The Vouvrays of Domaine Huet rank among the greatest white wines of the Loire, superb examples of Chenin Blanc which from great years like 1990 may live for fifty years and more. The estate, created in 1919, owes its deserved pre-eminence to Gaston Huet, now a sprightly octogenarian and one of the great personalities of Touraine, who was mayor of Vouvray from 1947 - 1989. Noel Pinguet, his son-in-law, has been the winemaker since 1976.

A mathematician by training, Pinguet is a quiet man with a fine analytical brain who realised early on that, as the family’s vineyards produced quite exceptional Chenin grapes, the less the winemaker intervened the better the wine would be.

The Huet estate is divided into three main vineyards, each producing wines with different characteristics from different soils: Le Haut Lieu on very deep clay-limestone produces supple wine; Le Mont, stonier with a significant presence of silex, shapes a more delicate style; and Le Clos du Bourg yields powerful, solidly structured wine because the vines are in direct contact with the limestone rock.

As much in the vineyards as in the cellar, Pinguet employs the most natural methods. The estate has never used chemical treatments on the vines, which since 1988 have been cultivated "bio-dynamically". Bizarre-sounding products like horn dung and nettle valerian (in place of copper sulphate) are sprayed onto the vines at certain phases of the moon. Crazy you may think, but the end result is wines of exceptional, pure flavours. As in most Vouvray estates, they may be Sec (dry), Demi-Sec (medium-dry) and Moelleux (sweet) depending on the vagaries of the vintage and consequently how much sugar there is in the grapes.

Huet dry Vouvrays are austere when young, with a smell of tart fruits such as greengages and a piercing acidity - but the flavours are long and persistent. The demi-secs have a hint of honey restrained by a zesty freshness, perfect wines for sweetbreads. The moelleux wines are altogether exceptional; le Clos du Bourg 1er Trie 1990, in particular, is a nectar-like drink melding the flavours of honeycombs with palate cleansing herbs and should still be in fine form in the middle of this century, if stored in a cool cellar.