The Real Wine Fair and other treats this week

the Real Wine Fair: 17th and 18th April, Tobacco Dock

Now back from my Scottish sojourn, which included the memorable beach wedding on Colonsay, I'm now back in London and looking forward to a busy week of tastings.

The Real Wine Fair opens tomorrow with its public day. This year I am unable to make the Sunday but look forward to Monday but first a quick visit to the Thorman Hunt tasting in the city as they have a good list of Loire producers including Yannick Amirault and Château de Villeneuve. 

Tuesday sees the launch of a book on the wines of India as well as J&B's tasting, who again have some interesting wines on their list – including Lucien Crochet, Vincent Pinard and Jacky Blot. 

Thursday will be a day of fizz – a tasting of Bairrada (Portugal) sparkling wines made from grape variety – Baga – followed by Crémants from the Loire. 

There are several Crémant Loire producers showing at the event: Bouvet-Ladubay, Langlois-Chateau, Veuve-Amiot, La Guillaumerie and Domäne Vincendeau.    

The week closes with the Big Fortified Tasting, which is a highlight as the tasting year. I suspect as usual I will tend to major on the Sherries but I should also take a look at some Madeira.     

Liv Vincendeau

A young Crémant producer showing 

her wines in London this week.

   

#loirevelo: some memories – many good; a few bad

Group photo@Château de Targe

Cycling: very well looked after by super-fit Christophe Marzais of Détours de Loire (35 Rue Charles Gilles, Tours – 02.47.61.22.23) and a revelation to see how many and how good the cycle paths are, especially along the Loire from Tours towards Vouvray and to the east of Saumur.

Four good visits: Marc Brédif, especially the 1959; Clos Cristal especially PetNat Clos Tirmouches and 2010 Les Murs' Saumur-Champigny; Château de Targé, especially the 2011 Cabernet de Saumur Rosé, 2010 and 2009 Saumur-Champigny classic cuvée and the 2009 Cuvée Ferry (needing more time); and Langlois-Chateau, especially 2005 Vieilles Vignes Saumur Blanc with a few more years in bottle and 2005 Vintage Crémant de Loire.
      
Vitiloire 2012: enjoyable despite the heat (around 30˚C). Great atmosphere and good to see so many people enjoying Loire wines.

Dinner at Le Théleme, 30 Rue Charles Gilles, Tours.

Sunday lunch at L'Hélianthe, Ruelle Antoine Cristal, 49730 Turquant. Have long wanted to eat here and it lived up to expectations despite being very busy with everyone celebrating La Fête des Mères. Only one negative – why serve good Coteaux de l'Aubance from Domaine de Bablut in silly little flutes? 

The view of the Château de Saumur at dinner on the Sunday night and some of the wines: Charles Joguet – 2009 Les Charmes and the two Les Varennes du Grand Clos 2005 and, especially, the 2009. Also 2010 Les Poyeux from the Vignerons de Saint-Cyr, a good example of a single vineyard wine from this well run cave co-opérative.  

Good that the Saumur-Champigny appellation has banned the use of weedkillers in the vineyards except under the vines. The rest of the vineyard has to be either grassed over or cultivated. It would be even better if they banned weedkillers altogether as producers in Savennières Les Roches aux Moines have done but this is a considerable step in the right direction. Unfortunately Brussels has now decided that such measures can't be put into the rules of an appellation because allegedly they don't directly affect the taste of the wine. Presumably Brussels is not favour of aiding biodiversity. These new rules for Saumur-Champigny were agreed in 2008. Marie-Anne Simmoneau of the Syndicat des Producteurs de Saumur-Champigny told me that today they probably wouldn't be able to get a similar measure ratified.    

Illuminated Château de Saumur + full moon

and the less good: 

Le Chien Jaune, 74 Rue Bernard Palissy, Tours. Appallingly slow service on Saturday lunchtime. Can they not cope with a group of 10 people? Almost certainly would have been better off grabbing something to eat within Vitiloire enclosure.  

Le Duplex, 18 Place de la Résistance, Tours  – recently opened restaurant in the centre of Tours. A triumph of design over taste and style, although the main course of quail and sweetbreads was good. Minuses: mineral and austere 2011 Menetou-Salon from Domaine de Chatenoy served foie gras, over-warm 2010 Chinon from Olga Raffault and small ISO glasses. Also apparently refused to allow Charles Sydney to serve the wines he had brought with him with the dinner. Won't be rushing back. 

Remarkably numerous and vicious mosquitos (single vineyard variety!) on cycle path close to the Thouet. Was attacked by a good 10-15 while trying to free Miss Vicky's bike of mud (or was it terroir?) 

