Loire 2006: Tasting in 2012
As my review of the Loire 2006 vintage makes clear, the Loire vignerons – from Muscadet right up to Sancerre – did not have an easy time this year. This was a vintage which saw weather that swung from baking hot drought to tropical deluge, and touching on every possible type of weather in-between. This meant that many vignerons had to deal with significant problems both in the vineyard and winery; vine diseases such as mildew and uneven and questionable ripening of the fruit are just a taster. The pickers in Vouvray harvested the fruit wearing waterproofs and picking just as many ceps and chanterelles as grapes. And when the climate is favourable for the fungi growing by the hedgerows and in the woods, as it was this year, it is just as favourable for the fungus that likes to grow on the grapes; many vignerons had to deal with rotten fruit. Selection was key, although some vignerons admitted to getting round this problem by treating the wine with charcoal in order to remove the taste of rot.
All this sounds terrible; and yet, when you taste the wines, both white and red, you can find character and depth that seems to belie the troublesome nature of the vintage. Admittedly, now more than five years on, we are only looking at wines from the most diligent and dedicated of vignerons, but there are wines tasted here with deep flavours, fresh and balanced acidities, and concentrated fruit. What you won’t find are brilliant sweet wines; this was a vintage where most were grateful for fruit sufficiently ripe for their dry wines, never mind the rather prodigious levels of sugar required for the wines to be moelleux or liquoreux following the completion of fermentation. The only sweet wine included in this line up, a Coteaux de l’Aubance named La Belle Adorée from La Grange aux Belles, declared the weakness of the vintage in terms of its residual sugar. Unfortunately it was also heavily oxidised. This isn’t a domaine I know well, nevertheless I think this wine’s condition was likely to be more reflective of winemaking practises, or perhaps just the cork, rather than the vintage.
