No matter when we started paying attention to wine, we probably all feel like we just missed out on something -- a Legendary vintage that was no longer easily available, a Mythic vineyard that had since been pulled, a Great estate that had fallen on hard times, or abandoned its old ways. (Well, not TomHill.
) In the late 90s, I was just starting to learn my way around European wine. Being an East Bay boy, I'd grown up drinking California stuff, and I didn't have enough money in grad school to do much more than shop the bargain bins at the Wine and Cheese Cask in Somerville. But then, on trips back home, I'd started dropping by Kermit Lynch's shop, and then read Adventures on the Wine Route; and so, naturally, I started buying (very small quantities of) Legendary, Mythic, Great labels like Clape and Tempier... and Charles Joguet. I didn't know, back then, that Joguet wasn't what it had been in the 80s; but by the time I started tasting a few of the 2002 vintage of Loire reds, I had more or less figured it out for myself: compared to, say, Baudry and Raffault, Joguet didn't inspire.Fast-forward a dozen-plus years. There's one last bottle of Charles Joguet 2002 Chinon, Cuvée Terroir in the cellar, entry-level bottling, young vines, long past its "best by" date, I'm confident. So I keep ignoring it. I misplace it in the white bins. Finally, I bring it home and we open it with a heavily herbed heirloom tomato farro salad. I'm not going to tell you it was Legendary, Mythic, or Great. But it wasn't over the hill. Medium-ruby color, only a little bricking, still has good plum and pomegranate fruit, a lot of tobacco and rosemary too -- and, most of all, everything's nicely balanced, giving it a surprising vibrancy. I kept thinking it was a Loire version of a nice old claret. And it was better than any young Joguet I can remember drinking.
Ain't wine fun?
