Loire 2002 at Fifteen Years
The 2002 vintage in the Loire Valley was one of the most striking of the first decade of the 21st century. In Bordeaux it was a rather muted affair, the red wines of 2002 Bordeaux region being rather light and – at just fifteen years of age – many are now in need of drinking up. Here in the Loire Valley, however, the conditions were rather more conducive to the style of wine made here, and indeed one could say they were ideal. The season kicked off with a strong flowering, if anything a little too warm, followed by occasionally cool and changeable weather during the summer which was slightly troubling. But then there came several weeks of beautifully warm and dry weather during the month of September, and this proved to be ideal for producing a slew of flavour-rich, acid-bright, textured and succulent wines.
While the vintage seemed to take on a broadly good reputation, I formed the opinion some time ago that it was particularly good for dry white wines, and exceptionally so for the sweet white wines. As for the red wines, these have always been a little more variable. There are certainly some great successes, but alongside these wines are some which perhaps, on reflection, showed rather better when they were younger than they are now, before the fruit faded to expose their rather bare acid spines. Nevertheless, even if some red wines have faded a little, there are still others which remain worthy of our time in this vintage.
Revisiting this vintage at fifteen years of age, I look here at more than twenty wines. There are no merchants or other bodies hosting horizontal tastings of mature Loire Valley wines as there are for Bordeaux or perhaps other regions, so as is often the case all of these wines were pulled from my own cellar. As such these are a rather limited selection which can only indicate how well these individual wines have aged, and we should be cautious about extrapolating these results across whole appellations or regions. While some wines from Anjou, Sancerre and Vouvray age brilliantly, others are clearly intended for early drinking. The identity of the domaine or the vigneron, and where the cuvée in question sits within their portfolio, is all important.
