TN: 2005 Huët Vouvray Sec Le Mont (France, Loire Valley, Touraine, Vouvray)

WINE TALK
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  • 2005 Huët Vouvray Sec Le Mont - France, Loire Valley, Touraine, Vouvray (1/5/2012)
    Off the list at Bayona in New Orleans for lunch with sweetbreads and garlic soup. This was an outstanding wine which had lost any baby fat it might have had and had wonderful citrus flavors (lemon and pineapple with a bit of kumquat), nice acidity, a background of tart granny smith apples, and very light honey giving it a bit of apparent sweetness despite the “sec” designation. This was a great pairing with the sweetbreads and the acidity also cut through the creamyness of the garlic soup. Chenin Blanc is not my wine sweet spot, and some of the demi-sec Vouvrays have been a disappointment in the past, but this was outstanding, well balanced, and a wine we will look for. There’s nothing wrong with Chardonnay or Riesling, but this was a very nice change of pace. NOTE - do not serve too cold. Right out of their wine cooler it was a bit cold and it blossomed as it warmed slightly. I would say 50 degrees F. is about right. (91 pts.)

Posted from CellarTracker

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Glad to hear you enjoyed it. I have a case of this biding its time. How do you think this will develop from here?

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I don’t have enough experience to express an opinion with any degree of certainty. It was certainly not showing any signs of staleness, oxidation or other bad characteristics of age. I tasted nothing that would lead me to conclude that it is on the down side of its aging curve.

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Jay-

Please stop drinking good wine and stick to the swill, er, stuff you love.

Thank you.

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It’s the Type II diabetes. I have to stick to the low ABV stuff. And only a little of that.

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Of course, you chose a pretty plush year for Vouvray.

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And Chenin runs a little higher in abv than others - usually 13% or so. Sometimes more for the Secs.
Try Muscadet, or Sancerre.
Also - i’m headed to NOLA in March, so don’t order any more of this, okay?

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Not to mention the fact that the Huet Secs tend to have a touch of residual sugar, notwithstanding the fact that they are designated as sec. I think the amount has been around 5 g/l historically, which of course is quite low, but for some of the younger vintages, I think the number is a bit higher and I would not be surprised if that is the case in 2005.

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The 2005s have many years ahead of them. In fact the secs seemed quite awkward just a year or so ago so I’m happy to hear Le Mont is showing so well now.

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Certainly true that the residuals are higher these days, double figures are not unusual, despite the ‘sec’ designation. Having said that the 2005 Le Mont has 7.5 g/l.

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That surprises me. Jean Trimbach once told me that the threshhold of human perception of sugar is 3 gms/ltr, below which anything you perceive as sugar is something else (like fruit). I recognize that the reverse is not necessarily true, but neither my wife nor I perceived any sugar.

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Jay, back in my retail days customers would come home from vacations, honeymoons etc. and tell me of the AMAZING vin ordinaire they had at these wonderful locations. I would tell them that wine is all about food and mood, blah, blah.

But given your palate I’d suggest that you have been affected by “the honeymoon theory” and that you should not consider any further purchases from Huet (the rest of the Loire or Burgundy).

Once home pop the cork on one of your Saxums (real man’s wine) and you’ll get ahold of your senses.

PS…did you get to Acme? They have 99 point beer to go wid dem oysters.

Now that was predictable.

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Sugar has an effect on the palate at 7.5 g/l but I don’t find it comes across as overt sweetness, more as a fleshiness in the wine, moving the wine away from the bone dry leanness of a wine with none/amost none, towards the sweetness of a higher residual. To my mind this provides the wine with balance, and although the fleshy charactaer won’t appeal to all, I find that wines with a little sugar are more balanced than bone dry wines (gross generalisation, sorry). The move from balancing flesh into sweetness to me palate comes above 7.5 g/l, but have never pinned down at which point this change becomes noticeable, and I suspect it will vary depending on the wine (acidity, temperature) and on the individual (palate differences).

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My palate is just fine. It’s you with your parochial (syn. narrow, shallow, insular, conservative, petty, etc.) palates who cannot appreciate the wide range of delicious flavors that wine can impart. [stirthepothal.gif] I feel sorry for you. Actually, I’m glad that you hate Saxum. More for me. And I can always get Huet when I need to.

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I can appreciate the wide range of flavors you allude to, it’s just that I don’t find that they make for an pleasurable beverage at the table. [soap.gif]

I spent years constantly tasting those wines and can’t really say I miss it. I also feel like crap after drinking alcoholic/tannic wines.

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Jay, et al, as a reference point, for recent vintages RS levels in the Sec bottlings have been running in the 8-10 g/l range, so just a wee bit higher than Chris’ quoted 7.5 for the 2005. Demi Secs are running around 15-ish.

**Commercial Disclaimer - I represent Huet in the Colorado market.

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Well, let’s say 10 gms/ltr. That’s 3.75 gms in a half bottle. Not that bad.

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Your perception of sweetness is a function of sugar AND acidity, so I can’t think Trimbach said quite that. Perhaps at a given acidity, 3gms/l is the threshold.

I attended a component tasting once at a lab in Napa where this was vividly demonstrated to us. They manipulated acidity and showed that your perception of sweetness changed accordingly. Similarly, if you adjust the sugar, the wine will seem more or less acidic.