Pity Andrew Barrow wasn't able to join us due to an accident on the way to the airport. Hope his stiff neck is now better. 

Hail struck Chacé, Varrains, Souzay-Champigny and Parnay on Wednesday 30th May.  

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My thanks to Alex Chardonnereau and Hilkka Chartier (Interloire) for organising a really fun trip. The first press trip I have ever been on when the participants may have lost weight rather than gained it and almost certainly finished it fitter than they were when they started! 

Some good reads

One of the galeries in the cellars of Langlois-Chateau

Firstly a piece from Chris Kissack on a tasting of Vins Clairs at Langlois-Chateau at the beginning of February – a soirée during this year's Salon des Vins de Loire.

Then a couple of recent pieces from Bertrand Celce's wine terroir site – one on Mathieu Coste in the Coteaux du Giennois and one on Jacky Blot's Domaine de la Butte in Bourgueil. 

To finish there is an excellent and detailed blog on the construction of the new tramway in Tours. Called un tram pour Tours it is written by 19 year old Arnoul Maffre. Article on him here.

Some photos

 

2006 Salon des Vins de Loire: stand of a bottle designer

Once again trying to sort out a few photos. These are from the 2006 Salon des Vins Loire and then from a tasting of vins clairs in the cellars of Langlois-Chateau.

Baumard poster

Saumur-Champigny – Esprit d'un terroir

Bernard Chéreau (Chéreau-Carré) with Annie and Aimé, who used to own the Hotel du Mail in Angers

Langlois-Chateau: Crémant de Loire rosé

Rue des Lapins – one of the galleries@Langlois-Chateau

2001 Quadrille, Langlois-Chateau

 

 To celebrate Jim's Loire notching up 100,000 visits we opened a bottle of 2001 Quadrille from Langlois-Chateau. This is Langlois-Chateau's top Crémant de Loire and we were kindly given a bottle of the 2001 to take away following the vins clair tasting and dinner at St Hilaire-St Florent at the beginning of February during the Salon des Vins de Loire. 

This is a blend of Chenin Blanc, Chardonnay, Cabernet and and Cabernet Sauvignon and it spends more than four years on its lees in Langlois' cellars. It is the long aging that gives Quadrille its attractive rich, toasty, brioche character that is nicely off-set by good acidity and length. 

Salon: Day One – Vins Clair tasting@Langlois-Chateau

 

Poster@Langlois-Chateau

1 February 2010

Monday evening was spent down at Langlois-Chateau in St. Hilaire-St Florent (Saumur) for a vins clairs tasting and a rapid look at the new winery transforming the buildings that they bought a couple of years ago from Ackerman-Rémy Pannier.

In the cellars of Langlois-Chateau

 

One of the tasting stations: terroir Le Puy Notre Dame (Chenin)

François-Régis de Fougeroux (Langlois-Chateau)

 

Dinner: Elizabeth Ferguson (marketing manager Mentzendorff ) and Ray O'Connor (International Wine Challenge)

A trio from Langlois-Chateau

Founded in 1885 Langlois-Chateau has been Champagne Bollinger's outpost in the Loire since 1973. They were the first significant Saumur sparkling wine house to dropping Saumur mousseux for the more rigorous rules of Crémant de Loire. I recently received three wines from the L-C stable to taste:

2004 Vieilles Vignes, Saumur Blanc
2007 La Bretonnière Saumur-Champigny
Carmin Dry Vin mousseux de qualité

Last evening I tasted the 2004 VV Saumur and the 2007 Saumur-Champigny and tried them with with papillottes of salmon* – the fish on a julienne of vegetables – with each parcel moistened with a little of the white Saumur before cooking them quickly in a hot oven just to the point when the salmon was slightly underdone but wonderfully juicy.

The barrel-fermented Langlois Vieilles Vignes can be one of the best Saumur Blancs. The 2004 may yet be but at the moment the oak, at least initially, is too dominant although underneath the oak there is good depth of flavour. Even though I decanted the VV to let it open up, the oak clashed with the fish. Instead it was La Bretonnière, lightly chilled, that was the better match with the dish. This 2007 is leafy, herbal and quite light entirely in the style of the vintage and it worked well with the salmon. 2007 is just the sort of Loire vintage where the reds can be a very good match with fish, particularly strong flavoured and meaty types like salmon, tuna, swordfish and sea bass. I'd drink this 2007 in the next couple of years. Best served cool cellar temperature, which in modern flats and houses means a short spell in the fridge.

