they reached ten years of age was one of them. Overlooking the 30th anniversary of the 1989 vintage, a landmark year in many corners of the Loire Valley, was another.
Fortunately, the penance I have paid for this oversight has not been too arduous. I pulled seven examples of the 1989 vintage in Vouvray from the cellar, and worked my way through them, with some well-known names among the mix, including Domaine Huet, Domaine du Clos Naudin and François Pinon, as well as a couple of less commonly encountered domaines. First, though, a little detail on the 1989 vintage in Vouvray, and why it was such a special year.
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