“Les Mythes du muscadet démystifiés”

Par Tamlyn Currin

Notes de dégustation :

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Famille Lieubeau Muscadet-Sèvre et Maine Confluent 2021

Tasted blind.

Certified AB organic.

20-year-old vines on shallow soils, gneiss hillside. Pneumatic pressing with juice selection. Spontaneous fermentation. Aged 9–12 months on lees in underground vats with regular stirring.

I smell lemon-lime wine gums and firelighters. Crisp. Boxy, glassy structure. Precise. Very neat. Acidity is taking a scalpel, ruler and spirit level to the fruit, slicing it into shape. Whetstone. Very appetising.

12% / Drink 2022 – 2025

16 / 20

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“Loire – Les Crus Communaux du Muscadet”

Par Tamlyn Currin

Notes de dégustation :

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Famille Lieubeau Muscadet-Sèvre et Maine Château-Thébaud 2018

Tasted blind. Certified Ecocert and AB organic. From a plot of 75-year-old vines at the confluence of the Maine and Sèvre rivers, a gneiss hillside, shallow soils, ploughed by horse. Hand-picked, whole-bunch pressed, juice selection, spontaneous fermentation. 36 months on lees in underground vats with regular bâtonnage. RS < 0.5 g/l.

Smells like a Chelsea bun! A slice of warm, fresh panettone. Candied angelica and candied citrus peel. And then anise notes fill the glass – fennel seeds. Deceivingly rich and seductive, because it starts with all these warm, fragrant patissière indulgences and then the acidity and minerality and freshness race in like archers’ arrows, pinning richness to a high stone wall. Salt and seaweed and cold-salt winds press the petrichor and pewter of rain into the luminous green-gold of fruit laced with wild honey and limes soaked in ginger syrup. Apricots and satin, salt and rocks, long spine of citrus-pith bitterness and fennel-seed coolness; and yet the wine has a fieriness, a heat, which is not alcoholic. Silky yet intent finish. Astoundingly exciting. A dramatically complex wine that is bold and sturdy in its horizontal space, but elegant in its verticality.

12.8% / Drink 2022 – 2040

18 / 20

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Famille Lieubeau Muscadet-Sèvre et Maine Château-Thébaud 2015

Organic farming. 70-year-old vines, 36 months on lees.

Although at the first moment of contact the wine is a heady gyre of angelica and panettone, it’s the texture that arresting. Heart-stopping, even. Chiffon meets silver-birch bark. Such gorgeous texture! Even the flavours of the wine are embedded in the texture, toastiness accentuating folds and contours, the sweetness of the fruit building in the mouth: apricot and orange, dried apricot, candied orange peel. Then you notice the herbal ley lines: cardamom, tarragon, the gentle breath of peppermint tea. Fragrant and focused, finishing like the feel of a silk shift slipping over parchment. 

12% / Drink 2019 – 2035

18 / 20

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Famille Lieubeau Muscadet-Sèvre et Maine Château-Thébaud 2009

Incredibly fragrant and still looking young. Heady. Jasmine. Old honey. Beeswax. It reminds me a bit of aged Hunter Semillon, but holding tight to its Muscadet soul: salty lemon peel, long and tense with a crescendo of nuttiness on the finish. 

12% / Drink 2013 – 2030

18 / 20

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Famille Lieubeau Muscadet-Sèvre et Maine Clisson 2018

Certified Terra Vitis. 50-year-old vines growing on granite. Hand-picked, spontaneous fermentation, two years on lees.

Lychee, satin, papaya, loose silk. Voluptuous, open, broad and generous with a malted, deep, molasses-crusted-loaf savouriness. So, so sensuous in fruit and texture, with this streak of minty fennel-cold freshness that shiver shudders down the length of my spine into a precise finish. More structural bone than the Goulaine, but equally seductive. 

13% / Drink 2022 – 2033

17.5 / 20

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Famille Lieubeau Muscadet-Sèvre et Maine Goulaine 2018

Tasted blind. Certified AB organic. 40-year-old vines on a 1.5-ha, south-east-facing plot on the Butte de la Roche, serpentinite subsoil, fairly deep sandy soils. The soils are tilled. Hand-picked, whole-bunch pressing, spontaneous fermentation. 24 months on lees in underground vats.

Lusciously succulent fruit. Almost startling in its reckless extravagance and generosity. Apricots and mango. Grilled peaches, musk melon. The nose is all charming fruit, but it tastes of earth and hot stones and stone-baked bread. So much texture it’s bordering on tannic. Gritty. A fistful of wine that stops short of your chin at the very last moment, and opens wide to offer a peace-offering handful of ripe apricots and honeyed
pears. Intensely centred and almost juddering with concentration, the mineral spine of the wine set magnificently within the flesh and richness of the fruit. Defiantly opulent!

12.5% / Drink 2022 – 2040

17.5 / 20

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