They call themselves “Les Bêtes Curieuses” (“the curious beasts”) and are shown on the label yukking it up while seated astride two wine barrels, but Jérémie Huchet and Jérémie Mourat are very serious when it comes to Muscadet: Their shared ambition is to show how much longevity and refinement a well-sourced, well-made Muscadet Sèvre et Maine can deliver.
If you think of Muscadet only as crisp, quaffable white to enjoy nice and cold with a platter of oysters, try today’s 2013 from the acclaimed Château-Thébaud subzone and you’ll see there’s a thrilling next level of depth and complexity you may not have considered. Then again, maybe you have considered it: The granite-rich Château-Thébaud is a bona-fide Grand Cru of the Western Loire, made famous by producers like Huchet’s neighbor, Domaine de la Pépière. Huchet and Mourat have a shared passion for old vines, organic farming, and above all, the intricacies of terroir; their collaborative Les Bêtes Curieuses wines are meant to showcase the diverse mosaic of soils in the Sèvre and Maine river valleys, the heartland of Muscadet country. Remember that the proper name for the grape in this wine is Melon de Bourgogne—especially apt in this case because this 2013 will stand toe-to-toe with aged white Burgundies costing much, much more. Jump on this!
I may be preaching to the choir here when it comes to the longevity of Muscadet/Melon, but just in case, let me reiterate: the high natural acidity of this variety, combined with the regional practice of aging wines on their lees (sur lie) for extended periods, enables what often seem like lightweight whites to age incredibly well. And when you consider the vital stats behind today’s effort from the two Jérémies, its exceptional mineral energy and layered texture should come as no surprise whatsoever: Their 2013 “Château-Thébaud” bottling is sourced from organically farmed vines averaging 50 years of age, then the wine is fermented and aged in underground cement tanks, where it spends a whopping five years—five years—on its lees before bottling. Those lees, or spent yeast cells, are a well-known preservative, enabling the Bêtes Curieuses team to bottle the wine with minimal sulfur.
It’s also overlooked by some that Melon de Bourgogne is a Chardonnay sibling; as its name suggests, it has roots in Burgundy but became the signature grape of the western Loire sometime after the phylloxera scourge of the late 1800s. Somewhere along the line, the Melon-based whites of Nantes and its environs, not far from the Atlantic coast, became known as “Muscadet.” It got commercially popular, and, much like Italian Pinot Grigio, started to become a little homogeneous as producers began pumping it out in larger and larger quantities.
Huchet and Mourat are, like their terroir-focused contemporaries in the region, striving for the opposite of homogeneous. They are bottling wines from the key “crus” of the Muscadet Sèvre et Maine AOC, including not just Château-Thébaud but “Clisson,” “Gorges,” and “Goulaine.”
For a wine to carry the Château-Thébaud designation on a label, it must age on its lees for at least two years—a requirement that far surpasses the maximum standard for
sur lie bottling in Muscadet. Of course, the Jérémies far surpassed that, and it shows in both the aromatics and texture of this 2013: In the glass, it’s a deepening yellow-gold moving to a silvery rim, with heady notes of rising bread dough mingling with sea spray, yellow apple, salted lemon, white peach, crushed oyster shells, and wet stones. It shows terrific depth and lots of still-youthful verve on the palate, offering a seamless mix of fruit and salty, smoky earth. Splash it in a decanter about 15 minutes before serving in all-purpose stems at 45 degrees and two thoughts immediately come to mind: (a) this wine is delicious, and (b) it’s still got more in tank for further aging! To pair it with oyster may seem like a copout, but really, if it ain’t broke…enjoy it!
