Loire 2018 at Four Years: White Wines
In this, the second instalment of my Loire 2018 at Four Years tasting report, I take a look at twenty dry white wines from this vintage.
I can still recall, without even looking back at my notes, an early tasting of some 2018 whites from the Menetou-Salon and Valençay appellations. The take-home message from that tasting, which was in the summer of 2019, came in two parts. First, the wines displayed rich and exotic flavour profiles set in lush and velvety textures, two delicious facets of this vintage. Second, coming hand-in-hand with the flavours and textures were low levels of acidity, at times frankly intangible.
The first feature I liked, the second raised some concerns. The wines were delicious, provided you could see past the lack of zip and just enjoy their opulent and flavoursome style, but the question that lingered at the end was this; with little or no structural frame, where were these wines going? And would grander cuvées, from more renowned vignerons working perhaps more prestigious terroirs, present this same build?
Well, a few years on, this is what we are here to find out.
The Wines
In this tasting report I look at a selection of wines beyond these two appellations, featuring some of the most highly rated domaines of the Loire Valley. With a number of single-vineyard cuvées from talented individuals, it is only fair to say that I was looking for a higher level of quality than that which I found in the early encounter with the 2018 vintage described above. This report includes wines from Domaine de la Pépière, Bertin-Delatte, Thibaud Boudignon, Domaine Ogereau, Arnaud Lambert, Domaine des Aubuisières, Vincent Carême, the late François Pinon, Gérard Boulay and a few others. I only look at dry wines here, as I will report on any sweeter styles, including moelleux, demi-sec and even a couple of sec tendre cuvées (it can be a challenge knowing where to draw the line sometimes, but I have my reasons for placing those sec tendre wines there) in the third instalment which takes in all these styles as well as sparkling wines.
