Winemaker Notes
"Haut Lieu" is the estate’s first vineyard, purchased in 1928. Its 22 acres have the richest soils and, generally, yields the most precocious wines.
Professional Ratings
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Wine Spectator
This delivers a beautiful display of purity and grace, with creamed Jonagold apple, star fruit, white peach and chamomile notes flowing seamlessly, backed by wet stone and fresh verbena accents. Subtle but persistent energy ripples through the very long finish. Drink now through 2035.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
Dressed in a golden-yellow robe and bottled with 18 grams of residual sugar, Huet's 2016 Vouvray Le Haut-Lieu Demi-Sec offers a clear and aromatic bouquet of crushed chalk and ripe, tropical fruit aromas. Round, piquant and salty on the palate, with a delicate juiciness and stimulating mineral grip, this is a promising and tensioned Chenin Blanc that delivers more drama and piquancy to the palate than the Sec counterpart. Although it's already lovely to drink, I would keep it at least for five years. The 2016 is lovely, pure, straight and elegant.
Unquestionably one of the most diverse grape varieties, Chenin Blanc can do it all. It shines in every style from bone dry to unctuously sweet, oaked or unoaked, still or sparkling and even as the base for fortified wines and spirits. Perhaps Chenin Blanc’s greatest asset is its ever-present acidity, maintained even under warm growing conditions. Somm Secret—Landing in South Africa in the mid 1800s, today the country has double the acreage of Chenin Blanc planted compared to France. There is also a new wave of dedicated producers committed to restoring old Chenin vines.
An important white wine appellation in the Touraine and one of the top in all of the Loire, Vouvray uniquely specializes in a wide range of styles from dry to sweet, and still to sparkling, each with its own definitive character. Vouvray is almost always 100% Chenin blanc (however up to 5% Menu Pineau is theoretically allowed but not often used).
Vouvray is also the name of a pretty little town just east of Tours on the northern bank of the Loire—its vineyards surround it to the northeast. Houses and cellars are carved out of the local tuffeau, a chalky or sandy, fine-grained limestone. Vineyards inhabit clay and gravel topsoil over tuffeau on the plateau, the best of which have a slight slope with a southerly aspect.
Chenin blanc’s high acidity and natural adaptability allow it to produce a wide range of styles with enormous success. Styles under the Vouvray name include sparkling, both Brut and Demi-Sec and still: Sec (dry) and Tendre (off-dry) as well as Demi-Sec (noticeably sweet), Moelleux (very sweet) and Liquoreaux (botrytized). Most can age about five years but the best quality versions will continue to improve over decades.