Domaine Huet "Le Mont" 2023 Vouvray Demi-Sec

375ml bottle

13% abv

100% Chenin Blanc

From its three storied Vouvray vineyards—Clos du Bourg, Le Haut-Lieu, and Le Mont—Domaine Huet makes some of the world’s most profound and long-lived white wines in all styles, ranging from the crystalline clarity of the bone-dry sec to the lighty sweet precision of the demi-sec, to the rich and ambrosial moelleux. At each sugar level, they are the ultimate examples of Loire Valley Chenin Blanc.

Though 2023 was a challenging vintage, with not enough early rains, then too much in the summer, Huet’s team worked heroically in the vineyard by hand-inspecting its vines and discarding any lesser grape clusters. But Huet didn’t stop there, and elected to sort the grapes yet again at the winery before they entered the press. Without the team’s painstaking work, Huet would’ve ended up in the same boat as other biodynamic growers, some of which lost virtually all of their crop. 

The result is a very strong, and critically beloved, lineup featuring dry wines from all three sites. With lower alcohol and elevated acidity, the three secs remind one of the great Huets from the 1980s and 1990s. But as the secs are surely to garner much attention, the Le Mont and Clos du Bourg demis are not to be underestimated. Some may consider them the winners of the vintage as they lean toward the drier side, around 20g/l, with incredible focus. They’ll also age beautifully and indefinitely.

Le Mont—For many insiders, the argument over Vouvray’s greatest vineyard comes down to two sites: Le Mont and Clos du Bourg. Undisputedly a grand cru vineyard, Le Mont enjoys a choice site on the Première Côte. With less clay and more stone than Le Haut-Lieu, Le Mont yields young wines of intense minerality. With age, the wines develop great length and finesse.

"There is no Demi-Sec from the Le Haut Lieu vineyard in 2023, but the Le Mont version seems destined to ultimately be ranked as one of the finest wines to be found anywhere along the Loire River in this vintage! The bouquet is pure, precise, and already beautifully complex, wafting from the glass in a mix of sweet quince, apple, incipient notes of mirabelle, chalky minerality, a gentle touch of lanolin, bee pollen, orange peel, and a lovely floral topnote of white lilies. On the palate the wine is pure, full-bodied, and supremely elegant in personality, with a great core of fruit, lovely acids and grip, fine focus, and a long, seamlessly balanced and very complex finish. I love the elegant personality of this wine, which closes with superb lift and backend energy. There is an old school aspect to this wine that is not found anymore in summers with more heat and drought, which seems to be the norm seven years out of ten these days in our age of global warming. This is a stunning, throwback vintage of Le Mont Demi-Sec!"

 – John Gilman