Look back in Angers
Over my life I've made many visits to the Loire but this summer was the first time I'd properly got to grips with its many expressions of Chenin Blanc. Plus: what (else) I've been drinking recently
FRANCE’S longest river exerts a pull on the imagination of many Francophiles.
I still recall a picnic on the banks of the Loire – the first time I ever tasted a peach – when I first came to Saumur with my parents in 1971, aged six. I’ve been back many times since, both with my own kids – I remember tasting Loire crémant at Gratien & Meyer with a toddler on my shoulders and my baby son in a sling – and on press trips, notably one with fellow wine writer Nina Caplan. On the latter we were shepherded around by inimitable wine broker Charles Sydney, now retired: he was prevented from taking us up in his light aircraft to show us the terroir only by cloudy weather.
Yet I’ve always previously gravitated towards the central Loire and its reds, the chewy, Cabernet-Franc-based wines of Saumur-Champigny, Chinon and Bourgeuil. These, however, are not the region’s most unique wines. Central Loire reds are indeed distinctive, while Sauvignon Blancs from Sancerre and elsewhere in the east are endlessly copied globally; yet Chenin Blanc is the region’s most distinctive grape.
Its two big strongholds are in Vouvray and Montlouis, to the east of Tours; and in the west, to the south of Angers, the heart of the Anjou wine country. So this summer, two-thirds the way through a long road trip from northern Spain to Brittany, I dived into the Chenin appellations of the western zone.
Chenin Blanc is best known for its brisk – even fierce – acidity. But the magic of the grape lies in the way its wines can change with different terroir, vinification and picking times. The last of these is key to the sweet Chenins of Anjou’s big Coteaux du Layon zone, especially when combined with the botrytis fungus that transforms late-harvested grapes in the area’s better sub-appellations.
Chenin really can thus result in wines ranging from piercingly dry and acidic through to unctuously sweet.
In recent years the fortunes of the area’s wines have fluctuated largely due to a factor few wine writers will credit: fashion. In the 1970s, a lot of Chenin vines were ripped out in favour of then-more-fashionable reds (Saumur-Champigny was particularly chic in Paris in the latter quarter of the last century.) Then in the 1980s and 90s, the area’s sweet wines found new favour in France, not least paired with the era’s modish foie gras dishes.
Now French red wine consumption is falling steadily, while sweet wine has become even more rapidly demodée. Dry white, however, is another story, especially internationally – hence, perhaps, the decision in July by the authorities in Bourgeuil, generally reckoned the most ageworthy of the Loire’s reds, to allow the making of white Bourgueil (at present Chinon-based wines made there must carry the lesser “Anjou Blanc” label.)
If any one winemaker can be credited with re-establishing the credibility of the Loire’s dry Chenins, it is Nicolas Joly of La Coulée de Serrant, in the now-prized Savennières appellation, on the river just west of Angers.
Joly, sometimes described as the “pope of biodynamics”, was an early trailblazer for such methods: his estate was certified biodynamic in 1984, though it was first planted by Cistercian monks in 1130. He owns all seven hectares of the Coulée de Serrant sub-zone, as well as part of the slightly larger Roche aux Moines sub-zone (it’s still tiny – indeed the whole Savennières appellation and sub-zones cover just 146 hectares – 360 acres.) And his wines – or rather now, those of his daughter Virginie, whom he handed over to some years ago – are very special.
After driving in through ravishingly beautiful vineyards, the Loire in the distance, we started tasting the range with their “straight” Savennières, Le Vieux Clos 2018. It’s a Chenin of extraordinary depth and subtlety, very long. Like all of their wines, it’s had six to nine months in 500-600 litre barrels - another counter-intuitive touch for a delicate white.
Coulée de Serrant’s Clos de la Bergerie 2017, La Roche aux Moines is a step up, with greater minerality from a site with more schisty soil than sand, complex with orangey, almost marmaladey notes. (Actually, the Chenin that I tasted on this trip which most echoed those deep, orangey notes was from Jasnières, an outlying appellation to the north of Tours – Domaine de Bellivière’s extraordinary Calligramme 2021.)
