Philippa Sydney, François-Xavier Barc, and Charles Sydney at Charles Joguet in Chinon.
Elizabeth and I traveled from Anjou to the Touraine where met up with just a handful of producers before heading northeast for the German speaking segment of our tour. François-Xavier Barc graciously spent a couple of hours with us, even though Cabernet Franc was entering the Charles Joguet winery in Chinon. Their eighty-year-old vineyard, the Clos de la Dioterie, had yet to be picked and the cool temperatures that day left us wondering if the Cabernets were ever going to fully ripen in 2008.
Loire expert Charles Sydney has updated his 2008 vintage report on Chris Kissack's winedoctor.com, and he appears to be upbeat on the quality of this low-yielding vintage. Charles is also the contributing Loire Valley expert for Tom Stevenson's indispensable annual wine guide, The Wine Report, a book that I have read cover-to-cover each fall since 2005. Charles Sydney's Loire segment has always been one of the more helpful sections of the book and I have often looked to his advice when building the Loire portions of my lists over the years.
So with good fortune, we bumped into Charles and his wife Philippa at the Joguet domaine, where they stopped to snap a few photos and to check in on the progress of the vintage. Charles cheerfully directed us to one of his favorite producers in the region: Jacky Blot at the Domaine de la Taille aux Loups. Jacky is a producer whose wines I had never tasted but which have always rated highly in Sydney's writing (full disclosure here: the Sydney's are also commercially involved with the Blot's through their Chinon-based brokerage firm). Of course we jumped at the opportunity to taste there that afternoon.
The Domaine de la Taille aux Loups in Husseau, Montlouis-sur-Loire.
In two month's of tasting through the northern wine regions of Europe, we've yet to encounter anything close to the tri extrême employed at the Blot domaine. Here, sorting tables are placed at the end of each row (!), where workers separate the botrytised grapes from the healthy fruit before it is transported to the winery in Husseau. Blot built his domaine from scratch, starting with 8 ha in 1989. The domaine has has now grown to 40 ha with the addition of his red wine producing Domaine de la Butte in Bourgueil. Much has been made of Blot's non dosé pétillant Montlouis 'Triple Zero' but we were most impressed by the super-concentrated dry Chenins including the Les dix Arpents and Remus bottlings. Many thanks to Charles for the introduction.
Françoise Blot passionately leads us through the tasting.
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