Wine and Song: The Upper Loire, 2026. The 2023 Vintage
This is the second of three collections of tasting notes on the wines of France’s Massif Central to be published in 2026. In this report I focus on the 2023 vintage. To read my introduction to this report, with a background to the region and its wines as well as brief primers on the four main appellations (not to mention an introduction to the work of Joseph Canteloube – sorry, I could not resist), see Wine and Song: The Upper Loire. Other reports cover the 2024 and 2022 vintages (the latter still to be published, tomorrow).
Before presenting my tasting notes, a short briefing on the 2023 vintage as it pertains to this region is warranted.
The 2023 Vintage
While 2024 was all about the rain, and 2022 was all about the dry and occasionally baking heat, the 2023 vintage sits between these two extremes. Of this trio of vintages it is therefore perhaps the more complex, but also a vintage with the most likelihood of turning out wines of attractive balance, while those vintages which flank it are more extreme in style, the wines more likely to be either lean and dilute, or rich and tannic.
