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François et Julien Pinon Vouvray Brut Tendre 1990

You can get a wine to fizz by two means. One is by pumping in bubbles under pressure which results in a very gassy drink that goes rapidly flat once the bottle has been broached, while the other is a costly process under which the bubbles get smaller as the years pass and the wine gets finer.

– Wines & Châteaux of the Loire, Thomas Arthur Layton (1967)

Thomas Layton’s account of his mid-20th century travels through the Loire Valley, including his rather half-hearted description of sparkling wine methodologies in Vouvray, is an eye-opening read. Layton, a wine merchant, publican, restaurateur and would-be travel writer, comes across as cantankerous and irascible and – despite occasional flashes of insight and detail – he seems content to deal with many subjects in a curiously superficial manner. All of which can make for an frequently frustrating but occasionally informative or amusing read.

His words on Vouvray are a case in point. Having arrived in the Vouvray appellation (at the time barely thirty years old, although inexplicably Layton seemed to think the figure was closer to sixty) he gives an account of the better (and also the worst) vintages of the early 20th century, as well as listing some of the top vineyards of Vouvray, Vernou-sur-Brenne and Rochecorbon. All good stuff. Much of the rest of the chapter, however, deals with an afternoon spent in a local bar feeding half crowns into a one-armed bandit and trying to pass himself off as French, before his deception is uncovered and he has to leave in something of a hurry.

Sadly, in his account of his travels – which was published in 1967 – Layton makes no mention of specific domaines in Vouvray. This is a great shame because it would have been fascinating to learn who, besides the obvious choices such as Huet and Foreau, he was motivated to visit. Maybe he would have turned inland, and headed up to see the Pinon family in the Vallée de Cousse? It would have been entirely plausible, the Pinon clan having been tending vines in this valley since the French Revolution, evidence for which comes from ancient documents still held by the family (and which I viewed on one of my visits many years ago).

At the time Layton was passing through it would have been Claude Pinon who greeted him, but the Pinon domaine really came to the forefront of the appellation under the direction of the next generation, the late François Pinon (1951 – 2021). He took over from Claude in 1987, after which he spent more than three decades shaping the domaine into one of the finest not just in Vouvray, but in the entire region. His wines were often enjoyable, frequently magical, and occasionally breathtaking. It is no accident that the wines of François Pinon are among the most numerous in my cellar.

François et Julien Pinon Vouvray Brut Tendre 1990

François Pinon’s early career was one of mixed blessings. There were mean and awkward years such as 1991 and 1992, but also more benevolent ones, most notably 1989 and 1990. Despite only having been at the helm for a few years François took full advantage of these two latter vintages, both of which came to be widely and appropriately regarded as great. He released an array of superb sweet wines, many of which have popped up as Weekend Wines in times past (and if some of these near-immortal cuvées have not, you can be sure their time will come at some point in the future).

Some more recent vintages were also challenging for François, with hail in 2013 and frost in 2016, both of which dealt severe blows to the crop. Fortunately for François, he had been able to keep back some old stock, mostly from the 1980s and 1990s, and a string of ‘museum releases’ no doubt helped to balance the books during these leaner times.

One such late release piqued my interest; while the racks in my cellar groaned under the weight of botrytis-rich sweet wines from 1990, and the occasional dry cuvée as well, I had never tasted any of his sparkling wines from this vintage, the oldest in my cellar having been a 1996.

It was not just the vintage that drew me in, but also the cuvée. The Pinons have long produced a quite dizzying portfolio of sparkling wines, including Brut Non-Dosé, Brut and Demi-Sec styles, as well as a méthode ancestrale cuvée (a methodology really revitalised with the pét nat craze of more recent times, so we can perhaps forgive Layton for failing to mention it at the top of the page), the range made more complicated by multiple disgorgement dates, and the occasional release of a truly late-disgorged wine, such as the deliriously delicious 2012 Brut Non-Dosé 7 Ans Sur Lattes cuvée.

But Brut Tendre? That is one I had not seen before. I quickly snaffled a couple of bottles (this was, by the way, about five years ago – sometimes it takes a while to get around to popping the cork).

The 1990 Vouvray Brut Tendre from François et Julien Pinon (Julien began working alongside his father only about ten years ago, so the presence of his name on the label tells you this is one of their more recent ‘museum releases’) presents a delightful partridge-eye hue in the glass, which appears remarkably fresh taking into account the wine’s 35 years. And I am impressed by the presence of the most gentle bead; it is only the occasional solitary bubble, but it is there. The aromatics are evolved and enticing, with a little toasted cashew note of autolysis so easily found in Champagne, and yet so rarely seen in the sparkling wines of the Loire, along with threads of Madeira cake, almond, dried oranges, crushed stone and a touch of tobacco. The palate is a supple, freshly framed and yet voluptuous, with a sweet texture that speaks of a generous dosage (hence the tendre designation) lending the middle of the palate and the finish a plush and charming character. Thankfully this is countered by a rather effusive and fizzing minerality, delicate acids and, mirroring the wine’s appearance in the glass, a rather ethereal mousse. It is, in the end, an impressive showing for sparkling Chenin of this age; I suspect key to its longevity is that dosage, which Julien Pinon tells me is 20 g/l, putting this firmly into the demi-sec camp. As for the alcohol, it is 13.5%, a reflection of the generosity of the vintage. 92/100

With old sparkling wines of the Loire I have on occasion freshened them up with the same wine from a younger vintage; this is certainly something I have done with very old sparkling wines from Pinon as well as Huet; you still have the rich complexity of age, but lifted by the acidity and mousse of the young vintage. With the 1990 Brut Tendre, however, I felt no such compunction. Probably a good thing, as I suspect it would have had the peevishly punctilious Mr Layton turning in his grave. (7/7/25)

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