Loire 2014 at Three Years
The Loire Valley has had a little run of difficult vintages in recent times, the trio of vintages from 2011 to 2013 having been particularly challenging. In truth each of these three vintages was a mixed blessing rather than a catastrophe, and there were always good wines to be found if you knew where to look. For a start 2011 was actually an exceptionally good vintage for red and sweet wines, but its reputation will forever be stained by the rot which pervaded Muscadet, its fungal fingers spreading upriver through Anjou and even as far as parts of Touraine. The ensuing vintage was a little mean when it came to the late-harvest varieties, namely Cabernet Franc and Chenin Blanc, but the early-picked varieties such as Melon de Bourgogne and Sauvignon Blanc were absolutely top class in 2012. While in 2013 there were no great wines, as hail blighted the vineyards of Vouvray, and the reds in particular were rather washed out, there were some decent dry whites as well as some very attractive sweet wines this year, albeit in smaller volumes than we would usually hope for.
This complexity, a reflection of this region’s great breadth and diversity, is partly what makes the Loire Valley so interesting. Even so, it is still more exciting when a vintage gives us not complicated variety, but broad and consistent high quality. And happily that is the situation we committed drinkers of this region’s wines now find ourselves in. The trio of difficult vintages that finished up with the washout of 2013 have been followed by three wonderful vintages in 2014, 2015 and 2016. Each has its own character, but all three years demonstrate broad success, being rich in excellent wines coming from many different corners of the region. The only fly in the ointment was that 2016 was blighted by frost, meaning some vignerons were unable to take full advantage of the otherwise excellent potential, nevertheless the quality of what was eventually produced still seems to be very strong.
To mark the great success seen in the first of these three vintages, I begin here a tasting report on the wines of 2014. I have already reported on the vintage in early 2015, in my Loire 2014 Vintage Report and tasting, and I revisited the vintage again last year. In both cases these reports focused on wines tasted during visits to the Loire Valley, or perhaps at professional tastings in the UK. Here, however, I focus much more on wines I have added to my own cellar, bolstered by just a few ‘professional’ tasting notes.
