Domaine Les Poëte, Vin de France Blanc, Orphée, 2017
So, why is this a Vin de France? According to CellarTracker, previous vintages were labelled Reuilly, which is a bona fide Loire AOC dedicated to Sauvignon Blanc, albeit one of the lesser renowned ones. While I google this up, and ponder the wine in parallel, I'd like to point out that I'm usually not quite patient enough to age a Sauvignon this long. In fact, I didn't age this one. For some reason, Les Poëte arrived in Israel (thanks to Lifshitz and Bourgogne Crown) with a posse of four-five year old wines.
OK, Google brings up a lot of stuff in French . I read the few English pages and Google Translated a few of the French ones and I'm sorry to say, I give up. I keep reading the same two-three paragraphs. What I can make out is that Guillaume Sorbe is a young, minimal interventionist winemaker, artisanal and biodynamic - I think I'm getting somewhere with this puzzle, he probably got pissed off by some bureaucratic requirement that didn't appeal to him and declassified in protest.
This derision is tongue-in-cheek. France is full of talented winemakers who got fed up with the tighter side of the regulations. There is logic in the French AOC system, and also broad bands of illogic. Anyway, this is a wonderful wine. At this point in its life, the wine's fruit has lost the leafiness of Sauvignon Blanc's youthful flush, giving us instead the kind of salty-sour, mineral rich Sauvignon that makes you want to, first, start aging Loire Sauvignons and, two, buy cases of the stuff.
We're starting to get some wonderful producers of Loire Sauvignon Blancs in Israel - Vacheron, Pinard, Riffault, Redde. I know there are more, but I can't afford to buy everything and these are the ones that have been my sirens so far. But now Les Poëte made it to the short list and it will take me some time to formulate where he fits in.
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