Domaine Pinon 1990 - 2022!
8/14/2024
We’re very pleased to offer a superb collection of sweet wines from Domaine Pinon, direct from the estate, beginning with the “Goutte D’Or” 1990, through the magnificent “Goutte D’Or” 2018, with our favorite current releases of dry and sparkling wines as well.
We met the Pinon family in 1981, and have happily followed the progress of three generations at this wonderful domain, though saddened by the sudden passing of François a few years ago. Over 33 years, he and his wife Odile transformed this estate into one of the finest in the Loire. He was greatly respected by vignerons, wine professionals and wine-lovers around the world. François' son Julien is capably continuing the great work of his father and grandfather and forging his own path...
Every wine in this collection of moelleux/liquoreux wines will be a superb tasting experience but, in our opinion, the 1996 “Cuvée Botrytis” stands out as something rarely equaled in the Loire, or anywhere else for that matter...
1996 was a great vintage for sweet and demi-sec wines in Vouvray, with high acidities framing the perfect ripeness – it was a superb vintage for François, with the relative coolness of his vineyards in Vallée de Cousse enabling the great terroir to shine through the sweet fruit in remarkable fashion. Here is an unbiased account from Chris Kissack: “Alongside some of the appellation’s grandest wines, such as the 1989 Moelleux Réserve from Philippe Foreau, or the 1989 Cuvée Constance from Domaine Huet I would readily place this wine. It is the heady, thrilling combination of acidity, sweetness, botrytis complexity and most of all the ‘liquid stone’ minerality that lifts the 1996 Vouvray Cuvée Botrytis from François Pinon out of the realms of the merely brilliant into the more emotional. In the glass it maintains a moderate golden hue, in itself giving no strong clue to what awaits. The nose is beautifully defined, rich in the scents of sweet pear and dried apple, with threads of apricot, white raisin and white pepper, showing great polish, with botrytis-derived scents of praline and smoke. It offers up the pure essence of Chenin Blanc wrapped in a leafy Vouvray lift, but it also hints of the mineral joy that is to come on the palate. Here the wine is nothing less than electric, combining the sweetly botrytised flavours of dried fruits especially figs, apples and raisins with an incredible backbone of minerality, all grained and flinty, lending the wine a seam of pebbly substance. It holds a very pure style through the finish, where it feels intense, pure, focused, long and vigorous. This is a wine which shimmers with vibrant acidity and perfect balance throughout; it is, all in all, breathtaking.”
