Loire 2025: First Taste
The 2025 vintage is an exciting one to focus on at this early stage, for two reasons.
First, because it is a vintage in which we have almost the full range of possibilities, with white wines made in sec, demi-sec and moelleux styles, alongside the reds and the sparkling wines.
Secondly, because there is much promise here. Among the dry white wines is where we have to tread carefully; while the best wines partner ripe and well-developed flavour profiles with modest acidities, I cannot deny this is a vintage in which there are also dry whites with low acidity and high alcohol levels which miss the fresh acid cut that makes the wines of the Loire Valley so delicious.
As for the red wines, however, I will approach these with a much more open mind. This is a vintage in which conditions were ideal for obtaining mature phenolics, which from the region’s top terroirs should give us well-balanced, ripe, structured and ageworthy wines.
And what about the sweet wines? Well, this is the first year since 2022 that the vignerons of Anjou and Touraine have been able to produce sweet wines in any volume (you can find a tiny number of wines in 2023, but nothing in 2024). And although the season was long, warm and dry, showers of rain around harvest time encouraged the development of noble rot which added to the vintage’s passerillage base. The season did not bless the vines with the conditions for strong concentration thereafter, so this is a vintage for moelleux rather than liquoreux styles, but what I have tasted so far has been clean, pure, bright and nicely concentrated.
In other words, delicious!
In this report I pull together my first tasting notes from the vintage, with 60 wines from the likes of Henri Bourgeois, François Crochet, Michel Redde, Philippe Alliet, Vincent Carême, Charles Joguet, François et Julien Pinon, Domaine des Baumard, Domaine de la Bergerie, Domaine Ogereau, Domaine de Bablut, Romain Paire and Verdier-Logel, to name just a small selection.
The Wines
As customary for my first report on the vintage I have grouped the notes by style and variety rather than region or appellation. There are no notes from the Pays Nantais, as these have already been published in my 2026 Muscadet and 2026 Beyond Muscadet reports. Likewise, any rosé wines I encountered can already be found online in my 2026 Rosé Report.
