. . . .and the wine is . . . .

2002 Clos Rougeard Breze. This is one of top Chenin's of the Loire Valley. A wine that needs loads of age to fully express what it says. This is not a drink me now wine. It is a serious complex wine completely expressive of place. It is a very difficult wine to assess young as there is oak and there is structure. But there is a core of really fine, pure intense Chenin fruit. It's there..maybe not in the pure benevolent form but it is still there. In a wine like this where something this good that's "there" will definetly eventually evolve into a serious presence on the palate. When you reach this wine at its apogee down the road it will be a reward for cellaring this stuff. There is not much around. Complex, ethereal stuff. My boss, David Lillier had the 1935 at the estate and said it was one of the top wines he has ever had. This guy know Chenin.

Anyway this stuff is good and ageable is one of the great wines of the Loire Valley if not the world....and it is dismissed in this review by Robert Parker, the world's leading wine critic, as a "palate cleanser." Most people who have never heard of Clos Rougeard white will be like this is some high-priced Loire wine that is quaffable. That is frightfully inaccurate and is conveying barely any of this wine's importance. It irks me. These people work hard and make some of the most interesting red wines on the planet and the first time the wines are reviewed by the wine advocate they are dismissed like tons of other anonymous white quaffers. It just sucks that people will not know. And wine geeks will chime in "shhhhh" or something like that but I just don't buy that line. These people make great wine and should get all the possible recognition coming their way. I am not talking about the score. I have no idea what it was. But that review is so lifeless and uninspiring and conveys nothing about this wine. Rant over. Tn's soon!