Katie Exton (Chez Bruce)
Four days, four gold medals and two regional trophies
Yesterday concluded our four days of judging Loire wines for the 2012 Decanter World Wine Awards. It was an interesting and varied day showing once again what diversity of styles there are in the Loire. We looked at sparkling wines – white and rosé, some more Sancerre in all three colours, dry and demi-sec rosé and concluded with various reds from Cheverny, Valençay and AC Touraine. During the afternoon we hit a high point with a 2010 Sancerre Rouge, which was awarded gold.
Victoria Stephens-Clarkson
Katie Exton, sommelier at Chez Bruce, and Victoria Stephens-Clarkson, formerly wine buyer for Liberty wines and now with the family wine business in the Cotswolds, joined Nigel Wilkinson (RSJ Restaurant).
Our day ended with a re-tasting of our gold medal wines and assessing whether any of these were good enough for a Regional Trophy. Our answer was yes, so this year the Loire has an unprecedented two Regional Trophy winners – Red Loire over £10 and Sweet Loire over £10. These two wines will now go forward to be tasted with their peers from other parts of the wine world to decide the International Trophy winners.
The regional results will be announced during the London Wine Trade Fair, while the International Trophy Winners won't be known until the awards dinner in September.
We tasted just over 300 wines over the four days – easily the biggest Loire DWWA entry ever. My thanks to all the Loire judges: Yves Desmaris MS, Katie Exton, Chris Kissack, Ken Mackay MW, Victoria Stephens-Clarkson and Jason Yapp.
Special thanks to Sebastian Denton, our red shirt who looked after us brilliantly. He didn't even throw a wobbly when the regional chair insisted on a complete change of glasses after a flight of Rosé d'Anjou and Cabernet d'Anjou before more onto our final flight of reds!
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