The weather’s gotten just a touch cooler so I’ve cracked open a softer wine to go with dinner tonight, a Domaine Huet. Now I love Chenin Blanc but I find it very underrated and underappreciated as a varietal – at least here in Canada – and I admit that’s actually justified. It doesn’t have the acidity of Riesling, the herbaciousness of Sauvignon Blanc, or the minerality and flintiness of Chardonnay. It’s closer to the Alsacian varietals but without the high acclaim.
There’s just really no demand for it here. Once in a while the LCBO brings in some nice Coteaux du Layon, Chaume or Quarts de Chaume but this is very rare and I have literally acquired all my Vouvray from the SAQ in Quebec because the LCBO seems to be allergic to bringing in high quality ones. C’est la vie. They don’t know what they’re missing out on.
DOMAINE HUET 2009 LE HAUT-LIEU VOUVRAY MOELLEUX
SUMMARY: A high-quality tasty Vouvray brought down a slight notch by a couple of distracting characteristics. One of the very few times I would ever recommend going for a drier version of the wine, though this sweet version is still a good match with spicier meals.
12.5% ABV and ~50 g/L of RS. Beautiful light straw gold color in the glass, don’t be fooled by the picture below. I think that was a result of bad lighting. Aromas of dried mangos and very strong burnt sugar. Much stronger than I was expecting, in fact. Indicates some maderization has occurred despite the light color. Despite that high relatively high sugar level and standard ABV and slow legs in the glass, it actually tastes very light-bodied on the palate, just slightly edging towards medium.
On the palate, sweet flavors of candied lemon and dried mango. The fruit flavors are really quite strong and have some vanilla cream flavor to them indicating the influence of the oak. There is a barely perceptible acidity there. The finish gives off quite a bit of burnt sugar flavor to the point of distraction. I feel the wine needs either less sugar or more acidity to balance it out. While this is by no means a cloying wine thanks to its lighter body, the burnt sugar flavors lingering on the finish were actually starting to become distracting because they were overwhelming the fruit flavor at the end. It was actually making me wish the wine was less sweet even with my sweet tooth.
I probably should have drank this sooner than I did as I think it would’ve benefited from a bit more freshness. The wine didn’t pair well with the sunflower whole grain bread and homemade fermented pickles I had for dinner with it but was stupendous with the spicy Cajun blackened catfish. The sweetness tamed down the heat and the heat in turn brought the acidity out more in the wine. I highly advise drinking this wine young and drinking it right now if you have any bottles from the same vintage or older.
I second the colour remark! I have the Clos the Bourg 2009 1iere tri and this is much much lighter. But than again, Huet is not unsensitive to oxidation. We had a Haut lieu sec 2007 some weeks ago in Orléans (France) which was borderline oxidized for my taste (but than again I’m a white Burg drinker, my palate is not a reference for chenin blanc)
Tran, this wine is an infant and has plenty of acidity to it. I find it somewhat similar to the '97s in that the wines are pretty opulent early, though there was more botrytis in '97. It took about 13-15 years for the '97s to shed their baby fat and really start to show the underlying structure and, imo, the '09s are better wines than the '97s.
If you’re getting dried fruit, especially dried mango and burnt sugar in a wine as young as that one, I’d worry about the provenance of the bottle. The wine should still be in the yellow fruit and mineral stage of its evolution.
Agree with brad, the 2009s are still so young, this is a great vintage wit huge potential for development. Any suggestion of unusual evolution has to call into question provenance. I have some 2009 Moelleux, but haven’t touched them yet Still working on my 1989s, and my 1993s…
Yep, I’ve had 8 bottles of this exact wine out of the case I bought and none of them were that dark nor had the burnt sugar you describe, so that bottle had to be defective.
My note from CellarTracker:
2009 Domaine Huet Vouvray Moelleux Le Haut-Lieu- France, Loire Valley, Touraine, Vouvray (2/17/2016)
A nice understated nose of mandarin citrus with a hint of ginger and honey. The palate shows the same as the nose, plus some tart apricot accents. Medium sweetness with medium+ acidity. The palate stays the same over 3 or 4 days in the refrigerator, but the nose lessens each day. This is a killer wine to serve with a cheese board as the acidity and sweetness stands up to, and can enhance, many types of cheese. This will be something if it ages to it’s potential and could be as good as it’s 2002 older cousin. (90 pts.)
Let’s not cry pre-mox, which has a certain connotation, until there’s a lot of proof. In all likelihood, this bottle was heat damaged. I know of no sweet wines from Huet that have suffered from pre-mox.
Tran, if you’re in the Philly / NJ area and we ever meet at an off-line, remind me to bring a 2002 Clos du Bourg Moelleux so you can see what a Huet is like when it’s just starting to shed it’s baby fat.
