2018 Coteaux du Layon Chaume Echarderie

Sourced from a tiny, south-east facing 0.35-hectare plot on a marriage of schists and pudding sandstones in the subsoil, the dark-golden colored 2018 Coteaux-du-Layon Chaume Premier Cru Écharderie opens with an intense and elegant, noble and refreshing bouquet of citrus fruits, such as limes, lemons and oranges, intertwined with honey and stone fruit as well as stony aromas, beautifully pure and precise. Playful and refined on the palate, this is an elegant, dense and stimulatingly salty and crystalline Chaume that offers remarkable drinkability and gastronomic talent due to its fine piquancy on the salty-grippy finish that doesn't take away the sweetness but lifts it, making the wine's lovely ripe fruit component a fine pairing with many dishes, not only from the Asian cuisines. Fine bitters on the aftertaste. Very stimulating indeed. 12.5% alcohol. Natural cork. Tasted in September 2021. According to Ivan Massonnat, "the Domaine's Chaume 1er Cru plots surround the place called 'L’Echarderie,' which, until the French Revolution, was the cellar of the lords of Haute-Guerche (exploiting the Chaume vineyards for the Ronceray Abbey)."