2008 Domaine Huet Haut Lieu Vouvray Le Mont Moelleux Premiere Trie

The Huet 2008 Vouvray Moelleux Le Mont 1er Trie smells of distilled herbal and floral essences mingled with saline and alkaline marine notes. In the mouth, hints of white raisin and caramel are pitted against slightly detached citricity. This harbors lots of energy though and achieves really long, saliva-inducing finishing savor. While the sec and demi-sec 2008s have noticeably more residual sugar than their 2009 counterpart largely as the result of a decision to assist balancing the acidity, this 1er trie harbors only around two-thirds the sugar of the corresponding 2009, simply because the 2009 material was so very rich and thus left so much sugar to spare. But I like the less sweet balance in this 2008 that needs at least 3-4 years in bottle and ought to perform well for 25 or more. Noel Pinguet professes great confidence in his 2009s and pleasure in one of those rare vintages where it was possible to bottle everything from sec through Cuvee Constance. That said, he admitted that achieving a balanced dry wine was challenging, and total production of sec was down from the estate norm; that of demi-sec, surprisingly, even more so (represented by a single bottling); virtually half of the vintage production being moelleux. While acknowledging similarities to 1996, Pinguet finds 2008 most closely resembles 1988. His is one of the few 2008 collections from Vouvray or Montlouis that is clearly less consistent than the corresponding 2009s, which he also finds more interesting. Importer: The Rare Wine Co., Sonoma, CA; tel. (800) 999-4342