2008 Quarts de Chaume

Linden (i.e. basswood) honey and lily perfume; candied lime and grapefruit peel; quince preserves and pineapple scent the Baumard 2008 Quarts de Chaume and inform a glycerin-rich, oily, soothingly-unctuous palate that preserves elements of fresh citrus and salinity sufficient to call forth salivation and at least go some way toward offsetting what is for now extreme sweetness. The sheer persistence of flavor here is remarkable. This is likely to be a very long-lived (20+ year) and perhaps eventually an extraordinary wine. But for now it does not approach the complexity not to mention the sense of balance exhibited by the corresponding Coteaux du Layon Sainte Catherine. 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