1947 - Vouvray Haut Lieu Moelleux, Domaine Huet

From a legendary vintage ("the most highly respected Loire vintage of the 20th Century" – Richard Kelly), Gaston Huet's dark amber-clored 1947 Vouvray Le Haut Lieu Moelleux opens with a very clear, intense and concentrated bouquet of super ripe peaches, apricots, and blood oranges mingled with fresh lime and coolish mineral flavors,; it is highly elegant and noble in its beautiful balance and intensity. Powerful, sweet, intense and very rich on the palate, this is an absolutely exceptional wine: dense, intense and finesse-full, with firm yet delicate tannins and an endless fruit intensity. There is mind-blowing balance, tension and freshness here. The finish is so pure and salty, so firm and intense that this quintessence of Chenin Blanc should go for another 50 years. Or, as Jürgen Franke from the German retailer Vinaturel puts it: "The 1947 is great but is always giving you the impression you have open the bottle two or three decades too early." According to Kelly, who quotes Gaston Huet himself, the 1947 was "the greatest vintage I (Huet) ever made." He reports: "The harvest commenced on the 19th September and all the sweet wines came from heavily botrytised fruit. According to Gaston, the apparent deep, oxidized appearance of the wines arrived early on in their maturation, but once the color deepened, the wines themselves changed very little." (955 EUR, if still available)