A week or so ago, I had the unique opportunity to taste two fascinating examples of old Vouvray side by side: the 1959 Prince Poniatowski Clos Baudoin and the 1959 Huet Clos du Bourg Moelleux. Not often do you get to drink even one bottle of 60+ year old wine on a Monday afternoon, let alone two! We’d been waiting for the perfect time to do this comparison, when particular friends for whom these wines would be meaningful were gathered in the same place. The stars aligned finally, and Mother Nature provided us a gorgeous afternoon on which to slowly savor and enjoy these wonderful, weird, compelling bottles under near perfect conditions.
A little background: more than 20 years ago, my husband took a trip through the Loire Valley with his then wife and his brother, and visited Prince Phillipe Poniatowski. After a marathon tasting and tour, “The Prince” pulled out a bottle from a dusty bin with only 3 bottles left in it and handed the bottle to Jonathan. Though there was no vintage tag affixed, the bin said all he needed to know: 1959. Given that this visit was so long ago, and there were only 3 bottles in the bin at that time, it is quite possible that this bottle was the last one left in the world.
Both wines were stood upright several days in advance, and decanted at cellar temp about an hour and a half before serving. Phillipe had cautioned Jonathan to give the Clos Baudoin a serious decant at a cool temperature, and he was without a doubt exactly right, even 20 years down the line. Both wines changed drastically from the moment of being opened. The Huet poured almost colorless at first, barely yellow-tinged, but within the hour darkened to an orange/amber hue much more in line with expectations. The “Pony,” as Jonathan kept calling it, also changed color, going from amber to an almost electric orange – the color of Tang, in my words, though our younger guests had no idea what that is.
On the nose, once a little funk had cleared out, classic aromas of lanolin, quince and apricot unfurled from both glasses. The Clos Boudoin came off just a bit older and richer, though it carried more the funky edge than the Huet, which was a little mute at first, and never quite reached the same aromatic heights.
On the palate, both had achieved a state of seeming imperviousness, frozen in time, with great equilibrium and balance. Both had somewhat faded fruit, a bit dried, but not dried out, and that clear lanolin, quince, apricot signature I associate with aged chenin blanc. I often use a particular metaphor to describe what I perceive in the texture of some old burgundies – I call it the feeling of being wrapped in a slightly dusty, sun-warmed velvet drape. In the Clos Baudoin, I found something similar, but a little less than perfectly pleasant. To take the metaphor a little too far, perhaps, it was as if I had wrapped myself up in that drape, and then licked it. The Huet was more texturally pure, and aromatically took on hints of third-pass jasmine tea – not in your face, just hovering at the edge of your senses.
Both wines held up over more than an hour of sipping and swirling. In the end, the honors went to the Clos Baudoin. You would expect the extra gear and depth to go to the Huet, which is really the “better” wine, but in this case it wasn’t born out. It was still pretty monolithic – “no Z axis”. The Clos Baudoin was eating air, getting better and better and growing.
Given what we know about the two producers, and the history of these two bottles, I think it’s fair to say that the Clos Baudoin was a superb, nearly perfect example of what it was. The Huet, while almost certainly the better wine, was a less than perfect example. What a fascinating comparison, after more than 60 years.
For a snack as we sipped, Jonathan served some homemade chicharrones (fat trim from mangalista pork, rendered way down until crispy), which paired fantastically well.