The Jolys’ top Coulée de Serrant 2022 cuvée (at €78 ex-cellar), entirely from schist soils, is darker, very complex – an amazing balance of richness yet with precise acidity. Last of all we tasted La Coulée de Serrant 2022 moelleux – a sweet wine made only in the best years: the Jolys have made just four ever, the last before this one in 2008. As with their top dry cuvée, the impressive thing here is the combination of precision with complexity and length. It’s frankly an astonishing wine.
But I’ll admit that even the Jolys’ most humble Savennières, at €42 ex-cellar, was the only one where I could stretch to buying a bottle. There are, however, more affordable options locally. Just across the river in the village of St Aubin-de-Luigné, Domaine des Forges hold vineyards in Savennières, on schist soil, in both the main appellation and the Roche aux Moines sub-zone. I especially loved their Clos du Papillon Savennières 2023, mineral and complex, and a bargain at €15.50.
The appellation has gained status and price in recent years. Other wines I tasted such as Château d’Epiret “La Croix Picot” 2020 (French retail price €32.50) or Domaine Laureau “Les Genêts” 2021 Savennières (€39 ex-cellar) were serious cuvées with tasty minerality and length – though they’re not cheap.
Or else you can keep it simpler with Chenins labelled under the catch-all Anjou Blanc designation. Domaine des Forges’s L’Audace Chenin 2023 is light, flinty and fresh. At lunch one day on the idyllic Isle de Béhuard, the only populated island in the whole of the Loire, I drank La Calèche 2022 from nearby Domaine Baumard, across the water in Rochefort. Perfect that day with sandre, a famous large, perch-like Loire fish, it’s a Chenin/Chardonnay blend consigned to even humbler IGP (Vin de Pays) status: fresh, juicy, underpinned with a tart acidity – and pretty good value at €7.70 ex-cellar.
Yet even Anjou Blanc can be a good deal more sophisticated than that – such as for instance Domaine du Petit Clocher 2023: six months in oak and nice breadth and balance (French retail €11.30.)
And that’s only where the region’s wine variety begins: most of these producers also make sweet whites too, as well as reds. Domaine des Forges’s sweet wines, for instance, range from a light, fresh entry-level Coteaux du Layon (€6.80 ex-cellar) all the way up to the top-ranked Quarts de Chaume Grand Cru 2021, a complex, intensely sweet wine (over 200g per litre of residual sugar – thats a lot) at €42. I admit that the one I came away with was the better-balanced Coteaux du Layon Premier Cru Chaume 2021 (better value at €12.90, too.)
I might cellar that: with their high acidity and sugar, these sweet wines last a long time. On a warm evening on the terrace at Angers’s excellent Les Petits Prés restaurant, a project of French TV’s Top Chef winner Samuel Albert, I drank Domaine des Petits Quarts “Le Malabé” 1997, from the tiny Bonnezeaux sub-zone of Coteaux du Layon. It’s surprising to find such an old bottle on a restaurant list, even here, and the wine was even more extraordinary: concentrated, dark, intensely sweet, almost like a sweet old oloroso sherry.
And perhaps therein lies the problem in the current unfashionability of these wines. They’re brilliantly made, but unless you’re a foie gras fan, it’s hard to see what you drink them with (the French don’t drink sweet wines with dessert.) Perhaps as a vino da meditazione at the end of your meal, as I drank the Domaine des Petits Quarts?
This is the trend that has led Christophe Daviau, of Domaine de Bablut a few kilometres south in Brissac-Quincé, to stop making some sweet wine at all.
Daviau says that the market for reds is definitely down, whereas it’s brighter for whites and orange wines, something he puts down to people drinking less with meals and more in wine bars. Meanwhile, he adds, “sweet wines went out of fashion in about 2005”: he has stopped making several of his sweet whites labelled Coteaux de L’Aubance, the smaller local sweet appellation. I did however being home a bottle of his deep, intense Coteaux de L’Aubance Noble 2002: he recommended drinking it with Stilton.
