Château Pierre-BiseI'm delighted that Claude and Joëlle Papin's lovely 2007 Quarts de Chaume, Château Pierre-Bise has won the Sweet Loire over £10 Trophy at the 2009 Decanter World Wine Awards. This wine is a beautiful example of a 2007 sweet Loire at its best. It has rich apricot and citric fruit, great precision and purity so typical of 2007 and clean length. Delicious now it has an astonishing ageing potential.
Joëlle, Claude and their sons take extraordinary care in the vineyards. Claude is a real specialist on geology and terroir and is one of the region's great thinkers about many aspects of Loire wines.
Claude PapinAlthough I'm the regional chair for the Decanter World Wine Awards, all the wines are tasted blind and I have no idea what wine have been entered, so it was brilliant news when I got an advance copy of the Loire results on Monday.
The trophy is thoroughly deserved as the Papins make a lovely range of sweet wines from different parcels in the Layon, which are still very reasonably priced. The dry whites – Anjou Blanc and Saviennières – and the reds – remarkable Anjou Gamay and fine Anjou-Villages should also be tried.
Across the Layon: October 2005 Now in only its sixth year the Decanter World Wine Awards has become the world's biggest wine competition with 10,285 wines entered this year. The wines are tasted by small panels made up of experts from the region whose wines they are judging. Another characteristic is that the chief organisers are all women – Sarah Kemp, Christelle Guibert and Sophia Dempsey.
Claude and Joëlle Papin Château Pierre-Bise 49750 Beaulieu-sur-Layon
UK stockists for the winning wine are: Lay & Wheeler, Lea & Sandeman and the RSJ Restaurant
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