Couly-Dutheil Chinon Clos de l’Echo 2011
Standing at the top of the slope of the Clos de l’Echo last autumn, watching the pickers bring in the 2023 harvest, with the valley of the Vienne beyond blanketed in an early-morning mist and the rising sun painting the clock tower of Chinon’s royal fortress in shades of amber and gold, it was a magical (if rather chilly) moment. After an hour or so of chatting with the pickers, and having them pose for photographs (there was no shortage of willing models) I left them to finish the task at hand, but as I did so I resolved to pull the cork on a bottle from Chinon’s most famous vineyard sometime soon
Well, it’s only taken me five months to get around to it.
And as the 2023 probably won’t reach the market for another two or three years, I am taking a look back at an older vintage, one of the Loire Valley’s most complex, 2011.
I always think of 2011 as the “topsy-turvy” vintage, the weather pattern completely the wrong way around, with an overly warm spring, a cool and miserly summer, then more overly warm and humid weather in autumn which persisted through and beyond the harvest. The results were disastrous for some, euphoric for others; in Muscadet, for example, the humid conditions caused the harvest to be riddled with grey rot which tainted almost every wine from the vintage I tasted. On the other hand, the long period of warm weather during and after the harvest was excellent for late-harvest styles in Anjou and Touraine, with a slew of high-quality moelleux cuvées from vineyards along the Layon and the Aubance, as well as Vouvray and Montlouis-sur-Loire.
But what of the reds, this 2011 Chinon among them?
Well for the late-ripening Cabernet Sauvignons of Anjou the warm and dry end-season conditions were ideal, as delaying the picking allowed the maturity of the tannins to catch up with the sugar concentrations, and initially it seemed to me that this benefit had also extended through to the many Cabernet Francs of Touraine. I certainly enjoyed a number of such wines in their youth. More recent encounters with this vintage through the wines of Touraine, specifically Chinon, have revealed an array of troublesome features though; rather green pyrazine flavours have emerged in some wines, while others display unusual earthy flavours more reminiscent of root vegetables, especially turnip. Affected wines come from some of the appellation’s leading domaines, including Bernard Baudry and Charles Joguet.
Tasting every vintage of Pierre de Tuf with Jérôme Billard of Domaine de la Noblaie last year, we came to his 2011, which fitted perfectly into the mould cast by the wines of these other domaines. I asked Jérôme about the maturity of the fruit at harvest, and he recalls it was ripe and in a clean and healthy condition, suggesting neither a lack of maturity or grey rot is responsible. He has another possible explanation for the unusual flavours though; the harvest was contaminated by ladybirds, which he recalls formed a cap an inch thick in the vats.
Ladybirds release pheromones when stressed (or when “in the mood” – but when you’re floating atop a cap of grape skins in a 70-hectolitre stainless steel cuve, perhaps stress is the more likely state) and these emissions are pyrazines (which also, putting it simply, give the green flavours to unripe grapes). So it makes sense that they could result in herbaceous or vegetal aromas in the wines. The 2004 (and 2011) vintages in Burgundy are renowned for their greener character which has also been attributed to ladybirds, but I am not at all familiar with the wines, and so cannot compare them to the wines of 2011 in Chinon. But the problems in the 2011s from Chinon are (I think) becoming more apparent with time, as I am told they also did in those two Burgundy vintages, which is suggestive.
With this short history of the 2011 vintage in mind, I pulled the cork on this 2011 Chinon Clos de l’Echo from Couly-Dutheil with a sense of trepidation. Not least because when I tasted the 2011 Clos de l’Echo Crescendo (the oak-aged micro-cuvée version) a couple of years ago it too carried a distinctive note of root vegetables. In the glass this still displays a great colour, quite dense, without much overt evolution. And the aromatics are intriguing, in part dark and toasted, with layers of highly toasted coffee bean, dark chocolate, blackcurrant, smoke and liquorice, all of which hold some sense of promise, although alongside I also find greener vegetal notes, with green capsicum and a touch of green bean, although it stops short of the root vegetable notes seen in some other wines. The palate shows a great texture, sinewy, with a powdery substance, with seams of black olive and green pepper, with plenty of modestly grained grip and a peppery energy. For the vintage – which clearly has issues – this is a decent result, and while I feel its character and quality is not what I had hoped, this is one of the better showings from 2011 Chinon I have tasted in recent years. Whether or not its more quirky greener side is down to the maturity of the fruit at harvest, or rot, or even ladybirds, is something I will continue to ponder. 89/100 (4/3/24)
Read more in:
- My detailed profile of Couly Dutheil
- My report on the Loire 2011 vintage
- My guide to Cabernet Franc
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