Loire 2012 at Ten Years
Sometimes great vintages come along in pairs. Take, for example, the 1899 and 1900 vintages in Bordeaux. The former was marked by a hot summer and relatively high alcohol levels, many wines coming in at over 13%, rare for the era (these days such figures would also be notable, but more because they are not too high, rather than not too low). The latter vintage was similarly hot and dry, and both 1899 and 1900 were helped by refreshing showers, just before or even during the harvest. Although 1899 was initially better received, in the end the wines of both years turned out to be magnificent, giving Bordeaux enthusiasts decades if not a century of side-by-side bibulous pleasure.
Naturally over the years I have enjoyed checking in on these two vintages, the wines now well over one hundred years old, even adding the odd double magnum or methuselah or to my cellar now and again, and popping the cork whenever the right opportunity comes along, such as my dog’s birthday (alright, alright, I admit this is all lies; I haven’t tasted either, I’ve never purchased a bottle older than about 70 years, and my dog doesn’t even drink wine).
Coming back to reality, in some ways the 2011 and 2012 vintages in the Loire Valley also go together as a pair, although not because they are both great years. Far from it, I am afraid. Both were trying vintages, with abject failure in some corners of the Loire Valley, but fabulous successes in others (one advantage of a wine region so diverse and extensive is that even in what appears to be the worst vintage ever you can almost always find a good or even brilliant wine somewhere). In this regard the two vintages go together like two pieces of a jigsaw, interlocking rather than matching. Where the 2011 vintage was deficient, 2012 will often come to your rescue. And when you feel 2012 has let you down, you can often cheer yourself up by turning to 2011.
Of course, the two jigsaw pieces do not snap together as cleanly as we might like (life just isn’t like that); there are some deficiencies which run through both vintages. But before I explore this in more detail, and get on to how the wines are tasting today, ten years on, first a quick vintage recap is warranted. After all, it is through understanding the weather that we understand why some corners of this wine region excelled in 2012 (and in 2011), and why some did not.
Vintage Recap
The season started with a cold weather, and in mid-April it was sufficiently cold to cause some frost. While it did not have the devastating effect seen in the 2008 vintage, when approximately one-third of the Muscadet vineyards were abandoned as a result, this was a significant frost in parts. Anjou and Touraine were perhaps worst hit, with some growers reporting between 15% and 40% loss of crop, while the vignerons of the Nantais scraped through (here they were already growing in frost resilience, the 2008 frost having ‘pruned’ much of the less vigorous wood from the Muscadet tree, if I can put it that way). Up in the Central Vineyards, however, the degree of damage done by the frost was much less. Their turn would come soon enough, with the arrival of frost as a regular feature of the Loire Valley season, starting in the 2016 vintage.
