Domaine Huet Brut 2005

Bodega: Domaine Huet
D.O./Zona: Vouvray (Loira)
País: Francia
Tipo de vino: Espumoso
Graduación (vol): 12%
Varietales: Chenin Blanc
Precio aproximado: 11 euros

fecha de cata: 14/8/2011
Decantado: No
Info de cata: Vino espumoso muy rico traido por Esti e Iñi de su excursion al Loira. Lo tomamos al comienzo de la comida y estaba realmente rico.  Color dorado, con finisimas burbujas y en boca me recordó los champagnes ricos,  a mi me trajo a la cabeza el ruinart, esa bollería. En boca no me pareció ácido, pero que muy rico. Nos encantó este vino comprado sobre los 10E en la bodega. Excelente RCP, creo que para comprar unas cajas, mas barato que el champagne y me gustó más que la mayoría de cavas que he probado.

Notas de cata (The wine doctor):Domaine Huet Vouvray Pétillant 2005: A plentiful but very fine bead here, and a nose of soft white fruits, still very youthful in terms of style, and still showing the young, floral and lightly mineral nuances of Chenin Blanc. There are primary suggestions of green apple, pear skin and citrus zest. The palate is broad and exuberant, rather full and rich with a very primary character still. A good freshness to it as might be expected, with the prickling mousse and fine acidity carrying along the stony white fruit. Good, slightly bitter grip in the very finish, and a long, defined end to it all. Good, very stylish, reserved, but with a lot of character tightly wound up inside the acid and chalky minerality. Time to leave these alone for a while, I think. From a tasting of Loire Valley Fizz. 17.5/20 (August 2011)

Pétillant & Mousseux

Although when we focus on Vouvray it is often on the beautiful sweet wines of the region, or perhaps the vibrant sec or under-rated and often over-looked demi-sec cuvées, the truth is the vast majority of the appellation is dedicated to sparkling wine, much of it rather lacklustre. This is not true of Huet's efforts of course, which are based on high-quality fruit rather than the under-ripe grapes which are often channelled into sparkling wines by the region's less devoted producers.

In recent years Huet has offered two styles of sparkling wine, the first being a mousseuxmade in the méthode traditionelle, that is a bottling made à la Champagne, a vin clairbottled with yeast and sugar for the second fermentation. This is the first sparkling wine to be offered by Huet, and with a pressure of 4-6 atmospheres it has a bead and mousse very reminiscent of Champagne, even if the flavours belie the wine's true origins.

More recently (although on reflection it is actually many years ago now) Noël Pinguet began to experiment with a méthode ancestrale, an increasingly popular practice if the number of examples I encounter from Vouvray producers at the Salon are anything to judge by. In this case the wine is bottled before the primary fermentation is finished, the result being a lower pressure sparkling wine - the pétillant style - because only a portion of the fermentation occurs within the bottle. Although it is not strictly necessary to add anything when bottling, Pinguet favours the addition of yeast to ensure the fermentation progresses smoothly. Once finished the wine is disgorged and then topped up with an aliquot of a sympathetic cuvée in order to achieve a dosage usually in the order of 10 g/l. In the case of the 2005 Pétillant, for example, decanted bottles of the 2002 Le Mont Première Trie were used.