2007 Nicolas Joly Clos de la Coulée de Serrant

The deeply golden 2007 Savennieres Coulee de Serrant evokes broiled quince, pear, and grapefruit with deeply toasted nuts in the nose. The trouble is, “broiled” and “toasted” also to some extent describe what this wine does to your palate. That said, there is an almost explosive fruit concentration as well as a honeyed richness here that allies itself to the nut oil elements while offering satisfying counterpoint with saline, oyster shell, iodine, cyanic pear pip, ashen, smoky, and alkaline mineral evocations. I am willing to look past the heat to appreciate such sheer complexity. But where is this wine headed, and would I really want to actually drink more than a very small glass? I was unfortunately not able to take the time this year to visit Nicolas Joly, a man best known to many younger wine lovers in his role as spokesperson for biodynamic viticulture and advocate of far-reaching metaphysical explanations for vinous phenomena, but who in person reveals a charm absent from his wines, as well as occasional flashes of iconoclasm. At their best, these wines are idiosyncratic reflections of their grower, of nature’s whims, and perhaps sometimes of sheer contingency; intense and intriguing if often not much fun to drink. Joly – with whom I have often corresponded on wide-ranging matters vinous, and for whom fun is not the point – might well agree with my description. But he would feel it misses the most essential point: that his wines consistently reflect their terroirs. On that count, I retain a measure of skepticism, and not only because Coulee de Serrant itself, being a monopole, does not permit of comparison with other renditions; but because it is often precisely what I call idiosyncrasies that most strike one in comparison with other renditions of Savennieres or Roche aux Moines. And if one believes in the importance of terroir, then surely also in its implicit pecking order, but frankly I have often found Joly’s ostensibly least wine – the Clos Sacres of simple Savennieres appellation – his most expressive and best-balanced, with high alcohol being the most frequent culprit when one ostensibly “trades up.” (This caused problems with some of the 2004s and 2005s I reviewed in issue 172 – and which confessed to 14-14.5% on their labels – but is much more problematic in the current crop, which fess up to 15-15.5%.) The behavior of recent releases in the open glass and bottle also makes me skeptical of their aging potential. All of those tasted held decently for the first day (more than I could say of their vintage 2005 counterparts), but on the second, all but the 2008 Coulee de Serrant had begun to further darken and lose flavor interest not to mention freshness. In the notes that follow I have made no attempt, finding it impossible, to individually assess the potential longevity of these wines. Importer: Domaine Select, New York, NY; tel. (212) 279-0799