The frost had not lifted from the plateau when I turned off the river road into Vouvray in the first week of February 2025, the day after La Dive Bouteille packed up its tables in Saumur. Vouvray sits on the north bank of the Loire 10 km east of Tours, in the Touraine stretch of the Loire that I tour in France, and Domaine Huet’s cellars are on the rue de la Croix-Buisée, on the first plateau at 80 to 100 metres. At 09:30 it was minus two. The pruning crews were already out in Le Haut-Lieu, and every cut cane lay white on the ground.
I had come from two days among natural growers, on purpose. Huet is biodynamic in the vines and classic in the cellar, and after two days of wines with no sulfur at all I wanted the other answer to the same question.
Three vineyards on the plateau: Le Haut-Lieu, Le Mont and Clos du Bourg#
Huet farms about 30 hectares of Chenin Blanc and nothing else, in three vineyards beside the cellars. Le Haut-Lieu is the one Victor Huet bought in 1928: deep brown clay over limestone, the source of the roundest wines, the ones that open first. Le Mont came in 1957: stony green clay with flint and quartz, and the wines are the opposite, linear, smoky and slow, the longest-lived in the house. Clos du Bourg is the oldest site, walled, worked from 1953 and bought in 1963: thin clay-limestone straight over the tuffeau, six hectares that give the most powerful and textured wine of the three.
We walked the edge of Le Mont with one of the cellar team while the pruners worked. The flint was easy to find under the frost, pale grey and sharp, and you notice the change to the brown clay of Le Haut-Lieu with your boots before you taste it. Under all of it is tuffeau, the soft limestone that built the châteaux and was quarried out for the cellars. A tuffeau gallery holds about 12 °C in every season, which in February feels almost warm.
From Victor Huet to the Hwang family#
Victor and Constance Huet bought Le Haut-Lieu in 1928. Their son Gaston, born in 1910, built the estate’s name and ran the village as well: he was mayor of Vouvray for over four decades. He spent the war years as a prisoner in Germany, which I mention once and leave to the books. His son-in-law Noël Pinguet joined in 1971, managed the estate from 1976 to 2012, and in 1988 took the vines biodynamic, with certification following in 1993. That was early for France, and it was done quietly.
Gaston Huet died in 2002. Soon after, Anthony Hwang, a New York businessman who also owns Királyudvar in Tokaj, bought the estate. His daughter Sarah Hwang is president today, and Benjamin Joliveau has made the wine since 2012.
My first Huet was a Pétillant, opened in a restaurant in Brno where I worked before I was a sommelier. A guest had ordered it expecting Champagne and asked for a Champagne instead, so the kitchen finished the bottle. I was in the kitchen. I have been explaining that bottle ever since.
Biodynamics since 1988, and a cellar that changes nothing#
The farming is where Huet is radical and the cellar is where it is conservative, and both are decisions. Biodynamics here means the preparations, the compost, the calendar, and above all no herbicide and no synthetic treatment on slopes that get Atlantic damp and October mist. I have written about biodynamics without the mysticism; Vouvray shows the practical side, because the mist that brings botrytis to the Chenin brings everything else too.
Harvest is in passes, tries in French: the pickers go through each vineyard more than once, taking what is ripe, and in botrytis years going back for the shrivelled bunches last. Whole bunches go to the press. Fermentation and ageing are in old barrels and steel tanks in the tuffeau, with no chaptalisation and a classic, moderate dose of sulfur. Nothing in the cellar is designed to make a style; the style was made in the vineyard by the end of October.
“The year decides which wines exist,” Benjamin Joliveau said when he passed through the gallery. “We decide when to pick, and how many times. That is most of the work.”
Sec, demi-sec, moelleux: the vintage decides#
From the same three vineyards, depending on the year, Huet bottles sec, demi-sec and moelleux, and in botrytis years a Moelleux Première Trie from the first, most concentrated pass, and rarely a Cuvée Constance, named for Victor’s wife. The Pétillant, made by the traditional method, is the fourth register. Nobody here is embarrassed by sugar, and neither am I. Sugar in a Vouvray demi-sec is structure, the way tannin is structure in Chinon, and the October weather decides whether it is there.
The library goes back to the 1920s, and longevity is the estate’s whole argument. A dry Le Mont at ten years is still young. A moelleux at thirty is still going somewhere.
One glass: Le Mont Sec 2022#
We tasted in the gallery at 12 °C, standing. The Pétillant Brut first, fine-beaded and dry; then the secs by soil, Le Haut-Lieu round and already open, then Le Mont.
Then the Clos du Bourg Demi-Sec, where the sugar is invisible as sugar and present as weight, and to finish a Le Haut-Lieu Moelleux Première Trie 2015 from the library, amber at the rim, apricot and honey held up by acidity so that the last impression is fresh rather than sweet.
Lunch in Vouvray: rillettes, sandre and a blue cheese#
Lunch was in the village, at a table by a window. Rillettes de Tours first, with the Le Haut-Lieu Sec, whose roundness is what fat wants. Then sandre au beurre blanc, zander from the river in butter and shallot, and the Le Mont Sec, which went through the butter like a blade. The cheese was the argument for sugar: a Fourme d’Ambert with the Clos du Bourg Demi-Sec, then the last of the 2015 moelleux with the last of the blue. Moelleux with blue cheese rather than dessert is what the locals do, and they are right.
Huet on tour#
On my Loire Chenin tour, Huet is the second morning: 10:00 at the rue de la Croix-Buisée, the three secs against each other, a demi-sec and the Pétillant, then across the river to Montlouis in the afternoon. The shop and tasting room are open to the public; cave tours and tastings are best reserved, which I do; and the estate holds open days around mid-May if you are travelling alone.
Guests on the Jura and Beaujolais natural wine tour sometimes ask me whether biodynamic means natural. Huet is my answer: biodynamic vines, classic cellar, moderate sulfur, wines that live half a century. On the Burgundy and Champagne classics tour, when someone tells me over a Meursault that Chardonnay is the only white grape that ages, I have a Le Mont in the van.
The pruners were still at it when we left at 15:00, working down the rows of Le Mont, each cut a decision about a wine nobody will drink before 2035.
