Loire 2018 at Four Years
It is a fact to both celebrate and rue that the Loire Valley does not engage in some sort of primeur tastings, in the manner of le système Bordelais.
Celebrate because, while I participate in the annual jamboree known as the Bordeaux primeurs, I acknowledge that there are well-described problems and pitfalls associated with the system. It involves tasting close to a thousand barrel samples, all specially prepared for early tasting and thus arguably not representative of the finished wine. None of them can be tasted blind, so all sorts of extraneous influences can be brought to bear. And it is all squeezed into the space of a week or two (or three – with every passing year it seems to soak up more time). If you feel the need to criticise the primeurs system, take aim at your chosen target and fire. With so many points of contention, it’s like shooting fish in a barrel.
I suspect most committed drinkers of Chinon and Cour-Cheverny will stop at this point, content with celebrating the absence of this system from their favoured region, but bear with me.
Rue because, while barrel sample notes and scores have to be viewed with a wary eye, a concentrated tasting of so many wines, in so many styles, facilitates a rapidly acquired, broad and complete understanding of the vintage. During the course of one visit to Bordeaux I will taste hundreds of young red wines, from the entry-level all the way up to the grands vins destined to live out the next two (or more) decades in the cellar. I will also taste many of the dry white wines, again those for drinking now and the grands vins for drinking in the far-distant future. And of course I taste all the sweet wines as well. The primeurs system is easy to criticise, but it is an informative and frankly unparalleled tasting opportunity.
The absence of a similar opportunity to make a broad and early assessment of the most recent vintage in the Loire Valley is a problem with which I have grappling for some time. The first samples to emerge are always the Muscadets, the region’s many rosés and the entry-level Sauvignons. As I noted in my recent Loire 2021 First Taste report, encounters with the reds are uncommon at this stage, and an early taste of a nascent and perhaps still-fermenting sweet wine is a unicorn-level experience; you think their existence is at least a possibility, you met someone who swears he tasted one yesterday, but any search for a unicorn of your own – maybe a 2021 Quarts de Chaume offered for tasting in early 2022 – is likely to leave you with an empty glass, and blank page in your tasting notebook.