12 September

Carmin Dry vin mousseux de qualité

The story goes that when the application was made for the sparkling Saumur appellation, the sparkling wine houses of Saumur forgot to include their sparkling reds in the application. Had they remembered, would Saumur's red sparkling wines have been granted appellation status? Frankly, I've no idea. Carmin, like Bouvet's Rubis and Gratien's Cardinale, is a fun wine especially because it's different – at least it was before the arrival in Europe of Australian sparkling Shiraz.

Carmin Dry is an attractively foamy red full of blackberry and blackcurrant fruit. A couple of glasses make an attractive aperitif, otherwise Langlois suggest drinking it with a red fruit dessert. I take the Dry in the Carmin name to mean dry in the sense that this is sweeter than brut. Certainly there is a marked touch of sweetness – at the level of sec-tendre or a lower level sweetness of demi-sec. A red sparkling wine without quite a high level of dosage is thought to be too acid and tannic – echoes of red Vinho Verde!

Trying the remains of the 2004 VV this evening the oak has moderated and a mineral Chenin character is now coming to the fore. I'd suggest that the 2004 really needs another couple of years in bottle to give the oak time to fully marry and realise its potential – alternatively decant a number of hours before drinking.

Samples kindly supplied by Mentzendoff.
* Fish from Moxon's – a very good fishshop in Lordship Lane, East Dulwich SE22.

A few snippets: Le Lézard Vert, Carmin, Grapevine

Le Lézard Vert, Epeigné-les-Bois

Le Lézard Vert in Epeigné-les-Bois sold
The café-épicerie, Le Lézard Vert, in Epeigné-les-Bois is changing hands with the new proprietors, who are from Paris, taking over from Clémence Bordet in early August. The new owners are from Paris and apparently intend to turn the current café-épicerie into a restaurant, café and épicerie. This is potentially very good news for the village as it has been a struggle for Clémence to look after her young son – born in November 2008 – and keep Le Lézard Vert going, while living in Montrichard.

Although Epeigné-les-Bois has only around 375 inhabitants, it still has its own café-épicerie, post office and more recently own library. There was a time during the early 1980s that the village shop closed. Fortunately the then mayor, Jacky Marchais, and his comité had the vision to set up a shop funded in part by the commune, assisted by regional grants. Sadly there are many French villages with no facilities – villages where it must be very difficult to have any community spirit as there are no meeting places; villages where, to get the bread in the morning, you have to drive four or five kilometres to the nearest bakery, depôt de pain or supermarket.

The terrasse of Le Lézard Vert

A few years ago, when Anita, the long-time owner of the village bar, retired, the commune bought the licence. Otherwise it would have been lost. The village shop was then merged with the café, whose premises were renovated.

Michel Mergot (left), the current maire of Epeigné-les-Bois carrying on the legacy of his predecessor, Jacky Marchaux (right)

This news should have resonance beyond the limits of the commune of Epeigné-les-Bois. If the commerce of a village dies, the elderly are left isolated as few villages in the French countryside are served by public transport and car use is inevitably increased. Years ago the French government recognised the dangers of rural depopulation, especially in remote areas like the Lozére.

I wish the new venture well – it will not be easy but the village needs it to succeed. Further posts once I have more details.

Le Lezard Vert, 8 Rue de la Fontaine, 37150 Epeigné-les-Bois Tel: 02.47.23.87.84

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The more time you spend in the Loire, the less you know?
This morning I got a message from Bob Parsons of Alberta, Canada. Like me Bob is both a member of Tom Cannavan’s wine forum on his wine-pages site and has a considerable affection for Loire wines. He mentioned the Langlois-Chateau 100% sparkling Cab Franc. I have to admit that I didn’t know that that Langlois made such a wine, which they call Cuvée Carmin. They have certainly never shown it to me on their stand at the Loire Salon (which is not to say it wasn't there) nor on visits to their premises in Saint-Florent.

I have drunk the sparkling reds from Gratien-et-Meyer (Cuvée Cardinal) and Bouvet-Ladubay (Cuvée Rubis). Fun and pleasant enough but curiosities. They have to be labelled as a vin mousseux de qualité as there is no appellation for sparkling red Saumur. I have no idea how long Langlois have been making Carmin.

Perhaps I had assumed that as Langlois-Chateau is part of Bollinger they were too serious a company to make a sparkling red Loire!

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Grapevine: Les Caves de Pyrène

As I have commented here before Douglas Wregg's Grapevine blog on Les Caves site is frequently well worth reading. Here are some relatively recent thoughts from Douglas:

'Fighting for the honour of France

Caparisons are odorous, he malapropped wisely. When I read the admonition “Watch out France” I bridle, because I know that some whippersnapper country or region, inebriated on a surfeit of self-administered puffing, is trying to provoke a particularly pointless argument. All this stems from man’s predilection for creating lists, establishing hierarchies and gnawing on statistics like a ravenous capybara.

