Twenty Years On: The 1996 Vintage, The Loire Valley
There aren’t many opportunities to taste older wines from the Loire Valley, unless you buy the wines when newly released and then wait as they slumber, year after year. This of course requires up-front investment and a great deal of patience. Nevertheless this is indeed how I came by many of the wines in the small and rather ragtag collection described below, especially those from Saumur and Vouvray. One or two, however, I did buy much more recently.
Having seen how exciting the 1996 vintage was for the residents of Reims and Epernay, the wines widely acclaimed as the finest produced their since 1990, it is interesting to note that the same conclusions were soon reached in the Loire Valley. Generalising, although the weather during the first few months of the growing season was unsettled, the summer that followed was marked by a long period of warm and dry weather. Indeed, it was sufficiently dry for hydric stress to cause problems in some parts, retarding vine growth and maturation of the fruit. When rain arrived in September it was, for once, greeted with delight rather than despair. There was good opportunity for the fruit, both white and red, to ripen.
It is not generally regarded as a great vintage for botrytised wines, but I have come to the conclusion that this is perhaps only because in this regard it was overshadowed by the 1997 vintage. A number of favourite domaines in turned out botrytis-influenced cuvées in 1996, and on tasting the wines below it is clear that a decent number – from Saumur, the Coteaux du Layon and Vouvray – are rich in delightfully botrytised fruit.
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