Wine Review: Thomas Pico Domaine Pattes Loup Chablis 2021
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 23 ก.ย. 2024
- In our tasting today Wine Searcher's Wine Director, David Allen MW, starts an exploration of the wines of one of Chablis' new stars, Thomas Pico and his Domaine Pattes Loup. The wine concerned is Thomas Pico Domaine Pattes Loup Vent d'Ange Chablis 2021. The wine's name 'Vent d'Anges' is a gentle homophonic play on words, with the French word for vintage - Vendange.
Domaine Pattes Loup is one of the most exciting estates to emerge in the Chablis in the last 20 years. Pattes Loup means "wolf’s paws" and the name refers to the name of a plot of Village level Chablis the domaine owns.
Thomas Pico started this tiny estate in the village of Courgis, about 2 miles south west of the town of Chablis, in 2005. He inherited 2.4 hectares of vines from his grandfather and was given another 8 hectares by his father. Thomas was highly motivated to make his mark and take a qualitative leap forward - he immediately began a program of strict yield restriction and the process of converting the management of his vineyards to organic & biodynamic viticulture. The approach is rare in the Chablis region as the climate is relatively inhospitable and extreme diligence is necessary.
Most of Thomas's vines are, fully mature, many being selection massale plantings made by his grandfather on hillside sites near Courgis and Preys (the two highest altitude villages in the appellation) with vineyards up to 300 meters high, making these two of Chablis highest altitude villages. Kimmeridgian, limestone, and rich clay soils dominate.
A distinguishing feature of Thomas' winemaking is his total commitment to hand-picking, followed by careful manual sorting at the winery to remove unripe or imperfect berries using a vibrating sorting table. All his fermentations are initiated with ambient yeasts. He gives the wines a 14-16 month period aging with their lees and bottles then without fining or filtration and with very low levels of SO2. A portion of his wines ferment concrete-egg fermenters with the balance in stainless steel.
His Premier Cru wines are all aged in seasoned oak.
To find out more about this wine, its pricing and where to buy it follow this link to the Wine-Searcher website: www.wine-searc...
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Interesting. Thanks David!
Thanks - as I think is probably obvious from my presentations I really found these an interesting set of wines, really enjoyable, but challenging my perception of the Chablis region.
I had the 2018 vintage of this wine and it was amazing. Very rich and creamy quite untypical of village level Chablis. I dont know if the score 89 reflects the fact that this wine does not taste of typical Chablis. However, for me the wine tastes much better than many other Chablis wines in the same price point and I would personally score it much higher.
I think that is also a fair point - the 89 is an aggregation of Critic's scores so could be being pulled down as a result of the wine being atypical for Chablis. I certainly felt this wine was of a higher quality than that aggregation indicated.
Did the wine show any indication of volatile acidity?
No I didn't think so - if the pH is good these SO2 levels should be OK to protect it - the lees will have protected it during elevage. There certainly wasn't the cider-like note that some less successful natural wines can exhibit.