Domaine Huet

The Free Bacchus Story

Open a bottle of Huet from a good vintage forty years after the harvest and it will very likely still be developing. Not surviving — developing, moving somewhere, not yet finished with itself. Very few white wines in the world do that, and Chenin Blanc's reputation gives no hint that it might.

The reason is partly underneath the vines. Vouvray sits on tuffeau, the soft limestone its cellars are cut into, and Clos du Bourg lies on a thin skin of clay and limestone directly over it. Huet farms three sites, Le Haut-Lieu, Le Mont and Clos du Bourg, and has farmed them biodynamically since 1990, certified since 1993 — converted by Noël Pinguet, Gaston Huet's son-in-law, who made the wines from the 1970s until 2012.

Gaston Huet was mayor of Vouvray for forty-two years, until 1989, and led the campaign against running the high-speed line through the vines in an open trench. The estate's owner put the TGV underneath the vineyards instead.

The same three plots produce the full stylistic range: sec, demi-sec and moelleux, plus a pétillant sparkling wine, all under the same farming. Wine Advocate has scored the sweet wines as high as 97–98, for the 2020 Le Mont Moelleux Première Trie. But the dry wines may be the more interesting proposition for anyone paying attention to price: a Huet sec from a strong vintage stands comparison with Burgundy or Alsace bottles costing a great deal more, and generally does not cost it.

Gaston Huet died in 2002 and the estate passed to the New York businessman Anthony Hwang; his children Sarah and Hugo run it now, with Benjamin Joliveau making the wines, and the biodynamic certification has been kept throughout. Continuity of ownership is not usually something a drinker can check. Continuity of practice, in this case, is.