Loire 2018 First Taste: Central Vineyards
In the final part of my Loire 2018 vintage report we come now to the Central Vineyards, where Sauvignon Blanc and Pinot Noir take centre stage, with supporting roles for Gamay, Pinot Gris and even Chasselas.
After the great successes seen in Anjou and Touraine, where Chenin Blanc and Cabernet Franc achieved wonderful levels of ripeness, and with the promise of excellent sweet wines from the former of these two varieties, we return now to a region with a reputation which rests upon an early-picked variety, Sauvignon Blanc. With a variety which depends on its acidity for a sense of freshness and vigour in the wines, there is an inevitable concern in a warm vintage such as 2018 that the region might be at a disadvantage. Looking at the Loire Valley’s other very important early-ripener, Melon de Bourgogne, the vintage produced a mix of styles in Muscadet, some acid-fresh, some a little flat, the balance within the wines varying from one domaine to the next, and from cuvée to cuvée. So how do things look in what Pierre Bréjoux christened The Kingdom of Sauvignon Blanc?
Sancerre
At Henri Bourgeois they reported the same dismal spring that was seen in the appellations downstream, with heavy rain at times in May and June, particularly the latter of these two months. The total rainfall for the first six months of the year was 450 mm, well on the way to matching the usual total figure for the entire year, which is about 600 mm. “We were scared of an attack of mildew”, said Arnaud Bourgeois, “but it was not an issue for us, indeed it was not as bad as 2016”, which was also a vintage marked by heavy rain during spring. Happily when summer arrived, the rain came to a halt, and hardly a drop fell thereafter. “We had just a millimetre or two, here or there”, says Arnaud.
