FRENCH WINE

WINE SPECTATOR 93 POINTS - "This offers an expressive mix of yellow apple, persimmon and Meyer lemon flavors infused with light notes of hazelnut and hints of smoke. The acidity is electric, giving this plenty of verve and carrying all the elements to the long and seductive, lightly floral finish."

ORGANIC

In 2009, the château’s new owner, le Comte de Colbert, asked Yves Lambert and his son, Arnaud, from Domaine de Saint-Just, to manage the estate. They accepted with a twenty-five year lease and immediately began a hard work of converting these historical vineyards to organic culture after more than fifty years of chemical farming. Today, five after many years of quality farming and the deft touch of Arnaud, the brilliance of the wines known centuries ago is reemerging.
Inside the bottle: The wine starts out aromatically expressing the magic that limestone imparts to its local vine community. Pure and striking fruits, like sweet lime, meyer lemon with lemon curd, exotic spice and flint dart out of the glass and into the nose. If you can manage to keep it in the glass for a couple of hours of slow observation and drinking, the wine will take you on a rollercoaster of highs that seem only to climber higher with every passing minute. Acidity? More than you can imagine but somehow it presents itself gently on the finish after a somewhat overwhelming initial attack from the first sip. The wine hasn’t a drop of tropical or rich, ripe fruit notes because this cold site rarely has a chance to develop botrytis, even in ideal years. The topsoil is pure sand with limestone gravel that has been unearthed from the tuffeau limestone that sits on thirty centimeters below the soil. It’s pure sand and limestone soils make it the most unique soil structure on the hill. Anyone would be hard-pressed to find a white wine in the world that carries this fair of a price.

Brézé is a unique site due to its relatively high elevation and eminently nuanced geological profile. The high composition of tuffeau, a porous, chalky limestone also used in the construction of much of the Loire’s Renaissance architecture, results in finely mineral Chenin Blanc. Clay and sand also lend themselves to the diversity of the terroirs, giving body to the reds and richness to the whites. With five historic and clearly delimited Clos to work with, the Lambert duo has the incredible opportunity to truly understand and reveal the distinctions within this extraordinary appellation.

100 % CHENIN BLANC - No dosage. This feels beautifully fresh, energetic, with polished orchard fruit nose, complemented by a light and minerally seam. The palate is certainly vivacious, filled with desiccated fruit, backed up by great acidity, and a fine pétillance. Full, composed, and striking, with a long, fruit-rich finish, this is very impressive.

CERTIFIED ORGANIC

• 100% Chenin Blanc
• 50-60 year old vines in Noizay
• Very thin layer of clay sitting over pure limestone
• Indigenous yeasts
• No malo
• Fermented and aged in barrel (20% new, 80% 1-4 year old barrels

WINE ADVOCATE 95 POINTS - "The 2018 Vouvray Le Mont Moelleux is clear, deep, pure and flinty on the intense but fine and coolish-mineral nose. Very distinctive! Lush and intense but also pure, vital and tensioned on the palate, this elegant and seductive Le Mont offers a straightforward drive and a highly complex and energetic finish with grip and great mineral tension. A gorgeous, crystalline, persistently salty and tightly woven Chenin with great complexity and energy. Very attractive already today!"

VINOUSMEDIA 96 POINTS: "The 2018 Montlouis Les Bournais is a wine of mind-blowing complexity and nuance. So deep yet also weightless and effortless, Les Bournais dazzles from the very first taste. Dried flowers, lime, mint, lemon confit and tangerine oil hover on the palate in a breathtaking Montlouis endowed with tons of translucence and sheer character. Don’t miss it."

Biodynamic

VINOUSMEDIA 93 POINTS: "The 2018 Montlouis Choisilles is a blend from the Les Epinais, La Taille aux Loups and Clos au Renard lieu-dits. Dry and bracing in the glass, with tremendous energy, the Choisilles is beautifully delineated, with sweet floral notes and bright acids that round things out so well. Citrus confit, white flowers, chamomile and crushed rocks lead into the sculpted finish."

Biodynamic

WINE ADVOCATE 95+ POINTS: "The 2018 Vouvray Le Mont Moelleux Première Trie is pure, deep and flinty on the concentrated nose, with very fine oak, toffee and potted ginger aromas. Lush, sweet and generous yet precise and crystalline on the palate, it features very fine tannins, lingering salinity and positive energy. This is a compact, persistent, tightly woven and stimulating Chenin from the Le Mont terroir that reveals firm, tensioned structure and a young finish with potential to improve and refine."

These are the finest, purest, most delicate yet also intense Vouvrays I have had from Huet in recent years - Stephan Reinhardt, Wine Advocate

Fans shouldn't miss the chance to buy some of the world's finest Chenin Blancs, which are still spectacularly moderate in price - Stephan Reinhardt, Wine Advocate

We just received an allocation of the 2019 vintage from Domaine Huet and are thrilled to have enough of these rare wines to offer them in an email. Only 4 wines were made in this vintage, three of which are dry (Sec) and one off-dry (Demi-Sec). They are all fantastic, complex and high scoring wines that are incredibly delicious. These wines possess a pleasing textural component and a minerality that enhances the pure orchard and citrus fruit flavors.

