2011 Sancerre Chavignol Les Culs de Beaujeu

Unlike its 2010 counterpart, the Francois Cotat 2011 Sancerre Les Culs de Beaujeu fermented to complete dryness, leaving behind an only slightly heat-generating 14% alcohol. Smoky and faintly bitter hickory and hazelnut ally themselves to a bouquet garni-like herbal melange, with celery salt and nut oils serving for saliva inducement in a lingering finish. Full, gentle, and polished, as well as fascinatingly flavorful, this is nonetheless notably for its absence of pronounced fruit character and its relatively modest sense of ripeness by estate standards (not to mention given 14% natural alcohol). It will be interesting to follow this for a few years and it should prove interestingly useful but I won’t attempt to prognosticate and am slightly skeptical that it would prove a long-keeper in Cotat-typical fashion. Cotat thinks it’s going through a temporarily closed state. Given Francois Cotat’s (and before that, his father’s and uncle’s) penchant for late picking and the promoting of textural richness in sweetly ripe Sancerre, 2010 seemed destined to prove an ideal match for this estate, which began harvesting at the end of the first week in October, but did not finish until nearly month’s end. In the event, the wines that resulted are so diverse – in part extreme, even by estate standards – that generalization is fatuous. Cotat’s 2011s are good for some surprises too, again for being so different from one another, but also in how little marked one of their number is by the ripe manifestations of citrus and pit fruits one practically takes for granted at this address. After the 2010 vintage, Francois Cotat with regret pulled out the considerable expanse of impossibly unproductive 65-year-old vines that his grandfather had planted and that had in recent years contributed around 30% by volume to the Grande Cote bottling. But that still leaves vines of around 45 years average, and on their first appearance without their 65 year old elders, that team turned in a memorable 2011 performance. A Peter Vezan Selection (various importers), Paris; fax 011 33 1 42 55 42 93