 | After a 2002 Francois Cazin 'Cuvee Renaissance' recently tasted as if I had opened the bottle a bit too late, I figured I had better open this 2007 right now-- and I'm glad I did, because it was perfect and beautiful. This 2007 is unique compared to other vintages because the romorantin grapes that Cazin normally uses for his 'Cuvee Renaissance' were-- in this vintage-- diverted into this bottling, so this particular year has a higher proportion of old-vine material than usual. While researching this particular wine, I found a few other notes about this vintage from other tasters-- one writer found it to be 'mute' and not very exciting at a 2009 tasting, and another found it to be an 'acid bomb' at a 2010 dinner, but I had a completely different experience with this wine-- I found it to be quite aromatic and perfectly balanced. It seems like a timing issue-- opening it up about 7 years later must have been just the right amount of aging that this wine needed. I'm sure other vintages of Cazin Cour-Cheverny taste great after a couple years, and that's probably why everyone who got some has most likely drunk this already & was so quick to pop the cork soon after release; but to me, the extra concentrated old-vine material must have pushed this vintage to need a little more aging, so I was pretty fortunate to have forgotten about my stash for so long. In any case, the wine was beautiful-- one of those bottles that is in perfect balance and you open it at just the right time-- a wine experience that I feel lucky to have had. |
In fact, it's a feeling I usually get with romorantin-- a grape that was once popular throughout the Loire (a curious vineyard nearby in Touraine at Domaine Henry Marionnet claims to date to 1850), but after the upheaval of the phylloxera epidemic it now mostly grows in the tiny Cour-Cheverny appellation, which became an AOC recently in 1997 . Romorantin's parantage is gouais blanc and pinot-- if that sounds familiar, it's because those same parents also gave us chardonnay and aligote. In the Loire since the 1500s, romorantin needs extra special guidance to shepherd its delicate pink canes into shape and minimize the effects of wind damage. When farmed with care, and when hail spares the region, romorantin defines the truly distinct wines of Cour-Cheverny. Cazin, who works with a combination of older vines planted by his grandfather and younger vines planted by himself, is considered a benchmark producer in the region and has truly helped guide what the Cour-Cheverny AOC means to the rest of the world.
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