Loire 2018: The Harvest
While winter was crisp and bitterly cold, and the vines thankfully escaped any significant frost damage this year, the Loire Valley still had a very difficult start in the 2018 vintage. It was the persistently wet weather and the ensuing mildew that did the damage this time, slashing yields on some vineyards.
As a consequence you might think the vignerons would be a little downbeat about 2018, but the truth turns out to be quite different. Thanks to the commitment of the region’s vignerons, mildew-damage was the exception rather than the norm, and most vignerons cam through this period exhausted but with vineyards relatively unscathed. The warm and dry summer that followed this rather dismal spring was nothing less than ideal, and these conditions ran unchecked up to and right through the harvest. The predominant conclusion that developed among the vignerons, as they picked the fruit, as they tasted their first juices, or as they swirled their first sample of fully fermented wine, is that 2018 has turned out to be an exceptional vintage.
Not only is quality excellent, but the majority of domaines (with some sorry exceptions) have also brought in excellent volumes. This is a very welcome development after two short vintages in 2017 and 2016. The stocks at many domaines have been running low, but this will no longer be true once the 2018s make it into bottle. But to us consumers it is quality that matters, and many vignerons are already speaking of 2018 as a “once in a generation” vintage. A number among them have already drawn comparisons to recent great vintages including 1990, 2003 and 2005. Those with longer memories, or who have spoken to their older neighbours, fathers and grandfathers about the character of the vintage, have even seen fit to cite the 1947 vintage, high praise indeed. If true, we should perhaps regard this not as a “once in a generation” vintage, but perhaps once in a lifetime.
