Introducing Richard

Richard has been a Loire convert since first drinking a Gaston Huet Vouvray in 1981. The experience of this wine drove him to convert from chef to MW and he brought his knowledge of the Loire first to Richard Walford and now to ABS Wine Agencies (after BBR took over Richards Walford). His Loire Report (www.richardkelley.co.uk) is the first step on his goal of writing a book on the area and he was brandishing an advance copy of the latest edition of the Jancis Robinson / Hugh Johnson World Wine Atlas to which he has contributed the Loire section.  He has, of course, starred in a number of OWC events but this was the first Loire tasting for 4 or 5 years and we had a full house at Brookes Restaurant for the opening event of the 2013-2014 Club year.

Introducing the Loire

We all think we know the Loire (and clearly many members had visited the area) but the Loire we know is the last 500 km. Upstream of the Pouilly bridge there’s another 500 km of France’s wildest river. Richard’s goal was to explore from end to end and to showcase both new producers who are beginning to question the old assumptions and the representatives of older traditions whom, he feels, have been unjustly neglected as the Loire has lost its reputation and (thousands of hectares of vineyard land) in the last two decades.

The white wines

The tasting opened with a glass of Sébastien Brunet’s Vouvray ‘Le Naturel’ Méthode Ancestrale NV Brut. If you’re making wine in France but outside the Champagne region you can’t use the term Méthode Champenoise (outside France you still can). Méthode Ancestrale means, in essence, that after a short initial fermentation the wine completes all fermentation in bottle (and some purist, though not Brunet, omit the usual riddling process. There was no cloudiness in this pale gold wine which had a fine mousse, intense pear and apple flavours and an elegant minerality.

The second wine was a Muscadet from Metaireau. Muscadet has had a tough time since the early 1990s when a terrible frost in 1991 initiated a run of bad harvests. Quantities and quality fell, whilst prices rose and the UK market turned decisively against the Loire and took up with the blowsy charms of Australian Chardonnay.  Louis Metaireau, however, had both the foresight and business skills to organise a consortium purchase of the top-rated ‘Grand Mouton’ area in the 1970s and then the fortitude to buy out other members of the consortium during the bad years. Now his daughter, Marie-Luce, runs the estate and her hand-harvested, old vine wines are beginning once again to cause a stir in the UK market.

Their Muscadet de Sèvre et Maine sur lie ‘Grand Mouton’ 2012 is the product of a great year for Muscadet. It was not an easy year and yields were low but a perfect Indian summer in the weeks before harvesting made for wines with concentration and richness. The flagship ‘Grand Mouton’ (there is also a prize-winning ‘Petit Mouton’) is made to what Richard called the ‘classic recipe’: around 9 months in underground concrete tanks before bottling in June and then plenty of bâtonnage to ensure the wine has the richness of lees contact. The wine is pale, almost water white, but with a citrusy richness that surprised those members who recollected the thin acidic Muscadets off the 1990s. A long clean finish for a beautifully balanced wine that would be ideal with any shellfish but has enough weight to deal with richer dishes. So, echoing Richard, “drink a bottle of Muscadet this autumn and keep a producer in business!”

The Muscadet was paired with a Jacques Rouzé Quincy. The Quincy ‘Tradition’ 2012 is 100% Sauvignon Blanc and comes from the best-known of the satellite appellations of Sancerre. Quincy itself is evidently a rather boring village of cereal growers and roofers but the drive of an enterprising Mayor in the 1930s made it the first appellation contrôlée in the Loire (in 1937) and EU grants in recent years have revitalised wine growing in this 100% Sauv Blanc appellation. The wine is a classic French Sauvignon Blanc; a vibrant aroma that mixes elderflower and sweet lemon with a touch of blackcurrant leaf, bone dry yet decently rich in the mouth with just a touch of tropical fruits and a good clean finish. At 80% of the price of Sancerre this is excellent value (a Figaro selection of the month in August). The monosyllabic and ‘tax efficient’ producer  Jacques Rouzé has some of the best sites in the district and this wine is worth the effort that Richard has clearly had to put in to get an allocation.

The following pair of wines were also 100% Sauvignon Blanc. First up was a Pouilly-Fumé 2012 from Jonathan Pabiot. Jonathan is one of the new generation (called by some the new Didier Dageneau, after the dynamic young Loire winemaker who died tragically young). A drop-out from Viticultural College, he’s one of many Pabiots in the area but his Pouilly Fumé is exceptional. He’s one of the very few (3 out of 300) to attempt the transition to biodynamic and this wine comes from his share of the 18 ha he runs with his father Didier. Jonathan calls the area Death Valley because it looks out over the conventional, regimented, herbicide-dominated parcels of his neighbours – a vivid contrast to his own land. There’s some silex (‘gunflint’ to the English) in the soil here which gives the wine a slight smokiness – a smokiness which Richard allowed us to smell for ourselves by striking two pieces of flint together to get the tang of battle and the occasional spark. Although this is only the basic cuvée, this very recently bottled wine (still a suggestion of a spritz) had vibrant citrus fruit, great minerality and lots of energy.

