TN: NV Le Sot de l'Ange Touraine-Azay-le-Rideau Malolactix

NV Le Sot de l’Ange Touraine-Azay-le-Rideau Malolactix - France, Loire Valley, Touraine, Touraine-Azay-le-Rideau (4/1/2021)
30% Grolleau de Cinq-Mars, 30% Gamay, 20% Cabernet franc, 10% Melon de Bourgogne, 10% Syrah. <1.2g RS, 12% alcool, under Nomacorc.

I hate using this label but this is… “natural”. Very light red color. On the nose, we are immediately hit with a whiff of barnyard; nothing flawed, the horse’s arse is not directly under our nose but it’s definitely walking nearby. There is also a ton of fruit (of the grape juice made from concentrate kind) and some floral notes (which had me think there was more Syrah). The palate is zippy! This is almost “perlant” (what would be the proper English term for this? slight effervescence?) showing mostly tart red berries but with a little bit of “mâche” (struggling with my English terminology tonight, I guess young, slightly grippy tannins would work) that saves this from being thin. The finish is short and overall it’s simple and boring to me. I’ve seen this characterized as a “glou-glou” wine with a recommendation to serve chilled. And it does help… a little. It’s definitely not in my wheelhouse. There is about 2/3 of the bottle left so we’ll try again tomorrow to see how it evolves.

Long TN for something I didn’t really like. And, wait! There’s more… pictures:

20210401_174327.jpg4032×3024 1.55 MB

20210401_174319.jpg4032×3024 1.38 MB

Day 2: Directly out of the fridge. The barnyard smell is almost all gone (temperature + time?) and the “perlant” as well. I should have aerated this some more upon opening the first day. The fruit is still all there. There is less “mâche” to it as well (again, probably because it is much colder) which unfortunately makes it much thinner. So, glou-glou, lively fruit but not much else. Clean though and held up well in the fridge overnight. Still not my preference but I can see some people liking the style.

Very cool label!

Not much interested in the wine. Or at least far more interested in this excellent note than the wine it describes.

I agree, the label is cool. It was probably 1/3 of the buying decision with the other 2/3 going to having heard the producer’s name too many times without having tasted any of his wines. Two crappy reasons that lead to a debatable buying decision.

Here are some of the other fun images they use on that cuvée’s label (very Gaulois):

Update: it is indeed a non-vintage. The only info I could get from the importer is that it is a “majority” of 2019 fruit.