Browse Tag

loire

To serve your love

Soucherie 2009 Anjou Blanc “Cuvée Les Rangs de Long” (Loire) – Approaches in softness but rapidly firms up, gripping and enveloping with a fine chalk/acid interplay, then releasing and lingering as a blend of powdery soils. Quite long. (9/10)

All Chambord

Cazin 2007 Cheverny “Le Petit Chambord” (Loire) – Not appealing in any way, which is a surprising enough result that I have to wonder about the integrity of this particular bottle. Sharp, a little wrenched, herbal and sweaty. There’s minerality, but there’s even more that’s unpleasant. This just can’t be right. (9/10)

Litigate against one’s love

Soucherie 2008 Anjou Blanc (Loire) – There’s a disjointed soft/sharp duality to this wine for which one has to be in the mood, as each element tries to pull the wine in a different direction. The softness is chalky and powder-textured, the sharpness is extremely clean and characterless (I don’t mean that as a negative; it’s more of a null-space acidity than it is a particularly malic or other sort of tart). Nice enough, but kind of a particular wine. (9/10)

Greco-Roman Rousseling

Roussel & Barrouillet “Clos Roche Blanche” 2007 Touraine “Cuvée Gamay” (Loire) – I like these young about 50% of the time, thinking the other half insufficient, and am repeatedly proven wrong by even a little bit of maturation (which is all I’ll allow under this closure), so my generalized displeasure with this bottle should be taken to mean absolutely nothing. It’s the tangy red fruit and earth that make the wine, and the grating, flaky, stale peppercorns and overaged herbs that ruin it. And the next bottle will be spectacular. I’m blaming taster variation rather than any of the usual suspects. (8/10)

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)

Barbou the elephant

Barbou “Domaine des Corbillières” 2009 Touraine Sauvignon (Loire) – A little more exotically-fruited than most Touraine sauvignon I’ve had, but not pushed into full Marlborough territory, or even modernistic Sancerrois experimentations. Still soil-chalky, still pleasantly green, still rindy. Somewhat insignificant, but then again not everything has to be important. (8/10)

Couldn’t work a "toi" in there?

Rousseau “Domaine des Trois Toits” 2007 Muscadet Sèvre & Maine Sur Lie (Loire) – Basic modern Muscadet, by which I mean not suffering from the dentally painful underripeness of the cheap commercial quaffing crap, but clean seaside transparency with the suggestion of fruit weight but the unlikelihood of ever identifying that fruit. For washing down bivalves, I’ll take it and enjoy myself. But it’s not Muscadet for contemplation. (8/10)

Cocagne & a smile

Cave Coopérative du Vendômois 2009 Coteaux du Vendômois Lieu-dit Cocagne Rosé (Loire) – Brittle, bony, and falling apart like eggshells. By which I don’t mean to suggest that the wine is disintegrating – in fact, it’s quite knit – just that it’s texturally fragile, like drinking pressurized eggshells. Light, floral, strawberryish and more than a bit volatile, but fun. (7/10)