Browse Tag

chenin blanc

Moines way or another

Laroche “Domaine aux Moines” 2001 Savennières-Roche aux Moines (Loire) – Layers of oxidation. Fulsome with a barky, drying palate. Snow globe-like with its swirling tartrates (and my pour is far from the bottom of the bottle). Copper-jacketed and starting to preserve itself in amber. I spend a good twenty minutes trying to decide if I like this, and never quite come to a conclusion. (11/10)

The patron saint of mediocre French wine chains

Nicolas “Domaine de Bellivière” 2006 Coteaux du Loir “L’Effraie” (Loire) – All the structural elements (a little fruit-sweetness, just enough acidity) are here, and it seems like the wine I know, but it resists attempts to draw anything else forth. Is this just closed, is it off, or is it already fading? The intention was to give it a day or so of aeration to see what might develop, but repetitive puzzled sampling killed that idea. Well, there’s more, so we’ll see what happens to the next one. (10/10)

Tuffeaux the sheaux

Chidaine 2005 Montlouis-sur-Loire “Les Tuffeaux” (Loire) – Soft and perfumed, with tissue-thin layers of leafy something-or-other through which one slowly drifts, searching for something tangible. Which never comes. Closed? Yeah, sure, why not? Certainly not particularly interesting at the moment. (8/10)

You dirty Raats

Raats Family 2009 “Original” Chenin Blanc (Coastal Region) – This is the unwooded cuvée, and tastes just as I remember from the source: very, very dense, almost syrupy, yet retaining just…just…enough acid for a sort of leaden balance. Stone fruit and pretty flowers, with a bronzed quality. Very fresh, but the opposite of lively. (8/10)

Forrester for the treeser

Ken Forrester “Petit” 2009 Chenin Blanc (Stellenbosch) – Sunny stone fruit with something perfumed – lavender? no, not that strong – and, as usual, delicious, though there’s a faintly syrupy hint starting to develop. This was never intended to be an ager, anyway. (8/10)

Queue up

Baumard 1995 Coteaux du Layon “la queue de Paon” (Loire) – For all the varied disappointments inherent in the dry wines from this house – rarely flaws or problems so much as aqueous timidity – the sweet wines don’t, at least to my palate, suffer from the same issues. In fact, the restraint that bores in other wines is, in the stickier examples, a refreshing alternative to the frequent excesses of the region, in which sugars have been pushed way too far, or unfortunate biological experiments are allowed to run their independent courses within insufficiently-protected bottles. Here are spice, a wide range of apples and whitish-green melons, honeysuckle, and a coppering minerality atop the essential foundation of flaked earth. Long, perfectly balanced, and delicious. (7/10)

What is morgen on?

de Morgenzon 2006 Chenin Blanc (Stellenbosch) – Heavy, leaden, dead from gravity and then necromanced with wood. While it will never be my favorite thing to do to chenin blenc, this cellar treatment can work in producing a fruity-but-internationalized wine. But it didn’t work here. Everything decent and appealing in the wine has been beaten to death, then reanimated and beaten a second time. (6/10)

Pét control

Huet 2002 Vouvray “Pétillant” Brut (Loire) – L02 PSB, for those tracking such things. Sophisticated, with crisp acidity, chalk, aspirin and the faintest prickle…so faint that, were one told that this is not pétillant, but rather just blessed with a little residual CO2, it’d be believed. Like most young Huet mini-bubbles, nowhere near as generous as some of its peers. And like most young Huet mini-bubbles, it would probably outlive and outclass them all. (5/10)

John Colt

Beaumont 2008 Chenin Blanc (Walker Bay) – Heavy, slurpy, and ham-handed. Yellow fruit and overdriven yellow tomato, thick and unstructured, with a whack of alcohol on the finish. This is the absolute opposite of how I thought Walker Bay would express chenin. Huh. (5/10)

Saam like it hot

[landscape]Saam Mountain 2008 Chenin Blanc Middelburg (Paarl) – Full of the bright, round, yellow fruit that I’ve found is (happily) almost unavoidable in bargain chenins from South Africa. It’s clean, with a bit of spice and barely-fair acidity, though more of the latter would be welcome. Drinkable enough. (10/09)