Pithon-Paillé, Les Treilles Retrospective, 2014: Other Tasting Notes
Following the vertical tasting of the Anjou Blanc Coteau des Treilles and Coteaux du Layon Belargus des Treilles from Pithon-Paillé reported on in part two, it makes perfect sense to now move on to look at all the other Pithon-Paillé wines recently tasted. My notes below are on wines mostly tasted immediately after the vertical tasting in February 2014; there are also, however, a couple of notes from a brief meeting with Jo Paillé, in London, in March 2014.
Sparkling Wine
I started with Jo Pithon’s very eclectic Crémant de Loire, this release being a blend of 90% 2011 and 10% 2012. The first time I tasted this wine last year, when it was a blend of the 2010 and 2009 vintage, I was surprised to hear Jo Pithon say of it “it might not be the best sparkling wine, but it is my sparkling wine”. This is a statement both proud and humble; no matter what I might have thought of the wine, Jo was rightly proud that, whatever he had achieved, it was his work that I was tasting. It reminded me a little of the time when Richard Leroy tried to persuade me, with sincerity and a straight face, to buy a vineyard in Anjou as he had done; he believed that, no matter how tiny your plot of land, it has significance as it is yours, and the wines that result are therefore also yours.
Jo Pithon does not have to be so humble when talking of his latest release though, which to my palate is a serious step up from the 2010-2009 blend. It has a fantastic dried-fruit and quartz nose, and yet despite the richly expressive aromatics the wine is dry and elegantly pétillant. Produced in miniscule quantities, with a production of just 500 bottles in this vintage of which only half had been disgorged at the time of tasting (the second half, I learnt on a recent visit to Pithon-Paillé, has now also been disgorged), it will not be easy to get your hands on this one. I have since obtained some of the second disgorgement for myself, but the note below pertains to the first disgorgement.
White Wines
The range of wines continues to expand, with several new cuvées of Anjou Blanc appearing. I began with the now-familiar 2011 Anjou Blanc Mozaïk which is largely a négoce wine, and generally offers consistency and reliability, as here. It was usurped on this occasion by the 2011 Anjou Blanc La Fresnaye, from the vines of Château La Fresnaye. This latter vineyard is in Jo’s possession and there are 2.2 hectares of vines planted here; although 1.5 hectares of these are white and only 0.7 hectares are red I have to confess I tend to forget about the white, the reason being that every year there is an Anjou Rouge La Fresnaye to remind me of the existence of the Cabernet Franc vines, whereas the white fruit is often left to undergo botrytisation and concentration, and it then forms a large part of the Coteaux du Layon 4 Vents cuvée. In 2011, however, the terroir has had a chance to prove it is just as good with a dry wine.
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