You could drown under a Niagara of Nielsen stats. I am so bored with who is top and who is not. Like politicians at election time, the export boards of each country spin the figures to claim success. Everyone’s a winner. But everyone takes a different relative starting point to develop their respective claims. France is caricatured as the arrogant frog king out of touch with the citizens of his realm; having lived for years in the chateau on the hill he is not aware that the divine right to be number one has been usurped.

By all accounts France isn’t France in all its shining diversity; it is fustian, the stain-glassed parliament of privilege, pomposity, posing and laurel-resting. One accusation leveled against France is that growers and journalists propagate the quasi-religious notion of terroir, suggesting that their vineyards are therefore somehow nearer to godliness and that the French are somehow more in love with the mythology of how unique their wines are. Come on, terroir isn’t up there or out there; it is as real as the rocks beneath your feet and every country seeks to promote its own strong regional and microclimatic identity for its vineyards and growers.'

Continued here

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I'm happy to go along with much of what Douglas says here, especially about the realty of terroir, which should surely be self-evident to any gardener even if they only have a couple of window boxes. To an extent the French bear part of the blame by giving the impression that terroir ends at Calais.

I'm less in full agreement with Douglas when he comments: 'the lack of a coherent marketing plan is what the critics are really having a pop at. I, for one, say thank god.' D'accord over the marketing plan but I can certainly do without the recent synthetic and misleading hysteria over the EU's proposal to permit the blending of red and white wines to make rosé. And week after their victory French producers are bleating that they should be allowed to distil excess wine ...

Of course, the French producers imported by Les Caves de Pyrène are far too good to worry about competition.

Douglas remarks that 'so some of the appellation regulations are a bit bonkers (the intention to protect and promote regionality is a laudable one)'.

Again I would agree that protecting and promoting regionality is laudable as is the protection of a name. However, I increasingly believe that some of the most bonkers examples of appellation law has nothing to do with regionality or typicité (whatever that may mean) but is down to politics – down to an established appellation ensuring that newly promoted ACs to do not provide unwanted competition. How else can you explain the bizarre appellation rule for the Coteaux du Giennois that prohibits them from making a 100% Pinot Noir, which had previously been their best red when they were a more humble VDQS?

Loire bubbles in the Nouvelle Republique

Bottles of Crémant de Loire rosé in the cellars of Langlois-Chateau

An article on the success of Loire sparkling wines in the Sunday edition of the Nouvelle Republique – unfortunately rather long on poetic gas and short on facts. The headline cites rapidly expanding sales but gives no details. An average price of 5-6 € in the supermarkets with 10€ as a maximum price virtually the only figures given along with praise for its rapport-qualité-prix.

With 5-6€ as an average price it is difficult to see how the producer makes much money or can afford to take the measures necessary to produce quality sparkling wine. Strip out sales tax at 19.6% and you come down close to 4€ on a 5€, include the retail’s margin, the cost of the bottle, capsule, cork and the minimum of nine months sur latte and how much is left to cover the base wine?

Furthermore the permitted yields for sparkling Saumur or Vouvray are significantly lower than the very generous yields allowed in Champagne. 65 hl/ha is permitted for Montlouis, Saumur, Touraine and Vouvray, while for Crémant de Loire it is only 50 hl/ha.

One of the tunnels in the cellars of Langlois-Chateau

Once you start looking at the price of the top Loire sparkling wines then the price is substantially higher than the 5-6€ supermarket average. A bottle of Bouvet-Ladubay’s Crémant de Loire is 9.98€ from their site, Langlois-Chateau’s is 11.40€ with Bouvet’s Cuvée Trésor at 14.50€.

One encouraging sign is that for the 2007/2008 campaign the sales of Crémant finally overtook those of appellations like Saumur and Vouvray. The Crémant de Loire appellation was created in 1975, so it has taken more than 30 years for it to become the established leading Loire sparkling wine appellation with its stricter rules – lower yields, hand picking into small cases, less juice allowed to be extracted from 100 kilos of grapes and a longer minimum time sur latte.

The Crémant appellations in Alsace and Burgundy date from the same time and here they replaced the existing sparkling wine appellations. With just one regional sparking wine appellation, this enabled Alsace and Burgundy to both increase the quality and communicate a coherent message to consumers.

The Loire ought either to have done the same or to have tightened up the regulations for the other appellations, which would have boosted quality and made it possible to give a more convincing message about the overall quality of Loire sparkling wines.

Langlois Chateau ads: no longer cutting edge!

Adverts from the past – 1934 and 1931 respectively.
Would be unthinkable to use the ad below today

From the Langlois-Chateau cellars at Saint-Hilaire-Saint-Florent