Thibaud Boudignon, 2016 Update
It is only a few years – two, to be precise – since I first drove down to Savennières to meet Thibaud Boudignon. I hadn’t known quite what to expect; I had heard some good things about this young winemaker, but I wanted to see (and taste!) things for myself.
I wasn’t disappointed. When not directing the winemaking at nearby Château de Soucherie, Thibaud tends a few small parcels of Chenin Blanc in Anjou and Savennières, and the results from this small-scale, hands-on, handful-of-barrels approach are striking. I was blown away by just about every wine I tasted, that first look focusing on the 2013 vintage.
I have been back to taste again with Thibaud since, checking out the 2013 and 2014 vintages, and on this most recent encounter I revisited the more recent of the two. I had previously tasted some of the wines from this vintage prior to bottling; would they live up to their early promise, now they are securely imprisoned under cork?
The Wines
Thibaud (pictured above, during that first ever visit) poured all three cuvées from the 2014 vintage, starting with the entry-level Anjou Blanc, the only one of the three I hadn’t encountered previously. The fruit comes from old vines in the commune of St Lambert du Lattay, on soils rich in clay. The élevage incorporates 30% new oak, as Thibaud tends break in his new barrels with this wine, only using them for his two upper-class cuvées in subsequent years. The wine has confident fruit wrapped in liquorice oak, and gives bags of pleasure provided you don’t mind more than a touch of the old Quercus.
