TN: 2010 Clos Floridene 'blanc' [Graves]

[AKR]

2010 Clos Floridene 'blanc' [Graves] My sister and I had a bottle of this while chatting and prepping a supper of mushroom risotto, sausage crumbles and carmelized onions. It's full bodied and viscous - almost Hermitage like - despite only 13.5% abv. The color seems deep gold to me, but perhaps others might describe it differently when looking at the picture. The nose is beeswax, butter, lanolin. On the palate: wood seems absorbed, low acid, and citrus pith. It's a serious wine, that could keep going if one wanted, but the fruit is waning here in my view. I buy this occasionally, in the better regarded years, but white Graves/Pessac's just aren't my preference. My sister is ok with them, so I figured it would be good to enjoy together, as she had not visited in some time. This semillion heavy blanc used to be hard to find, but thanks to Total Wine this is far more prevalent than 20-30 years ago. For my tastes, I guess I'd give it a B. Denis Dubordieu's whites are the rare BDX blanc's I'll buy, and even then, maybe its a once/twice a decade single bottle purchase. You can see the color here:

2010 Clos Floridene blanc [Graves]

https://photos.app.goo.gl/EX6cg4cfpe7h3wVp7

[Comte Flaneur]

Arv coincidentally I won six of these at auction last year, and were as you describe. I loved them. They definitely need drinking though.

[AKR]

I remember the 1990 blanc being surprisingly youthful and vigorous at maybe age 15 or 20, but even then, not my kind of white.

[AKR]

In a deja vu moment, my sister and I polished off a bottle of the 2016 Clos Floridene 'blanc' [Graves] with a similar dish - browned sweet sausage and onions in a (jarred) creamy basil sauce over fedelini with charred Brussels on the side. This vintage is 13% abv; it's a blend of 56% sauvignon blanc and 44% semillion. It's crisp and lemony, but mild on the fruit and depth. The waxiness, honey texture of blanc Graves that have some bottle age are not here yet. For my tastes it's tastes more like a Loire expression of the SB varietal. These get some new oak (I think 25% or so) but it's not apparent in taste/texture to me. These have crept up in price each release, approaching $30 now, and the estate has purchased neighboring vineyards so production is now much more than it was a couple of decades ago, now approaching 8000 cases. I enjoyed this, but not as much professional critics, and would give this a B. Total Wine snail mails me a lot of coupons - which are mostly difficult to use and thus get thrown away - but this light bodied, golden hued wine is one of the few where they can be deployed for some value.

2016 Clos Floridene 'blanc' [Graves]

[Comte Flaneur]

A pretty good shout this wine in my experience

[Chateau Vin]

Curious— why it was poured in different stemware...

[AKR]

Curious— why it was poured in different stemware...

Everyone here has their own preferences...Mrs AKR likes stemless, sister likes the more svelte/small Riedels, and I like more volume