Just one wine for my Friday note this week....it's just been too hectic a week for any more. And next week, for a variety of reasons, looks worse!
Fortunately there's always time for fizz, and this wine has to be one of my absolute favourite tipples of 2010.
Vincent Carême Vouvray L'Ancestrale 2008: Residual sugar here between 17 and 18 g/l. A pale straw-gold in the glass, with a very gentle bead of fine bubbles. The nose is lovely, all bittersweet fruits, orange zest and blossom, alongside that honey-mineral partnership that you only ever really find in Vouvray. Gorgeously seductive on the palate, that residual sugar making an immediate impact, but there is a lovely citrus-sherbet vivacity to it as well. Full, creamy, yet crisp and lively, this has a delightful presence. There is a polished gras to it originating with the sugar, but also a very precise character giving it definition, a quality that comes from the wine's needle-fine acidity and tight little mousse. Powdery-chalky minerality sits behind it all. In the finish, long and appealingly bitter. What more can I say? This is just divine; I could drink this by the bucket-load. 18+/20