I’ve just been rereading what I wrote about my encounter with the late Gaston Huet, the most respected producer of Vouvray in the Loire. “He believes in hanging on to his wines for years before selling them,” I wrote in 1981. I suspect that even he might be surprised to see a wine as old as 1919 from his beloved Domaine Le Haut-Lieu being released by Berry Bros. By several curious turns of events, the London-based wine merchant is in the process of acquiring nearly 2,000 cases of grand old Huet Vouvrays. Along with Huet’s German importer Vinaturel, Berry Bros will be offering various combinations of this historic stock over the next few months and I would urge anyone interested in fully mature white wine to register their interest, or try the Wine Society, which has selected vintages.
Cheap Vouvray may be one of the nastiest of wines – equal and unresolved parts acid, sugar and sulphur – but Huet Vouvrays can be some of the greatest wines in the world, or at least they have been. There has been a small revolution at this historic domaine, which is why these wines are being put on sale now.
The domaine consists of three of the best vineyards in the Vouvray appellation, arguably the world’s Chenin Blanc capital. The Huet family bought the original vineyard, Le Haut-Lieu, with its old wine stocks, in 1928. When I visited Monsieur Huet in 1981 he was still enjoying the 1921s and 1913s. To Haut-Lieu’s 10 hectares, Gaston Huet added eight hectares of Le Mont in 1957 and the six-hectare Clos du Bourg in 1963. At that point, he felt he had acquired the crème de la crème of the appellation and had a domaine he could personally manage.