Foreau’s 2009 Vouvray Sec – bottled, as usual, little more than 6 months after its harvest – leads with honeysuckle and lily-of-the-valley-the-valley, grapefruit and peach. Full and subtly oily on the palate, it finishes with smoky suggestions of snuffed candle wick and bitter notes of fruit pit and citrus rind, but also an undeniably chalky sense of mineral grounding often missing from Central Loire Chenin of its vintage. “It was really difficult to execute a good sec in 2009 as the grapes simply got too rich,” Foreau notes – as if there were not enough reminders in bottle! – “and for me if you get to 14% alcohol, that’s not good.” (In the present instance, we have 13.6%, with 4 unnoticeable grams of residual sugar.) This wine was dosed with a bit more sulfur than Foreau usually employs – prompted by what he sees as the fruit’s fragility – so it will probably be more expressive in a year, though I would plan to enjoy it over the next 3-5, not over such a long period as that over which one can usually happily savor a Foreau sec. Considering that few white wine growers anywhere can boast the track record of Philippe Foreau, his Vouvrays are priced to continue offering wonderful value. This becomes especially (at times depressingly) evident when one compares the much higher prices asked for Chenin from certain appellations further West that have traditionally been treated as superior according to the still rather hide-bound French pecking order, even when they deliver questionable or even dismal results. Buy these wines now, before the market for Loire wine at last becomes a meritocracy! Foreau thinks the high flint content in his sites helped convey minerality even in a vintage as rich (to the point where rendering balanced sec was tricky) as is 2009, but as in other very warm vintages of the past two decades the excitement chez Foreau is at the top end of the must weight spectrum. “I have never in my career had such acidity with this degree of richness,” opines Foreau of his two top 2009s. Alluding to 2008’s record-breaking rains and consequent flooding in certain sectors of Vouvray – which for a critical while rendered it impossible to get into one’s vineyards to treat the vines, other than on foot and with tanks strapped to one’s back – Foreau remarked matter-of-factly: “this vintage stared out badly, but finished well, while 2007 started out well and finished badly” – and just how well 2008 was capable of finishing, there is no better place to witness than in Foreau’s cellar. Foreau opines that working the lees – fashionable anyway now with Loire Chenin and a younger generation – was a mistake in 2008 as it ameliorated the acidity, if at all, at the expense of clarity and focus.Importer: Rosenthal Wine Merchant, Pine Plains, NY; tel. (800) 910-1990
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