Huet Le Haut Lieu Moelleux 1er Trie 2003

“This is the first year that the Hwang family owned Huet. The 2003 Le Haut Lieu Moelleux Premiere Trie is rich and full, round and succulent with toasty and honeyed aromas, tangy citrus, almond and Indian spice. Concentrated, dense but never heavy. Light and gentle. Since this wine is from the warm 2003 vintage, the acidity is lower and pH higher, so it doesn’t have the freshness of other vintages. Drinking well now.” 93 points Rebecca Gibb, Vinous, June 2022

The original vineyard site, purchased by Gaston Huet in 1928 ws just 3 hectares, it now covers 9 hectares. As the name suggests, the house and the vineyards are situated on a plateau with a slight south facing gradient at one of the highest points of the appellation.
The Le Haut Lieu itself consists of 3 to 4 metres of heavy clay soil mixed with chalk, known locally as aubuis, which lies over a bed of limestone. It is this limestone subsoil that proves to be the constant link between the three vineyards owned by Huet. It is the vines proximity to the porous, yellow tuffeau that is responsible for the overriding style of wines produced from each of the sites.
This friable rock is from the Turonian Age and was laid down during the Cretaceous Period, which dates them at between 67 and 137 million years. The tuffeau is made up of fragments of bryozoa, sea creatures that lived in vast numbers in tropical oceans which, when mixed with fragments of mica and grains of sand then compacted, gives notable physical and chemical properties to the soil. The chalky, brittle quality makes it ideal for excavation; and the reason why Vouvray is made up of a labyrinth of caves and troglodyte dwellings. Of the three sites, Le Haut Lieu regardless of their style or sweetness, tends to offer the most precocious of wines, although this should be seen as a relative statement given that they are still capable of lasting many decades.

Moëlleux and Moëlleux Première Trie
The defining, classic Moëlleux (best translated as meaning ‘full of marrow’, this term refers more to the textural quality of a wine than the sweetness) will have approximately 30 grams of residual sugar.
The elevated classification of Première Trie doesn’t automatically mean that these grapes have been harvested on the first passage as the name might suggest but are selected on any one of the three separate visits to the vineyard when bunches affected either by botrytis or dried by wind and sun are selected, often grape by grape.