It was paired with Pierre Martin’s Sancerre ‘Monts Damnés’ 2012. This wine –alone amongst those we drank on the night – is in very short supply. It comes from what is recognised as one of the two unofficial Grand Cru sites in Chavignol (also the appellation for the cheese we tasted on the night). The limestone slope is so named because it’s almost impossibly steep but when the vines get a grip they can express great minerality. This example had citrus and gooseberry on the nose with a touch of nettle. Bone dry but still with a sense of richness in the mouth.

For the next pair we moved into Chenin Blanc territory. These were two very different expressions  of what, for Richard, is and always has been the “greatest grape variety in the world”.  The first, a Vovray from Sébastien Brunet (who made the sparkling wine that opened the tasting) was the Vouvray ‘Renaissance’ Sec 2012. Brunet now has 15 ha of land in excellent sites which he is in the ‘process’ (since 2005) of converting to organic. This particular wine is dry (only 3 gsm of sugar) and had the classic Chenin nose of apples and pears plus a dash of lemon (and the touch of wet dog that always characterises Chenin for me). The apple / pear notes comes from the high levels of malic acid in Chenin, which also give it the capability to age almost endlessly. Richard advised drinking Vouvray either very young or after 15-20 years. ‘Spotty adolescence’ can last a long time for these wines but once through it they can age almost indefinitely (as members who sampled the 1926 Vouvray at a previous tasting will remember).  The apple notes also make Chenin an ideal match for the pork rillettes that Hilary Reid Evans had brought for us from Hardouin, Vouvray’s best traiteur (www.hardouin.fr).   

The second wine of the pair was Savennières ‘Les Genets’ 2011 from Damien Laureau. ‘Les Genets’ refers to the sprig of broom that also gave its name to the French-English Plantaganet royal family. This wine, grown only 5 miles from the Vouvray, springs from a different soil – the edge of the Massif Armorican. These effect of these ancient metamorphic rocks and a strongly oak-influenced vinification give a wine that is highly mineral, with intense honey and pears on the nose and an almost medicinal note. In the mouth it’s full and rich with fairly high alcohol . Older-style producers are still making a wine that needs a minimum of 10-15 years in bottle before drinking but the newer, Burgundian influenced producers such as Laureau are aiming for a more accessible style, though Savennières (the produce of a small area, with high intensity vinification and long maturation) will never be cheap. 

The red wines

First  up was a Pinot Noir 2011 IGP Puy de Dôme, from Cave St Verny. This wine is from what we could call the ‘unknown Loire’. The Auvergne is on the same parallel is Cote Rotie but whilst in pre-phylloxera days it was one of France’s largest vine growing areas it never recovered from that natural catastrophe which saw hundreds of thousands leave the land and head for Clermont-Ferrand or Paris (though the latter is still ‘export’ territory for most local vignerons. An energetic local co-op makes this light, pale cherry red and very appealing Pinot at a great price (for which see Richard’s offer). 

Then came two Cabernet Franc wines. The first was the Chinon ‘Le Logis de la Bouchardière’ 2012 from Bruno Sourdais. A deeper red, this wine has aromas of red fruit overlaid with mushroom, black pepper and a refreshing touch of stalkiness. Noticeably tannic, like most Cab Franc, this wine was nonetheless rich and ripe – a wine for early drinking, though it would certainly take 4 years of cellaring.

There is, Richard explained, no one single style of Chinon. It’s simply too big and too varied an area. The final red, another wine from Bruno Sourdais, was his Chinon ‘Le Chêne Vert’ 2011. Darker red, both more vinous and more minerally, had rounder tannins and a savoury feel in the mouth to balance the red fruit in the nose. Slightly older vines and more new oak push the price up a little but both wines represent good value for money.

In Conclusion…

Last wine of a wonderful evening was the Moulin Touchais 1983 Côteaux du Layon. This was an excellent example of the sweet wines for which the Côteaux de Layon are known.  It was deep gold with a honeyed nose and – initially – a slight sulphur tang. Concentration, great length and controlled power characterise these wines and the sulphur tang can be explained by the fact that the Touchais family (who recently ‘re-discovered’ 15,000 bottles of this  initially under-valued wine amongst the 2 million or so contents of their cellars) re-cork, add a touch of sulphur, capsule and label the bottles as and when they are ordered.

I hope this superb tasting will induce us to revisit the wines of the Loire. It certainly reconfirmed our view of Richard as one of the Club’s top presenters.

GH: 24/9/13