I love dry Chenin Blanc (that’s not the secret, patience grasshopper) especially from Loire. It’s my second most consumed white after white Burgundy.
Yet, here it comes, I’ve never drank a Huet: not a dry, not a moelleux, not a one.
I even found myself posting about the longevity of said wine without having tasted it myself (I guess I felt confident enough to base it off second hand accounts):
That is one of the things that make no sense in my wine life. I’m sure others abound.
In an attempt to make sense of this…regardless of consumption our dollars go to protect estates and domaines that you love and to extend them and the wines that they produce for as long as we’re here.
I’m heading to the cusp of this, and fully intend to buy Clos de Briords, red Saumur-Champigny, Hexamer, and Bourdignon well past the logical balance point of my personal aging curve and my cellar population. I may not need the wine, but I don’t want to have these wines wrap up before I do. I would add Vatan to this but I feel like Alfert is carrying the load for us all there.
The central paradox that I have seen emerge in the last 15 years is that I simply do not drink my best, most expensive wines. I am constantly searching out and drinking more inexpensive cellar protector bottles to prevent the capital decimation, the potlatch of drinking the good stuff.
Well apparently, I started this thread on a false premisse. I’ve had Huet. Once.
A friend of mine reached out and told me he ordered some Huet Moelleux at a sushi restaurant with me and my wife circa 2013. Apparently, I did not enjoy it immensely and quickly ordered a dry Riesling (wait, what? I almost never drink Riesling) instead. I have no recollection of this but he swears by this and will not be told otherwise.
But, still, no Huet dry ever.
Another thing that doesn’t make sense: I still think I can tell if a wine was made with whole bunches based on the spicy/stemmy character. Experts show this is wrong. My blind tasting results show this is mostly wrong. Yet I still think of myself as a stem detector. I am not. I should accept that.
Guys, Huet is not that hard to buy and not that expensive. Stop kvetching. Buy a bottle or two (TODAY) and drink some soon. Try their different terroirs and see if you can tell the difference and if you like one more than the other. Try different sweetness levels and the wine at different ages.