Domaine Le Fay d’Homme, 2016 Update
I have already published a tasting report on the wines of Vincent Caillé (pictured) this year, as I stopped off to taste with him at the Salon des Vins de Loire back in February. So enamoured was I with his wines that I rushed out a report on my tasting just a week or two later. I hope you will forgive my exuberance, but as Vincent’s wines – especially his crus communaux cuvées – are some of the best in the region, I just couldn’t help myself.
These wines may not be raised in amphora, nor do they see extended skin contact, coming out all funky, tannic and orange. The grapes were not picked by a nomadic goat-herder and fermented only with the ‘natural’ yeasts from the same peasant’s hipstery beard. Nor do the wines rely on fancy packaging, fat bottles or funky labels, to attract our attention. Thank heavens. What we have here are wines of fantastic precision, elegance, delicacy and poise, wines which appeal because of what we find in the glass, in our noses and in our mouths, not because of any ‘natural’ dogma or other funky winemaking methodologies. These are the sorts of wines we should really be looking for from Muscadet, supremely terroir-driven wines to raise the credibility of the region to the level which it deserves, to be considered alongside Sancerre and Chablis as one of the classic, cool-climate styles from northern France.
Having already published one Vincent Caillé update this year I don’t intended lingering too much longer over the wines. After a very smart 2015 Clos de la Févrie I tasted a fascinating oak-fermented cuvée, the 2013 Opus No. 7, which wasn’t anywhere near as frightening as it sounds. In fact, and this is rare when it comes to the combination of Melon de Bourgogne and oak, I really rather liked it. Then came the 2012 Monnières-Saint-Fiacre (Vincent’s first vintage here was 2004, by the way) and the 2012 Gorges (likewise, his first vintage here was 2001) cuvées, and these were both stunning. As is the case with most vignerons, Vincent doesn’t make these cuvées in every vintage, but he certainly wasn’t going to skip 2012, one of the best vintages in recent years.
