2018 Domaine Huet Haut Lieu Vouvray Le Haut Lieu Moelleux

Full bottle 1,454 g. Certified Ecocert organic and certified Demeter biodynamic. 100% Chenin Blanc, 35-year-old vines on clay limestone. Hand-picked, sorting in vineyard and on tables. Six months' traditional vinification with two months in French oak barrels. No malo. No lees ageing. RS 52 g/l. 45,000 bottles made. On the island of Kea, in Greece, one late August, we spent (way too much) time foraging windfall fruit from fig trees growing wild into the rocks and collapsing stone walls along the sides of the winding, rugged, mountainous roads. They were tiny green-gold figs, ripened to honeyed softness, melting in our mouths, each one almost like a teaspoon of fig jam in a brushed-velvet pouch. They tasted very slightly dusty, of the hot stones and dried grass and wildflowers that surrounded them, a touch of salt from the sea winds. Spooned up with thick creamy yogurt and a squeeze of local lemons, they made the breakfast of kings. One mouthful of this wine took me straight there. There is the beauty and contradiction of wine: that a sip of landlocked cool-climate Loire Chenin can transport you to the hot sunshine of sea-surrounded Greek Cyclades islands. Figs, honey, lemon, cream, dust, wild flowers, light. Mellifluous is the word used to describe moelleux wines, and this wine owns that lilting word. Tempting to drink it now, but wait, wait, wait, wait. (TC)