Vincent Carême, 2019 Update
It is now several years since I promoted Vincent Carême to the top tier within Vouvray (am I allowed to do that?), based upon the strong performance of his wines in the 2014 and 2015 vintages. These were wines with which Vincent seemed to go beyond the limits of the Vouvray appellation to join the ranks of some of the very best in the entire Loire Valley, putting him on a similar footing as François Chidaine, Claude Papin, the late Didier Dagueneau and his son Louis-Benjamin, Jonathan Pabiot and one or two others. I should point out this list is far from exhaustive, and I am sure most readers would have their own ideas about which vignerons constitute the region’s crème de la crème, but I hope you get the idea.
On this most recent encounter I saw nothing to dissuade me of this opinion. Vincent has been able to take advantage of the 2016 vintage, which looks to be of increasingly high quality every time I pull the cork on a bottle. Sadly for some in the appellation, spring frost tempered their ability to take advantage of what the growing season later offered, but happily this was not the case for Vincent who has made a handsome range of wines ranging from sparkling and sec through demi-sec to moelleux. The two representatives from 2017 were equally promising, and this is another vintage which I suspect will give us delightful drinking in years to come, before we can turn our attention to the joys of 2018, a year bursting at the seams with demi-sec and moelleux styles.
The Wines
Looking first to 2016, Vincent has as usual produced two sparkling wines from his domaine-grown fruit, the 2016 Vouvray Brut and the 2016 Vouvray L’Ancestrale. These are both top-notch, and complete a trio of vintages – 2014, 2015 and 2016 – in which these two wines have proved some of the most attractive of the region’s bulles. It is not just in the sparkling category that Vincent excels though; the 2016 Le Peu Morier, just nudging into sec-tendre territory although for all intents and purposes this is effectively dry, and the 2016 Tendre, a demi-sec with approximately 20 g/l residual sugar, are nothing less than delightful. The 2016 Moelleux, with a typically modest 40 g/l, on the money for Vouvray moelleux, is an exercise in restrained classicism. It might not surprise readers to learn that I have added all five of these cuvées – sparkling, sec, demi-sec and moelleux – to my own cellar. Not to mention others from this vintage not tasted here, such as the 2016 Le Clos. Well, what would my words be worth if I wasn’t prepared to put my money where my mouth is?
