by Patrick Ogle
Hervé Villemade Les Saules Cour-Cheverny Blanc 2013 is wine made from a rare grape produced in the Loire in France. romorantin.
This wine is the color of straw. I sniffed out a lot of floral and green vegetation on the nose. Nothing grassy--at least
not in the way we commonly mean "grassy" but the scent of greenery and green vegetable rather than New Zealand sauvignon
blanc "grassy. It maybe a bit of dill? Or just the whole damned herb garden!
When you taste you get a sort of hidden nectar taste beneath tart with citrus/citrus pith and bright acidity.The citrus is something like what you get from cold weather wines but fruit isn't what stands out. It is a lively wine. It is a wound up, tension-filled wine. I sort of wish I had it with some rich cheeses and salad. It isn't light mind you (hence the "rich" modifier on the cheese noun).
I read about the grape before having this--perhaps a mistake--so I expected it to have more in common with it's sibling, chardonnay. There is that citrus that you get from cold weather chards but the floral aspect is something unique. Even the citrus isn't quite the same. For one, it isn't as pronounced as it is in some chardonnays.
Bottled a little less than a year after harvest this wine has spent almost three years in the bottle. If you read some online (and dismissive) descriptions of the romorantin you would think the wine would be undrinkable now. In fact? It still tastes YOUNG. You can translate these dismissive statements as "it-isn't-chardonnay-so-it-can't-be-good". This isn't chardonnay and it IS good. It maybe a wine that has a particular affinity for the small area of the Loire where Les
Saules is made. This wine, and all the wines from Hervé Villemade, come from organic grapes. They are also fans of minimal intervention--sulfur is added in small amounts at bottling.
This wine comes from a cross between gouais blanc and pinot noir, just like chardonnay. It is a little complicated than that because pinot is genetically unstable and therefore the VERSION of pinot is likely significantly different. Fringe Wines has an excellent discussion of this HERE.
Finding wines made from romorantin may be tough--there are less than 125 acres of the wine grown in the Loire. I could find no indication it is grown commercially elsewhere.
Hervé Villemade Les Saules Cour-Cheverny Blanc 2013 is wine made from a rare grape produced in the Loire in France. romorantin.
This wine is the color of straw. I sniffed out a lot of floral and green vegetation on the nose. Nothing grassy--at least
not in the way we commonly mean "grassy" but the scent of greenery and green vegetable rather than New Zealand sauvignon
blanc "grassy. It maybe a bit of dill? Or just the whole damned herb garden!
When you taste you get a sort of hidden nectar taste beneath tart with citrus/citrus pith and bright acidity.The citrus is something like what you get from cold weather wines but fruit isn't what stands out. It is a lively wine. It is a wound up, tension-filled wine. I sort of wish I had it with some rich cheeses and salad. It isn't light mind you (hence the "rich" modifier on the cheese noun).
I read about the grape before having this--perhaps a mistake--so I expected it to have more in common with it's sibling, chardonnay. There is that citrus that you get from cold weather chards but the floral aspect is something unique. Even the citrus isn't quite the same. For one, it isn't as pronounced as it is in some chardonnays.
Bottled a little less than a year after harvest this wine has spent almost three years in the bottle. If you read some online (and dismissive) descriptions of the romorantin you would think the wine would be undrinkable now. In fact? It still tastes YOUNG. You can translate these dismissive statements as "it-isn't-chardonnay-so-it-can't-be-good". This isn't chardonnay and it IS good. It maybe a wine that has a particular affinity for the small area of the Loire where Les
Saules is made. This wine, and all the wines from Hervé Villemade, come from organic grapes. They are also fans of minimal intervention--sulfur is added in small amounts at bottling.
This wine comes from a cross between gouais blanc and pinot noir, just like chardonnay. It is a little complicated than that because pinot is genetically unstable and therefore the VERSION of pinot is likely significantly different. Fringe Wines has an excellent discussion of this HERE.
Finding wines made from romorantin may be tough--there are less than 125 acres of the wine grown in the Loire. I could find no indication it is grown commercially elsewhere.
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