2008 Savennieres Clos du Papillon

The Baumard 2008 Savennieres Clos du Papillon has a hard act to follow given the quality of the vintage’s “standard” bottling. Pronounced nutty piquancy and wet stone in the nose as well as on the palate here mingle with smoky snuffed candle wick and black tea; quince and white peach. Like the corresponding regular bottling from the Clos St.-Yves, this displays a lighter touch and drier taste than its 2006 and 2007 counterparts, here with an almost austere combination of peach kernel, crushed stone, and graphite mineral messages in its finish. I personally prefer the relative delicacy and refreshment of the former bottling today, but this Clos du Papillon grips so authoritatively and combines such a sense of stuffing and stone without becoming heavy or bitter than it must also be counted a singular success, likely to keep well for a decade and perhaps beyond. Indeed, these are the finest Savennieres that I can recall having tasted from this address. I finally had the pleasure to taste personally with Florent Baumard (for more about whose domaine and methods, consult my report in issue 172) and found him a disarmingly astute critic of his own wines whose confidence I share that the best is yet to come from this vast and already justly renowned estate. I find a freedom from bitter or coarse elements and a clarity of flavors in the more recent wines that is welcome and which, when pressed, Florent Baumard suggests might in part be attributable to increasingly selective and watchful (though not necessarily gentler) pressing. The envelope-pushing here is evident in the quality of Baumard’s relatively high-volume sparking wines, rendered from blends unfamiliar outside of the Loire. The wines I tasted five years ago were good, but only modestly-recommendable (and I elected not to publish notes on them in issue 172). The lot numbers of Baumard non-vintage sparkling wines appear on the front label in very tiny, faint letters under the words “sparkling wine,” but cannot be read without good eyesight, and not if the bottle is wet! The Baumards’ “regular” bottling of Savennieres is from their Clos St. Yves vineyard between the Clos du Papillon and Roche aux Moines, and a fact of which I was not aware when I published my notes in issue 172 is that two different labels are used interchangeably, one of which indicates the vineyard name. Importer: Ex Cellars wine Agencies, Cambridge, MA; tel. (617) 876-5105