Domaine du Clos Naudin Vouvray Moelleux Goutte d’Or 1990
This week I try to avoid excessive use of superlatives as my Weekend Wine takes us to Vouvray, and to one of the most remarkable wines ever to have come out of this appellation, the 1990 Goutte d’Or, a striking moelleux cuvée from Philippe Foreau of Domaine du Clos Naudin.
I suspect most reading this are familiar with this domaine, and at least know of this wine even if few wine drinkers get to taste it. Nevertheless, for those not familiar with either, let me briefly set the scene. Domaine du Clos Naudin is one of a handful of top-notch domaines in Vouvray, comprising vineyards purchased in 1923 by Emile Armand Foreau (1884 – 1980), known to all as Armand. Having said that we know that Armand, who returned to Vouvray in 1919 after fighting in World War I, was making wine before this date, perhaps since 1910; the strongest piece of evidence for this which I have encountered was the 1921 Vouvray which Armand’s grandson Philippe Foreau poured during a visit to the domaine a few years ago.
Armand then passed the domaine to his son André (as an aside Armand also had a daughter, Germaine, who married Gaston Huet, the stories of the two domaines intertwined for a moment) before it came to the next generation, the aforementioned Philippe. He joined his father in 1980, and stepped up to run the domaine single-handed in 1983. The 1990 Goutte d’Or featured here was thus made by Philippe, although the first ever Goutte d’Or was his grandfather’s creation, in the 1947 vintage.
Philippe Foreau developed a particular system for his moelleux wines, which are made according to the potential of the fruit; a straight Moelleux for concentrated but not particularly botrytised fruit, such as the 1990 Moelleux featured back in 2014, and a Moelleux Réserve for richer, fully botrytised grapes, such as the 1995 Moelleux Réserve which popped up on these pages in 2018. It was with this system Philippe made his mark on the appellation, in the 1989 and 1990 vintages.
Both cuvées were produced in the 1989 vintage, alongside the Moelleux Réserve Première Trie and Moelleux Réserve Quatrième Trie, two wines with well-deserved unicorn status (I tasted the latter, essentially a 1989 Goutte d’Or and never commercially released, with Philippe more than ten years ago, although sadly it was a corked bottle – that is as close as I have come to either of them). Of course there was no Goutte d’Or in 1989, as this is a cuvée which communicates intense botrytis-derived concentration in a liquoreux style, and 1989 was a vintage of more classical lines; the volume of Quatrième Trie produced, by the way, was just one barrel.
It was in the 1990 vintage that Philippe decided to recreate what his grandfather had produced in 1947, with only the second-ever release of Goutte d’Or (there have been five releases, 1947, 1990, 2011, 2015 and 2020) alongside both Moelleux and Moelleux Réserve cuvées. The wine was a knockout success, and remained one of the most hotly discussed cuvées in the region throughout the 1990s. And it is certainly still worthy of discussion today.
One of the many striking differences between the 1989 and 1990 vintages was the colour, and this was apparent very early, with Philippe Foreau’s 1990s showing richly bronzed hues from the outset. The 1990 Goutte d’Or was even darker, and today it approaches a red walnut hue (I should have taken a photograph of the wine in the glass – next time!). If it is similar in hue to any other wine I have tasted in recent times, it would be the 1947 Bonnezeaux from Château de Fesles. Figures for the residual sugar vary, with some stating it is 170 g/l, others 320 g/l. Personally I think the latter is closer to the truth, evident on tasting, the style reminiscent of the fully botrytised grains nobles cuvées that Jo Pithon, Patrick Baudouin and Philippe Delesvaux produced in their heyday, but rather than stating anything with certainty I will simply endeavour to ask Philippe or his son Vincent next time I see them.
So, in the glass the 1990 Goutte d’Or from Philippe Foreau displays an incredibly dense, walnut brown hue, tinged with flecks of orange-red, which betrays the intense botrytis-driven origins of this wine. The nose is stellar, quite breathtaking, with a complex layering of orange marmalade and caramelised citrus fruits, nuanced by veins of black tea leaves, liquorice, baked forest fruits, camphor and – remarkably – the freshness of ripe white peach. With time in the glass it continues to throw out ephemeral notes of crushed chalk, candle smoke and acacia. The palate is incredibly intense and velvety, with black tea leaf, axle grease, tar and confit orange, tinged with baked raspberry and caramel, all set in an impossibly luscious and viscous texture, a true liquoreux Vouvray. Underneath there is a pithy density and plenty of tense bitterness, and it also possesses a fresh and lifting acidity which lends an almost improbable freshness which contrasts with the wine’s appearance and hedonistic texture. Supple, dense, complete and incredibly long, this is a remarkable example of what can be achieved with botrytis in Vouvray, but the freshness and complexity combined is divine. And it is surely immortal; come back to this any time over the next one hundred years. From a half bottle, and the alcohol is 12.6% on the label. 100/100
While it might surprise you, I dithered over my score here (because, believe it or not, I do worry about this sort of thing). While this is an astonishing wine, the more liquoreux a cuvée is, the more individualistic it becomes, expressing the style of the vintage and the consequences of botrytis rather than the typicity of the terroir, which disappears behind the noble rot. In the end though, bearing in mind this wine’s multi-layered and complex structure which is head-and-shoulders above any other Vouvray I have tasted (even that 1921) and its future potential, I decided anything lower than the score awarded would be churlish. (3/11/25)
Read more in:
- My guide to Chenin Blanc
- My detailed profile of Philippe Foreau
- My guide to Vouvray and the many Vineyards of Vouvray
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