By Al Drinkle
Portions of this article previously appeared in The Art of Eating, a publication that we unreservedly recommend to any lover of food and wine.
Immediacy is an increasingly essential virtue to consumers of every stripe. When you're introduced to a band that you find appealing, you can have their entire discography downloaded onto your phone within a matter of minutes. If you find yourself in need of a new pair of shoes, you can arrange to have them placed upon your doorstep within 24 hours. Whether through happenstance or pandering, many wines accommodate these expectations of immediacy—and this isn't necessarily a bad thing.
There are certainly times that I want to tear the cork out of a bottle to find an extroverted wine that makes minimal demands upon my limited intellectual bandwidth. However, the world's most rewarding wines—the “greatest”, one might argue—tend to be those rare ones whose allure is more subtle and mysterious. Such wines won't raise their voices to meet the din at a crowded party and they aren’t bellicose competitors in a comparative tasting. Inconveniently, they'll often require time in the bottle to evolve towards their sublime destiny, or time in a decanter when broached in their youth.
Such wines can’t fully display their immense charms unless you yourself are in a state of tranquility through which you can most consummately appreciate them. When you're ready to meet them partway—to slow down, focus and listen—the recompense is immeasurable. Days, months or even years later, you won't merely recall a great bottle of wine, but an incredible, singular experience.
This lengthy preamble is to set the stage for Domaine Laureau’s Savennières wines. The problem with Laureau’s wines is that they lack immediacy. The great thing about Laureau’s wines is that they are absolutely incredible in virtually every other way.
Among the Loire Valley’s great areas for Chenin Blanc, Savennières in Anjou produces the most understated, cryptic wines. The region’s 35-odd producers offer interpretations ranging from diamond-cut and filigree to corpulent and lavish—and today almost all are dry. But compared with the extroverted bottlings from the appellations of Vouvray and Montlouis, 150 kilometers east along the river, Savennières can seem demure. Encountering Domaine Laureau’s wines for the first time was a minor epiphany for me. Their beauty is an exercise in shading akin to the austerity of a black-and-white photograph.
Damien Laureau is exceedingly amiable with an air of tranquility that one might not expect from a father of six. He was born into a grain-farming family near Versailles, but in the late '90s moved to a suburb of Angers to help manage his uncle's pear orchard and small vineyard. He was aware of the historical prestige of close-by Savennières, and in 1999 an opportunity arose to rent 5.5 hectares of vineyards there. “Little by little,” he recalls, “I began to realise how lucky I am to be able to work in this special place.” Now, with his wife, Florence, Damien devotes himself to just over 10 hectares of Chenin Blanc in Savennières.
Domaine Laureau's organic certification is a mere surface scratch of an operation that incorporates regenerative farming, animal husbandry and an obsessive attentiveness to soil health. Gray schist is ubiquitous in Savennières, but the particular nuances of the region’s soils inspire Laureau's various cuvées. (See the wines on offer for more details).
Although several of their colleagues in the region embrace botrytis, Damien and Florence discourage it through vigorous de-leafing and separating bunches to maximise airflow. I wish that it went without saying that wines of these prices are harvested entirely by hand as they are at this estate—and in fact some growing seasons dictate that the Laureaus make up to four passes through each site to collect grapes at optimum ripeness. Ripeness in the “optimum” sense perhaps requires quantification in a region where some very celebrated growers consistently bottle wines that hover around 15% alcohol, but Laureau’s wines invariably fall between 12% and 13.5%.
After a whole-cluster pressing, Domaine Laureau's Chenins undergo spontaneous fermentation in either steel, large barrels or amphora, depending on the cuvée. An animated and sometimes piercing sense of acidity belies the fact that malolactic fermentation is systematic, and Damien eschews fining and filtering before a judicious addition of elemental sulphur prior to bottling.
Despite their uncanny textural expanse, these wines are never boisterous. They are also never simple and the attentive drinker will witness them shapeshift like delicious spectral fog while working their way through a glass (or even better, a bottle, ideally shared with a kindred spirit). Laureau’s wines evolve beautifully and using the Chenin Blanc grape as an esteemed emissary, they serve as magisterial liquid postcards from Savennières.
We are offering 15% off all Domaine Laureau wines:
2022 Domaine Laureau Savennières “L’Alliance” $45.05 (reg. $53)
The domaine’s “business card”, this is a blend of two vineyard sites (for the nerds, these are La Petite Roche and La Pitrouillet) consisting of vines less than 20 years old. It’s punishingly saline, disarmingly fruitless and a brilliant introduction to Domaine Laureau, to Savennières at its most charmingly austere and to Chenin Blanc at its most glacial.
2020 Domaine Laureau Savennières “Les Genȇts” $64.06 (reg. $76)
Comprised of Chenin planted in silty and sandy plots in Savennières, the distinct youthfulness of a 2014 that I opened a couple of months ago would undermine the fact that Damien intends for this to be a complex wine for “earlier drinking”. The current vintage is enchanting—overtly dry, yet imbued with subtle notes of lemon honey and chamomile which are quickly obliterated by a landslide of salivating stoniness. Look out for a forthcoming article on the multifaceted applications of the word “value”, but in the meantime I’ll say that although this cuvée isn’t the least expensive in the portfolio, it might offer the greatest value.
2020 Domaine Laureau Savennières “Le Bel Ouvrage” $82.45 (reg. $97)
An expansive, powerful incarnation of Chenin grown on schist and rhyolite, this breathtaking expression of Savennières transcends grape and place. Celestial bath salts, luminescent cookie dough, shepherd’s tea popsicles and enough allusive rock references to give an entire geologist’s convention wet dreams intricately combine with a million other flavours in a full-bodied, texturally-beguiling masterpiece of Loire wine.
2017 Domaine Laureau Savennières “l’Aurore” $89.25 (reg. $105)
Savennières was subjected to merciless frosts in the spring of 2017 and Damien’s valiant response was to combine all of the domaine’s fruit into one comprehensive cuvée. The result is a mere 200 cases of an understated, caressing and spiritually-stirring survey of this tiny region’s various altitudes, aspects and soil types. It’s a one-off, and it goes without saying that quantities are extremely limited.
2019 Domaine Laureau Savennières Roche aux Moines $139.40 (reg. $164) / MAGNUM $286.45 (reg. $337)
Instead of being denoted as “Grand Crus”, the two most historically-celebrated vineyards of Savennières simply have their own appellations. One is the famed Coulée de Serrant, a monopoly of the Joly family, and the other is Roche aux Moines, whose enviable virtues are interpreted through several different winegrowers. Laureau’s Roche aux Moines speaks in a chorus of whispers, or put in a different way, its aromas and flavours are numinously luminescent but akin to a million tiny candles as opposed to one big spotlight. Not without its detailed etching and deep-seated saltiness, this is primarily a triumph of subtlety—it’s infinitely complex but entirely bereft of bombast. In total, Laureau made enough to fill 900 bottles and 60 magnums, and if 2019 has any particular significance to you (the birth of a child, wedding year, the loss of your virginity, whatever), few wines are more fitting to celebrate and re-celebrate noteworthy milestones over the next couple of decades. Quantities are extremely limited.
