If you know me you probably know by now that I enjoy a good amount of acidity in wine. It is no surprise of course, that I love the incredible whites from the Loire valley from lean, minerally Muscadet to decadent sweet Moelleux (pronounced mway-le)Vouvray. These wines, thanks to their acidity, are legendary for their potential to age and wine lovers will often tell tales of drinking astonishingly old vintages. I had my first experience a couple of years ago when I tasted a 1990 Vouvray from the Domaine du Viking. Though I don’t remember exactly when it was, I know that the wines was at least 12 years old and it the way it tasted amazed me. It was bright, full of fresh acidity, but time had given it nuttiness and a depth of flavor that I hadn’t ever experienced in Vouvray- all this from a producer that I hadn’t even really heard of, and haven’t really seen lately in our market. Looking at the great labels of Vouvray on the shelf at work from producers like Huet, Foreau and Nicolas Joly, I wondered how wines considered benchmarks for their appellations -symbols of quality and dedication in the vineyard- would fare after some extensive aging.
After some searching on the internet and around town I ended up procuring a bottle of 1971 Domaine Huet Clos du Bourg Vouvray from a friend with an extensive cellar. As soon as I got the wine I planned a dinner and started prepping by doing some reading about what I should expect and if the wine might even be over the hill. With the night of the tasting upon us I started wondering if drinking a 37 year old white wine might be too good to be true. Maybe people just write about drinking insanely old wines because it is exclusive and they end up fooling themselves into liking them…maybe. The level of the wine was definitely lower than a young bottle and I could see, holding the bottle up to the light, that the color was surely different from any other I had seen. Removing the capsule, I really got nervous when I saw that the cork was covered in thick, black mold, no doubt the sweet wine had started to seep through the cork and became food for mold. Pulling out the cork was tough since it wanted to crumble and fall into the bottle, but we couldn’t let that happen! Finally the moment arrived and we poured our glasses. The golden color was inspiring and I could smell fresh apples…I suspected we were about to taste magic.
Absolutely magical.
The flavors and aromas mingled like colors in a pile of leaves, there were fresh appley scents as well as apricot, honey and then some butter, and of course, bright acidity framing the whole thing. After tasting several times I decided I didn’t even want to have any food with it, it was enough to just appreciate the wine by itself, unadorned in all its glory. How amazing it must have been, the first time somebody tasted a wine this old and expected it to be bad. Imagine the thrill of being a winemaker and realizing what your wine is worth 37 years down the line. I get a chill just thinking about how in the past 37 years seasons have come and gone, people have been to the moon and back, people are born, other people die, and all the while the wine is resting peacefully under ground, evolving slowly, revealing layer upon layer. For all this I have one word: amazing!
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