But then producers down here like Daviau and his son, Antoine, have a wider range of options than some Loire winemakers: both Cabernet Franc-based reds and sparkling whites are bigger here than they are closer to the river. Certified organic since 1996, the Daviaus produce a range of terroir-focussed dry whites and reds, as well as a sparkling Chenin/Chardonnay/Grolleau blend.
I was particularly impressed with the dry whites. Petit Princé Chenin Blanc 2018, Anjou Blanc is grown on soil that’s a mixture of clay and silica and spends 12 months in clay amphorae: it’s an intense and very pure expression of Chenin, delivering a particularly pronounced, characteristic crescendo of acidity. By contrast, Ordovicien 2019, Anjou Blanc – on the wine list of Copenhagen’s legendary Noma - is a big, powerful wine, fermented in old oak barrels: amazing depth and balance here, and that touch of marmalade again.
Alas, after a couple of days in the Loire, it was time for us to head north west to the beach in Brittany on the final stage of our journey. On the last morning in Angers, I visited the city’s huge medieval castle, home to the extraordinary Apocalypse Tapestry. Made in the late fourteenth century, it’s a 140 metre-long woven depiction of the apocalypse as described in the Book of Revelation, full of multi-headed monsters and fiery retribution. To hear some French wine producers talk in an era of falling consumption, you’d think they’re facing a similar fate.
But I don’t think winemakers like the Daviaus will have any problem selling their wines - though even they may have to adapt to the times. They’ve done that before, the family having made wine here since 1546. And I think many wine lovers outside France still haven’t quite woken up to the variety and level of quality of the Chenin Blancs now being made in Anjou. They’re really worth exploring.
What I’ve been drinking recently
My Loire visit came towards the end of a long road trip with my wife and our Cockapoo, Lemmy, starting from the ferry in Bilbao and winding through the Rioja Alavesa country and the Ordesa Canyon in the central Pyrenees, before heading up to Cognac and then Angers. The following were some of the stand-out wines from the Spanish leg of the trip - sadly unavailable in the UK.
Viñas Leizaola “Paloma de Sacramento” 2022, Rioja blanco - Belgian winemaker Etienne Cordonnier has been making Rioja just outside the beautiful hill village of Laguardia since 2011. This is his white - so as you’d expect in Rioja, it’s made mostly from the local Viura grape, and most of it spends 15 months in new French oak barrels. Yet it’s not at all overblown: fresh and clean, with and a complex palate of peach and pear fruit and a touch of minerality (N/A UK retail though available at Cambio de Tercio restaurant, London.)
Hermanos Frías del Val Selección Personal 2016, Rioja - Gabriel and Vicente Frías del Val make wine just west of Laguardia in the village of Villabuena: Vicente showed us around. Like a growing number of Rioja producers, they reject the official Joven/Crianza/Reserva/Gran Reserva classifications, based as they are solely on the amount of time a wine has spent in oak and bottle. Their approach is instead more attuned to terroir - and their 26 hectares of wines, with an average age of 50 years, are scattered across 70 different parcels. This is one of their fancier cuvées, from a difficult year: 12 months in oak and four in bottle before release (so technically a Reserva, though it is generically labelled as "Joven”): dark fruit, powerful yet elegant and balanced. I brought home a case of this, as well as of their excellent Viña del Flako white Rioja (N/A UK: these guys really deserve a British importer.)
Viñas del Vero “Gran Vos” 2016, Somontano - the stupendous Ordesa Canyon is far enough east in the Pyrenees to be in Aragón, so that region’s wines - especially Somontano - dominate on wine lists in the nearest mountain village, Torla. This is elegant and powerful yet softened with bottle age - a lovely Cabernet Sauvignon/Merlot blend. And a bargain at €25 in our hotel’s restaurant (N/A UK.)
Alas I don’t know a lot about Hungarian wine! Furmint is the main white grape and can make nice fresh wines
Great blog and road trip, no wonder Lemmy is feeling the pace. Different trip but I'm off to Budapest and the Danube Bend next week - any recommendations?