Humble Pie with Pithon-Paillé, 2011
First of all, those expecting an article on food or wine matching, and perhaps those unfamiliar with the concept of humble pie, please accept my apologies. For there will be no pie served with this article. This is not, despite erroneous expectations, a feature on food and wine matching. The only things I will be eating here are my words.
Following my report on the latest releases from Pithon-Paillé, tasted in January 2011, Wendy Paillé enquired as to whether she could send some new samples for me to assess. In particular, could she send new bottles of the 2009 Anjou Blanc Mozaïk and 2009 Savennières? Naturally I acquiesced – in fact I was delighted to be given an opportunity to retaste these wines which seemed, when I met them last, to be cut through with a firm and – to me at least – a very undesirable seam of oxidation. At the time I showed due diligence, in that when Wendy asked me how the wines were showing I mentioned that two were showing some notes of oxidation. Ideally, I would have returned to retaste them during the Salon, but having met up on the final day there was simply no such opportunity. Happily, thanks to my recently received samples I have been able to retaste, and the result of doing so is this short tasting report. And I have to confess that my opinion of these wines is now very different, much more in keeping with my thoughts when I tasted them during my visit to Pithon-Paillé in 2010.
There are many different facets of this change of heart that I could explore within this report. For example, please indulge me for a moment and consider just how many writers there are worldwide who currently comment on, score or critique wine, including both professionals and the more amateur blogger. Isn’t it remarkable that you never – or perhaps I should say almost never, as I am sure there will be a few examples out there – see any retractions of scores or opinions, or admissions that a wine has been judged incorrectly? Everybody seems to get it right, first time, every time. My only conclusion is that there must be a lot of ‘perfect’ tasters out there.
