TOP

Domaine Ogereau Anjou-Villages Côte de la Houssaye 2009

And now, a long-awaited bottle.

I originally pulled the 2009 Anjou-Villages Côte de la Houssaye from Domaine Ogereau from the cellar back in 2024, along with a smorgasbord of other Ligérian bottles from this vintage. The intention was to taste them all (should be enjoyable, I thought), drink them all (an even better idea – but not all at once, of course) and then write them up in a Loire 2009 at Fifteen Years report. And that was exactly what I did.

If you click through to the report you will find 40 tasting notes, on dry wines from Muscadet, Savennières, Vouvray and Chinon, as well as a dozen (well, almost a dozen) sweet wines, largely Vouvray but also a smattering from Coteaux de l’Aubance and Quarts de Chaume. What you won’t find, however, is a tasting note on this wine, for which there is an unusual explanation.

Having intended to start the bottle off using my Coravin, the first blip of Argon gas was too much for a presumable flaw in the bottle, as a lozenge-shaped piece of glass the same size as the palm of my hand popped out of the shoulder, followed – with explosive force – by the entire contents of the bottle, painting my kitchen worktops, drawers and floors a rich claret red.

I spent the next hour wiping down and mopping up, and accepting that – as all my other bottles were deeply buried in the cellar – that I would have to wait a while before I could pull another bottle and finally revisit this wine, having not tasted it for five or six years. Having carried out my annual cellar sort-out over Christmas, I made sure I sought one out.

So here we are. And look at that old-style Ogereau label, dripping with gold text and trim. A feast for the eyes as well as the palate!

Domaine Ogereau Anjou-Villages Côte de la Houssaye 2009

The Anjou-Villages appellation is a relative youngster, the cahier des charges signed off in 1991, an enclave within the broader Anjou appellation. There are several distinguishing features. The first is geographical; the Anjou appellation is of course huge, but the Anjou-Villages enclave was limited purely to the Savennières, Anjou Coteaux de la Loire, Coteaux du Layon and Coteaux de l’Aubance zones; with the departure of the latter a few years later (creating Anjou-Brissac), just the first three zones contribute today. While it sounds broad, it is in fact tiny; there are barely 200 hectares dedicated to this appellation today.

The second distinguishing feature is variety. While just about anything goes in generic Anjou, Anjou-Villages is always red, and it is fashioned from just two cultivars, Cabernet Franc and Cabernet Sauvignon. Thirdly, the wines must see a minimum period of élevage before bottling, which must be delayed until June 15th after the harvest. Delayed bottling and thus longer élevage is of course a feature of many superior subzones in the Loire Valley, from the Muscadet Crus Communaux such as Clisson and Gorges, to the geographical denominations of Touraine, such as Oisly and Chenonceaux.

The style within Anjou-Villages varies considerably, which is largely down to terroir and cultivar combined. To the east are the vineyards of Le Anjou Blanc, on the limestone soils of the Paris basin, where Cabernet Franc does well, providing classically styled and elegant interpretations of the appellation which have a lot in common with similarly composed cuvées from further upstream. To the west, meanwhile, on the igneous and metamorphic soils of Le Anjou Noir, Cabernet Sauvignon is happier, and the style is completely different, typically dense, occasionally rather spicy (whichever of the two Cabernets is planted) and structured. They all have merit, although the most interesting to my mind and palate are those which are 100% Cabernet Sauvignon.

I was convinced of this by an encounter with the 1997 Anjou-Villages Cuvée Prestige from Domaine Ogereau maybe sixteen years ago, at which time it was 13 years old, and on top form. This cuvée was subsequently replaced by the Anjou-Villages Côte de la Houssaye, a cuvée from a slope of schist overlooking the Hyrôme, a tiny tributary of the Layon, running in from the south side. Happily there was no wine explosion this time, so the 2009 vintage presented a richly pigmented hue in the glass (rather than all over my kitchen), with a bright raspberry rim. It has a quite perfumed nose, with Cabernet notes of currants and violets, touched with liquorice and fresh bay leaf. The palate goes beyond what the nose suggests though, with a cool and vibrant texture supporting a core of currant and raspberry fruits swirled with sooty minerals, violets, menthol-infused, dark chocolate and slate. This all rests on a gentle spindle of powdered tannins which provide a fine frame for current drinking, but which should also see this do well in the cellar for another decade and perhaps considerably longer. Drink or hold, as you see fit. The alcohol is 13.5% 94/100 (23/2/26)

Read more in:

Find the Domaine Ogereau Anjou-Villages Côte de la Houssaye 2009 on Wine Searcher:

Find all Domaine Ogereau wines on Wine Searcher: