A visit to the Loire
When I was first getting into wine I attended some Loire wine tastings. The wines were strikingly different to anything I’d had before. The wines were minerally, very restrained, obviously in need of food.
Here in Paris, they are very popular — chiefly because they are cheap, well understood and generally sound. There’s also the factor of proximity. The French place the most trust in things which are made close by and the Loire is pretty much the closest serious wine region to Paris. Unlike Champagne, Loire wines are generally very cheap (sub-5 euros).
We took the TGV to Tours. The only redeeming quality of this town seems to be that it is a show case of classic soviet era housing project design. Probably the ugliest town I’ve ever encountered in France.
Luckily, it is surrounded by wine country. The town encroaches on Mont-Louis and Vouvray — south and north of the Loire respectively. These towns are not your usual pretty wine villages. You can tell that these places get cold in winter. All the houses seem to be hiding away again the hill. They are universally gray. Like Champagne, however, the drab sounds belie the glorious wonders which are buried in the ground underneath.
We turned up at Domaine Huet which, along with Moulin Touchais and Couléde Serrant, is the maker of the most long lived wines on the Loire. I have had a few examples of their wines over the years, dating back to the immediate post war years. Those few special drops have created in my a fanatical love of the domaine which causes me to irrationally buy their wine when ever I see it. To visit the source of these great wines… I was giddy.
As is usually the case in France (at least outside Bordeaux and Champagne), the greater the international renown, the more humble the domaine. Par exemple, this is the office at Huet:
A member of the family was kind enough to show us all current release wines. Huet is a terroir focussed producer. Three key plots of land are owned in Vouvray: Le Mont, Le Haut-Lieu and Le Clos du Bourg. Le Mont is usually a minerally, elegant, highly structured wine; Le Haut-Lieu is usually a bigger, crowd pleasing wine; Le Clos du Bourg is usually the most complex.
Wine making is traditional, with storage in old fû chê (aged oak casks). The focus is simplicity. That said, stainless steal and other modern wine making accountrement are employed to guarantee a sound wine.
Wines are aged in the hills of tuffeau surrounding Vouvray. This is a milky white rock, easy to tunnel through and porous. The cellars are extremely cold and humid. They are usually covered in thick mold. From the street, you’d never even know they existed. This is part of the secret to the aging capability of Vouvray. Many on this forum have been surprised at the youth of the Marc Bredif 1985 which Bert was selling. These wines sit at 12C all year round, without like and in 85-90% humidity.
On to the wines.
2000 Sparkling Classic tropical aromas on the nose, pineapple and pawpaw. The palate is a little thin and short but this is a cheap sparkling and provides good bang for buck. There’s none of the hard acid of some Loire sparkling wines.
2006 Le Haut-Lieu secGrassy, pure, slate. Almost Sancerre like. Very minerally. Palate has green apple like puckering acidity. Delicious and long.
2006 Le Mont sec Even more minerally, earthy and slatey. The palate has ripe, pure texture of tropical fruit. Uncanny. Delicious and long. Will go longer than the Haut-Lieu.
2005 Le Haut-Lieu sec Rich botrytis, lots of tropical fruit, ready to go now! Delicious and unique to Vouvray. Superb.
Next came the demi-sec. These wines are off-dry, like some Mosel riesling or Alsacian blancs.
2005 Le Haut-Lieu demi-sec Lifted botrytis aromas, burnt pineapple. Spicy. Bold, in the style of Haut-Lieu. Well balanced on the palate, sugar doesn’t figure into it. The only criticism would be too much botrytis. This isn’t a wine to have with dinner but would work great as a relatively dry dessert wine with fruit salad.
2006 Le Mont demi-sec Wow! What an amazing wine. Light style, chardonnay like. Great poise and balance. A Chablis from Vouvray! Very clean and pure, elegant and subtle. Long and classy. Superb.
Next, came some sweet wines:
2006 Clos du Bourg Moulleaux Extremely complex, a real departure. Flavours outside the tropical spectrum: spice, vanilla, earth, a touch of truffle. Also superb.
Seeing that I was enjoying the wines, our host went and fetched one of the very rare 1er trie (first picking through the vineyard) wines. These are tiny production wines, similar to German TBAs.
2005 Le Mont 1er Trie Big, rich tropical fruit aromas, a more oxidative style. Sweet but well balanced with delicious cleansing acidity. Very different to the other wines, being quite big and forward. Perhaps the subtlety will come with age but right now botrytis-aromas dominate the wine.
2005 was obviously a ripe year dominated by botrytis. 2006 is totally different. Production was 50% less, with a lot of fruit being lost to frost (there’ll be no Cuvee Constance). Personally, I like the elegant 2006 but 2005 will provide a lot of pleasure for those who like richer, sweet, dessert style wines which rival Sauternes, Mosel and Tokaji.
Before I left, I was taken around the caves. This is paradise on earth. Millions of bottles aging slowly. The slow dripping of water makes you think the bottles are whispering to each other, conspiring chemically to produce bottled pleasure. I begged for some ancient bottles but they’re being kept strictly as learning tools for the domaine:
After visiting Vouvray, we headed in the (general) direction of Chinon. This town is responsible for some of the best red wine on the Loire. The wines are Cabernet Franc based, quite acid and very dry. Some can be extremely long lived but few rival the right bank of Bordeaux. These are wines made largely for consumption, less so for reverence.
That said, Chinon is the ideal wine village: old, picturesque, beautiful, full of restaurants, butchers, boulangeries and nice people. Wine is every where, but isn’t treated as a gimmick for tourists.
They must of known I was coming because Saturday night was the fetê of the gourmands. Parfait! They were already partying when we got into our small but cheap and comfortable room at a caféon the main square — the Cafées Arts. The view from our room took in the scene:
Lots of eating and drinking were going on. Cheese, sausage, ham, bread, wine even couscous were been eaten every where at an amazing rate. Tables and chairs setup by the mairie were completely occupied.
We found an interesting, generous cavist near by — La Cave Voltaire. I selected a few bottles which I planned to take back to the square. The cavist suggests we consume them sur place with some simple charcuterie and he’d serve the wines in a fashion they deserved — not out of plastic cups, for example.
The store afforded us a view of the festivities but was far enough away that we could hear ourselves think. It seemed like a good bet. The plates of ham and cheese were superb and for a mere 10 euros we had enough food to eat over the next 6 hours. The highlight of the food was the porc rillettes and boudin noir with confit onions. Delicious.
The wines were bouth Chinon Rouge. The first a Les Roches 1990 was lifted, mature, full of pencil shavings, dried vine leafs and a hint of confiture des fruits rouges. The palate was quite acid but it kept the fatty porc in check. The next wine was from the exceptionally hot 2003 vintage where it hit 50C in Chinon. It was a Lambret Cuvee Marie 2003. You’d be forgiven for thinking this was SA shiraz! Ultra ripe for Loire with forward, juicy red berry fruit and lots of coconut aromas (!). The palate still had some acidity about it and the alcohol was moderate but the wine seemed out of balance. So it goes.
After this, what better way to settle the stomach than with some Hine XO cognac? Went down a treat.
It was by now midnight but the locals were still opening bottles. There was some amazing hams on sale and I wanted to buy them all:
The band from earlier kept playing until abut 3AM. I recorded them at about 2AM, you can hear a little here:
http://treehou.se/~swm/loire_trip/band.mp3
We spent the next day recovering and visiting a few old chateaux on the Loire. It was a wine free day, unfortunately.
