Loire 2005 at Ten Years: Demi-Sec & Moelleux
I think the approach of most mainstream wine publications at this point would be to finish on a huge, blow-out array of sweet wines. I know it is the opinion of many in the wine press and wine trade that the Loire Valley gets interesting when it gets sweet, and everything else is for ‘summer drinking’.
This is precisely the kind of belief this ten-years on tasting is intended to overturn, so I have kept the number of sweet wines bringing this report to a conclusion down to a minimal number. My intention has been to cast the spotlight on how well the best dry wines of serious appellations such as Savennières, Vouvray, Chinon and Saumur-Champigny age, and I think the tasting has served that purpose well. I have not really set out to prove once again what we all already know with certainty, that the sweet wines of the Loire Valley are first of all, magnificent, and secondly, capable of aging very well.
The Wines
Nevertheless, I couldn’t end without a few sweeter wines. I kicked off with a handful of demi-sec cuvées from Vouvray, from Philippe Foreau, the Clos du Bourg from Domaine Huet and the Cuvée des Fondraux from Champalou. Now I don’t want to be accused of painting demi-sec as a sweet wine, so please note these wines are included on this page really just to pad out the numbers; in my mind, they are much more closely related in terms of functionality à table to the dry wines. I often find myself drinking it with roast pork, porc aux pruneaux especially.
I am a sucker for this style, which to me embodies everything that Vouvray should be. The residual sugar, generally in excess of 20 g/l, not only makes the wines the perfect match for such sweet pork dishes, it also changes the aging curve dramatically, giving them much greater potential. I will never forget the Domaine Huet Demi-Sec tasting I attended a few years ago with Noël Pinguet, featuring wines from the 1950s and 1940s, still going strong. They were not wines of mere academic interest, but were a joy to taste and drink. Vouvray Sec ages well, but even with limited data points I don’t think it would hold up quite that well (having said that, I have some 1940s Vouvray in my cellar, which I must get around to opening some time to see just how it does).
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