Baumard’s 2009 Coteaux du Layon Carte d’Or had just been bottled when I tasted it in late June. Persimmon, kumquat rind, and quinine bitterness (and their aromatic precursors) mingle with quince preserves in a wine whose ennoblement extends to more obvious botrytis pungency, without the sense of lift or countervailing elements (other than slight bitterness) to its enormous sweetness. This might of course be suffering a bit post-bottling, and it will certainly make for an impressively-concentrated and (if past prices are a guide) highly affordable dessert wine. But I would expect to utilize it in that capacity rather than for meditation, and although its sugar alone will probably preserve it well past that point, I’d be inclined to plan on drinking it over the next 5-6 years. I finally had the pleasure to taste personally with Florent Baumard (for more about whose domaine and methods, consult my report in issue 172) and found him a disarmingly astute critic of his own wines whose confidence I share that the best is yet to come from this vast and already justly renowned estate. I find a freedom from bitter or coarse elements and a clarity of flavors in the more recent wines that is welcome and which, when pressed, Florent Baumard suggests might in part be attributable to increasingly selective and watchful (though not necessarily gentler) pressing. The envelope-pushing here is evident in the quality of Baumard’s relatively high-volume sparking wines, rendered from blends unfamiliar outside of the Loire. The wines I tasted five years ago were good, but only modestly-recommendable (and I elected not to publish notes on them in issue 172). The lot numbers of Baumard non-vintage sparkling wines appear on the front label in very tiny, faint letters under the words “sparkling wine,” but cannot be read without good eyesight, and not if the bottle is wet! The Baumards’ “regular” bottling of Savennieres is from their Clos St. Yves vineyard between the Clos du Papillon and Roche aux Moines, and a fact of which I was not aware when I published my notes in issue 172 is that two different labels are used interchangeably, one of which indicates the vineyard name.Importer: Ex Cellars wine Agencies, Cambridge, MA; tel. (617) 876-5105

A wine that contrasts extreme sweetness with freshness. It has beautiful acidity as well as a great swathe of sweet peach and orange laced with honeyed cream. ——R.V.(6/1/2011)—— 92