Saturday night's apéro was a delightful surprise – a 1989 Azay-le-Rideau from Pascal Pibaleau. 1989 is, of course, a great vintage and Pascal Pibaleau is a good producer but the surprise was how wonderfully good this was. Lightly golden the wine had a lovely balance of delicate sweetness and vibrantly ripe acidity. It also went very well with our selection of cheeses, especially the excellent sheepmilk blue, bought from the very good and recently opened cheese shop in Bléré – La Balade des fromages, 6, rue Général-de-Gaulle, Bléré, tél. 02.18.06.17.75. See article in La Nouvelle République.
I'm not very good at estimating the amount of residual sugar in a wine but my guess is that it was around 60-70 grams. This is another instance that underlines the idiocy of labelling these lovely wines as 'dessert' wines. Like Vouvray white Azay-le-Rideau can come in various levels of sweetness from sec to moelleux. Never as far as I know is an Azay moelleux super sweet. Fortunately I think we have another couple of bottles of the 1989 left. Azay white has to be 100% Chenin.
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