Winemaker Notes
Le Mont wines are often the estate's most reticent, but develop the strongest perfume with age. Mineral-driven with a crystalline purity.
Professional Ratings
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James Suckling
A pristine dry beauty from the chenin blanc grape! Stunning nose of spring blossom, Yamanashi white peach and honeycomb. Super-focused and racy with excellent concentration, everything gelling beautifully at the precise and intensely mineral finish. From bio dynamically grown grapes. Drink or hold.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2021 Vouvray Le Mont Sec opens with the classical flinty fruit aromas on the still discreet but again elegant and fascinating, unique nose that is crystal clear, precise, fresh, intense and aromatic, with concentrated quince and lemon aromas intermingled with chalky and even more saline notes. Crystalline, refined and elegant on the palate, this is a full-bodied, tight and complex Vouvray from green marls and silex soils. The wine is still tight and very tensioned, which is great to taste but challenging to drink at this early stage. The finish is pure, citrusy and very mineral, most of all salty and lemon fresh, with fine tannins and a firm, sustainable structure. 13% stated alcohol. Natural cork. Tasted in March 2023. Best After 2028
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Wine Spectator
A concentrated, multilayered wine that is richly styled yet bristling with racy energy, featuring juicy apple and creamed pear flavors marked by ginger, cinnamon and allspice accents, with a firming core of salty mineral. Delicious now, this will only improve with time in bottle.
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.