1988 Savennieres La Coulee de Serrant, Nicolas Joly (Magnum)

"If any producer has reached mythical status on the Loire, it is certainly Nicolas Joly. He is known to many, even to those who have never tasted a single glass of his wine, as the leading latter-day partisan of Rudolf Steiner’s agricultural philosophy. Given that he produces only 40,000 bottles from their 15 hectares of vineyard, it is not surprising that many wine lovers may never have even seen one. At 69, Joly and his German wife are still quite active, but it their daughter Virginie who now manages the property. She did not originally plan to have anything to do with the estate, and never studied winemaking, but came back in 2002 and has gradually stepped into her father’s shoes. With a total of 50 hectares, the estate is its own little world, which certainly provided the right environment to develop the holistic attitude that Joly espouses. Everything here is on schist soils. The most famous site is the Clos de la Coulée de Serrant, a monopoly of seven hectares and an appellation of its own. Here the arable soil is hardly 20 centimeters in depth. Their slightly more than three hectares of vineyard in the Clos de la Bergerie is also a monopoly in the larger Roche aux Moine appellation, which is considered a premier cru of Savennières. They also own another five hectares of Vieux Clos, where the schist soils are considerably deeper. Once crisp, svelte and with sometimes little more than 12% alcohol, the wines have swung over a generation to the opposite extreme, from austere to ostentatious. Two thousand eleven is a case in point. It was a warm vintage, with alcohol levels rising to as high as 15.3% on one of the wines. In addition, there was about 8% botrytis at harvest. Along with the ensuing malolactic fermentations in barrel, this also influenced the profiles of their three chenin blancs, which have little in common with those from Vouvray or Montlouis. They have enormous substance, but the varietal character has essentially disappeared. The low sulfur regimes here also mean that the young wines mature (oxidize?) very quickly. This, though, is what the estate claims is the purest expression of their “terroir.” Most people who have studied winemaking will call Joly’s wines faulty, but they do have a cult following among those whose highest aesthetic virtue is that a wine be “natural.” "  Vinous.com, December 2014