We drink a good amount of the Pepiere Briords in our house, in some Summers going through a couple cases. But we generally drink it on release and just replenish by the vintage. Years ago, having read somewhere that the wine could benefit from some cellar time, I put away a mixed case and subsequently lost track of it in the cellar. A couple weeks ago, while digging through a stack of boxes, I found it again.
To be honest, off these three bottles, I’m not convinced the wines gain enough to merit the effort to cellar them. With wines like Bordeaux, Burgundy, Barolo or Riesling, the aging process can be truly transformative, but I didn’t really get that here. These wines (with the exception of the slightly oxidative 2007) are still eminently drinkable, but I would say that they have successfully persisted in the cellar as opposed to transforming into something new and different. If you had the 2005 side-by-side with a 2015, I’m not sure there would be enough of a difference between them - in fact, blind, I’m not sure I would be able to tell them apart.
Oh well, fun experiment, and I still have the rest of the case to drink through, but probably not something I would bother doing again.
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2005 Domaine de la Pépière (Marc Ollivier) Muscadet de Sèvre-et-Maine Sur Lie Vieilles Vignes Clos des Briords - France, Loire Valley, Pays Nantais, Muscadet de Sèvre-et-Maine (1/21/2018)
Light yellow in the glass (color here is really no different than a just released Briords). Crisp nose with a briny accent.
Dry, with a citric note on the palate - maybe a little more “rounded”/less taut than a younger wine. Very nice, and certainly not showing any decline at this point.
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2006 Domaine de la Pépière (Marc Ollivier) Muscadet de Sèvre-et-Maine Sur Lie Vieilles Vignes Clos des Briords - France, Loire Valley, Pays Nantais, Muscadet de Sèvre-et-Maine (1/21/2018)
Similar in color to the '05, but the nose here is a little diffuse.
Conversely, this might be a touch more structured/taut on the palate than the '05, and seemingly more persistent on the finish. I recall being so-so on the 2006 vintage on release, but this is pretty good today.
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2007 Domaine de la Pépière (Marc Ollivier) Muscadet de Sèvre-et-Maine Sur Lie Vieilles Vignes Clos des Briords - France, Loire Valley, Pays Nantais, Muscadet de Sèvre-et-Maine (1/21/2018)
Again, similar in color to the two preceding wines; nose is somewhat nondescript, but there is a faint oxidative note here that might indicate that this bottle didn’t fare as well in the cellar over the past decade.
That oxidative note carries through to the palate as well - if you tried this wine on it’s own, you might not pick up on this and just think that the wine was less structured and maybe a touch dilute, but having had the other two wines first, this is just beginning to head downhill.
Posted from CellarTracker