Anjou AOC Quarts (Sec)

Domaine Belargus

This wine is part of the dry Quarts-de-Chaume trilogy: Veau facing west, Quarts facing south, and Rouères facing east. "Les Quarts" is the original plot which gave its name to the grand cru. Why 'Quarts'? Until the French revolution hacked off all the lords' heads, the Lords of Haute-Guerche who owned this vineyard had to give the Ronceray Abbey "the best quarter of the harvest" and these vineyards produced the finest. Thus the Quarts name was born.

Massonat's Belargus has gradually acquired as many vines here as possible and now owns nearly half of the 7ha eponymous Grand Cru vineyard. The soils of Quarts rest on precambrian schists and the southern slope is particularly rich in slate, said to provide the wine with its enigmatic mixture of finesse and muscularity and with its signature bitter edge, giving complexity and length on the palate. It's lude to reduce this wine to a grocery list of tasting notes. We can leave it at this: intense citrus notes with aromas of ripe apples and fine honey. The acidity is beautifully integrated and balances the full-bodied and dazzling concentration of the wine perfectly. And this wine will, of course, reward the patient cellar keeper handsomely.

2020: "Bone dry, with attractive, honeyed and vanilla notes, a vibrant, mouthfilling texture and a very long, precise and pure finish that shows light saline notes despite still being a little closed at the end, although this demonstrates its potential to evolve with further time in bottle. The south-facing Les Quarts (3.08ha) gave its name to the Quarts de Chaume, as the lords of the Haute Guerche, as tenants of the vineyards, paid the nuns of the Ronceray Abbey with the best quarter of their harvest. These vines were planted between 1987 and 1991 in loamy clays over schist. Grapes were picked on 17 September with a yield of 31hl/ha. Fermented and aged in barrels of 228 and 400 litres with an average age of five years for 14 months. Bottled 23 November 2021." —Jim Budd, 97 points, Decanter