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Le Haut Lieu was the estate’s first vineyard, purchased in 1928, and is situated on the Première Côte. As the name suggests, the house and the vineyards are located on a plateau with a slight south-facing gradient at one of the highest points of the appellation. It’s a nine-hectare plot on deep, brown, chalky clay (known as aubuis). Here, the yellow limestone (tuffeau) bedrock lies up to four metres down, making for a richer soil that produces round, supple wines that tend to drink well young. It generally produces the earliest maturing of the three cuvées and the first ready for drinking, but, like Clos du Bourg and Le Mont, the wines can be extremely long-lived. We have enjoyed bottles from the ’40s that are still drinking very well!
When young, these dry wines are pent-up, intense, mineral (chalky and/or smoky-fresh) whites that are wonderfully pure and racy. With age, the top examples mature at a snail’s pace to become some of the most intriguing dry whites on the planet. They go from the white flowers, citrus pith and crunchy fruit of youth to something deliciously honeyed, buttery, savoury and autumnal. The younger examples are go-to wines for anything involving seafood or white meat. For the technically minded, Huet’s secs have between 4 and 8 g/L residual sugar depending on the vintage.