Loire 2008 at Ten Years
In this report I turn my attention back to the 2008 vintage in the Loire Valley, seen through the lens of a small selection of wines on their tenth birthday. There is of course no right-minded wine merchant sitting on a collection of wines from this region for a decade, and so unlike more famous regions (obviously I am thinking of Bordeaux) there is nobody offering jobbing wine critics, writers and bloggers a comprehensive ‘ten years on’ tasting For this reason, all of the wines featured here have been brought up from my own cellar, expressly for the purpose of this report.
As a consequence of this methodology this report does vary in terms of size and breadth from year to year, as some years I naturally acquire more bottles than in others. My Loire 2005 at Ten Years report was fairly representative, looking at several dozen wines from Muscadet all the way up to Sancerre, from white to red, from dry to sweet. We are now tasting our way through a relatively lean period though; my Loire 2006 and Loire 2007 reports having been rather less comprehensive affairs, and so too my 2008 report. This is merely the calm before the storm though; looking at what lies ahead for my 2009 and 2010 reports, with over a hundred different wines lined up, next year I will have my work cut out.
For the moment, though, let us stick with 2008. Unlike the fabulously successful 2005, 2009 and 2010 vintages, 2008 was not an immediately memorable year for the wines of the Loire Valley. Nevertheless, in a region with such diversity of variety, terroir, climate and style, there is almost always a quality hotspot or two somewhere along the river. And this was certainly the case in the 2008 vintage (yeah, I’m looking at you, demi-sec Vouvray).
Vintage Recap
Although I am certain today there are more wine drinkers aware of the devastation that can be wreaked by a spring frost than there were a few years ago, after the events of 2017 Bordeaux, as well as the frosts experienced herein the Loire Valley in the 2017 and 2016 vintages, I suspect most have forgotten about the terrible devastation that was visited upon Muscadet and parts of Anjou in April 2008. The buds had burst early and were vulnerable, and when the mercury dropped to -3ºC on the morning of April 7th there was little the vignerons could do.