Since its founding in 1928, Vouvray's Domaine Huet has been the standard-bearer for great, age-worthy Chenin Blanc. The Wine Advocate's Stephan Reinhardt absolutely loves these wines, heaping high praise and scores on each one of the wines from this vintage. He wrote, "These are the finest, purest, most delicate yet also intense Vouvrays I have had from Huet in recent years."

Le Mont Sec, always my personal favorite among the Vouvrays from Huet due to the mineral tension and nerviness possibly caused by the silex stones in the tuff soils, comes in third for me this year.

The domaine's founder, Victor Huet, was a Parisian bistro owner who re-settled to the town of Vouvray in the beautiful Loire Valley after WW1. He soon purchased the first of his great vineyards, Le Haut-Lieu, in 1928, and Domaine Huet was born.

Victor's son Gaston worked with his father from the beginning, and assumed full charge by 1937. With an obsessive devotion to quality, and an engaging showman's personality, Gaston built the Huet legacy over the next 55 years.

As the estate prospered in the post-WWII era, Gaston secured two additional prime vineyards on the Premiere Cote that would ensure the domaine's stature: Le Mont (purchased in 1957) and Clos du Bourg (farmed since 1953, purchased in 1963). Collectively, these three vineyards, and the wines made from them, account for Huet being the greatest of all Vouvray producers.

Gaston was joined in 1971 by his son-in-law, Noel Pinguet, and 1979 by chef de culture, Jean-Bernard Berthome. Together, they crafted legendary wines from their three parcels-with the vineyards and nature dictating which grapes would become Sec, Demi-Sec, or Moelleux. The estate always held back significant stocks of older vintages, and these wines' near immortality has helped to further the Huet legend.

With Berthome in charge of winemaking since 2012, the domaine may be making its most consistently great wines ever. It was one of the earliest adopters of biodynamics, and recent wines, perhaps more than any in the domaine's history, achieve a fascinating level of transparency, purity, and knife-edged balance.

The wines from Domaine Huet are among the greatest white wines in the world. Fortunately, they remain quite affordable and offer amazing value. If you haven't had quality Chenin Blanc before, this is a great opportunity to try some of the best. If you've been lucky enough to enjoy Huet before, then you know that now is the time to grab these iconic wines.

WINE ADVOCATE 94+ POINTS - "Again, Huet's 2019 Vouvray Le Mont Sec reflects the unique, south-facing nine-hectare vineyard with its pebbly flint (silex) and green clay soils wonderfully! Pure, fresh and flinty on the deep, intense yet also floral and herbal nose that represents a concentrated and firm white stone fruit aroma with lemon and grapefruit notes as well as fennel, anise and cumin hints. The bouquet gets darker and stonier with a lot of aeration (during days, to be honest). The leitmotif, though, remains the characteristic mix of aromatic fruit aromas with flint stone and volcanic basalt tones that, at this early stage and poured straight from the bottle, remind me of the Rieslings from Forst, Pfalz (Germany). In any case, this is like perfume on rocky stones! On the palate, Le Mont Sec is a rich, lush and round, very concentrated yet silky textured, elegant, vital and tightly structured 2019 with a powerful, intense and long finish with lingering salinity intertwined with tight, perhaps slightly dry tannins. I recommend cellaring this round yet tight and concentrated Chenin for a decade and then drinking it slowly over many years and with, hopefully, even better integrated tannins."

The wine is a brilliant pale gold. On the nose, there is a fine bouquet full aromas of white flowers and yellow fruit such as pears. One finds citrus notes such as grapefruit. The attack is gentle with a lovely vivacity where one finds agreeable notes of grapefruit on the lingering finish. It is a lovely wine, ripe and refreshing.

The vineyard was planted in 1130 by Cistercian monks and today consists of vines aged from 35 to 80 years old. The old small monastery still exists and a few hundred meters away, the castle of La Roche aux Moines was built and dismantled during the wars of religion. Always considered as a rare and unique product, the Serrant Casting was celebrated by Louis XI and Louis XIV as one of the best French white wines. The vineyard is cultivated partly by hand and partly by horse because of the steep slopes overlooking the Loire. Since 1984, the entire estate has been cultivated using biodynamic farming methods. Three wines are produced in small quantities on the property and benefit from the principles of biodynamic.

From a ripe vintage comes this rich Chenin Blanc redolent of lanolin, pollen, ripe pear and quince over a base of wet stones. The richness in the mouth is cut but the rapier like acidity and the fruit is contrasted nicely by the crisp mineral notes.

CERTIFIED ORGANIC

DECANTER 96 POINTS - "Occupying the highest point on the slope, Hauts de Husseau's soils feature less chalk but plenty of marine fossils. Here grow the domaine's oldest vines, with very deep roots. This wine is all about focused richness, displaying a saline nose with rich, pineappley scents. The palate is very intense but retains a sense of purpose, chanelling the ripe apple and sweet pineapple flavours down the centre while salinity floods the edges."