Great topic. With chives pancakes, crème fraiche and smoked salmon, we had a 2010 Domaine Jean Teiller Menetou-Salon “Mademoiselle T”, my first encounter with this domaine and I have to say I’m very impressed. I’m not a big Sauvignon Blanc fan, but this is awesome. Medium yellow colour. Clearly recognizable as Sauvignon Blanc in the nose, but of the riper kind: yellow and green apple, some anise, a tiny bit of funk. Really dense and almost fat in the mouth with a great mineral core, “white” tannins, coating the mouth, good acidity, tobacco notes in the long finish. Great wine.
The Menetou Salon sounds great Steven. Nothing like a good SB from this region eh. The “riper” note especially appeals.
Tasted this for the first time at Stella in NO, had to buy a case, and opened a bottle today for appetizers. 2011 Edmond Vatan Sancerre Clos la Néore is an amzing wine. It’s a combination of all the good attributes of white wine mixed in one bottle. Briney, citrusy, buttery, flowery, all combined in a great aciid presentation with a very long fruit finish. The rest of the case will go to hiding for a long time. Thanks for making me open this.
Happy Valentine’s Day to HRH
Oysters
Roast Poulet Rouge (HRH’s fave meal) with Meyer Lemon from my tree and tarragon (HRH’s fave herb)
Sauteed Swiss Chard (HRH’s fave green) with drippings from the chicken
Too obvious? ![[wink.gif]](/uploads/db3686/original/2X/0/04707e6a7bbb03e0153e349d8a9270d30e1e9525.gif "wink"){kind=small}
2011 Domaine de la Pépière (Marc Ollivier) Muscadet de Sèvre-et-Maine Les Gras Moutons - France, Loire Valley, Pays Nantais, Muscadet de Sèvre-et-Maine (2/14/2014)
textbook minerality. Did I mention minerality? How about salinity? What about the stony saline minerality? Let’s throw in some delightful citrus acidity with the batch of local oysters served as God intended.
Geez I love this wine
2011 Domaine Bernard Baudry Chinon Blanc - France, Loire Valley, Touraine, Chinon (2/14/2014)
Lovely Chenin. Stony quince with a softness, but still sufficient acidity. There is also a little pear and yellow tannic apple peel but mostly just the great Chenin quince. Love it Love it Love it.
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Scott, that Gras Moutons is a really nice bottling. Not sure if the terroir is exactly the same, but Pepiere has done much more with that than Branger did. Much good gets said here of Muscadet generally, and Pepiere gets no short of love, but even so I’m not sure its enough. Where else has one producer done so much to define the appellation? Really hard to overstate the case IMO.
Last night I grabbed 2005 Huet Petillant, and it was stellar. Shows the 2005 richness but with such great acids. The wooly somewhat funky chenin character really comes through in this one. I loved it.
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2010 Foreau Domaine du Clos Naudin Vouvray Sec - France, Loire Valley, Touraine, Vouvray (2/14/2014)
Light yellow color, like straw in the field with still a touch of green hue lurking in the background. Nose is citrus with primarily grapefruit and minerals. Attack is initially driven by salinity but soon the tart grapefruit and wet stone. The finish is very long and lemon and lime rind notes lingering with the mouth watering acidity. Good complexity and paired perfectly with the selection of Spanish cheese, smoked salmon, olives, and lump crab for valentines day.
Bottle was a gift from Chris S. as well as being one of FMIII favorites so that was a trifecta.
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2012 Eric Louis Vin de France - France, Vin de France (2/14/2014)
So the story goes that a container of these destined for the U.S. had to be thrown overboard in an Atlantic storm in late 2013. The replacement container is finally hitting our market. I picked the last one off the shelf from a local vendor after he verified they’d be restocked later this week. I’ll be back for more.
This cork was very saturated and I thought it might be concerning but still dropped the contents into a decanter. Consumed over 3+ hours the light, nicely balanced 100% Loire Pinot (if one can believe the back of the label) over-delivers for its $15 price point. Very floral with a light cherries this has a nice balance with good acids up front and fine tannins bringing up the rear. Not thin nor a heavyweight it has a very similar profile to a recent Big Table Farm Willamette Valey we recently enjoyed. Why is it so hard to find an enjoyable inexpensive Pinot? I don’t know but our house will stock up on this one.
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Tonight with boulettes sauce poivre vert, brussels sprouts and the German version of Gnocchi called “Schupfnudeln” or “Bubespitzle”: Domaine de la Butte - 2009 Bourgeuil “La Haute de la Butte”. Decanted for an hour because there was some CO2 at first (which I hate). The hour in the decanter did the wine well.
Very dark, almost black, cherry red. In the nose, there’s lots of green/herbal elements - fresh tobacco leaves, green pepper, dried majoram. There’s a little fruit as well: Cassis and blackberry. The wine smells a little primary, there are notes of apple juice just starting to ferment and yeast. In the mouth, this is very primary as well, crunchy fruit, mouth coating tannins, the acidity is fairly mild, but it does have “bite” in the medium to short finish. I should have known it, but some more time in bottle will likely benefit the wine. Still, especially with the food, it drank really well (my wife didn’t like it very much though, not even with the food).
I would imagine this was pretty “tight.” Did you open in advance?
Baudry Croix Boisee 2011
Day 1: Tightly wound, seems to have a more herbaceous note than the 2010. Some grip from the tannin but clearly ripe and not dried out
Day 2: The fruit emerges very nicely and shows this will be a very fun wine to watch for years
Day 3: Back into its structural shell
Delicious all the way through
Popped the cork about 3 hours before. Good tension!
Love that 2010 Naudin. Probably one of the key wines in the last 3-4 years that got me fully dialed into the beauty of acid in wines. Thanks for the note, Brig.
Warren, timely note. I was considering opening one the 11 Boisee tonight. Maybe the Guillot is gentler?
Great note! I bought some 2010 Foreau Vouvray Sec from Down To Earth Wines on BerserkerDay, so this one made me smile.
It’s great to see all of these observations about Loire wines. Keep them coming! I will contribute another note tomorrow.
2002 Baumard Savennieres Clos du Papillon
Medium gold color, with some flecks of (apparently) old dark cork In the glass. Beeswax and golden raisin aromas and flavors, with a hint of green bitterness that becomes more prominent … Corked.
No sherried premox characteristic as has been mentioned elsewhere on the forum.
My 2011 Boissee is open. What a gem. I’ll toss up my note tomorrow afternoon. I learned from this thread that aside from Baudry, I am virtually all white from Loire. Would like to learn about a few more red Loire, old world-like producers, that have not been Parkerized like some other parts of France. Happy to take suggestions, stuff I can obtain state-side, preferrably in So Cal.
Looking forward to your note, FMIII. You just put into words the reason for my choice of this week’s theme.
pretty cool that you could set those links to look at our cellars… the beauty of a pivot table, eh?
I think I’m going to open a Loire red, just to tickle Frankie’s fancy…
Bummer. But it still counts as a note for purposes of the Neighbor Ride charity, so it wasn’t a total loss!
Estas casado. Y, tienes una hija. Quitame tus manos de encima! ![[swearing.gif]](/uploads/db3686/original/2X/8/8a0d3f3461d40641d294442fc2be78039bf94d19.gif "[swearing.gif]"){kind=small}
oy vey