2012 Salon des Vins de Loire: just a few more portraits

 Julien Bresteau (La Grange aux Belles, Anjou): above and below

 

Véronique Taluau (Taluau et Foltzenlogel)

 Yannick Amirault (Bourgueil and Saint-Nicolas-de-Bourgueil)

 Pierre Carbonnier, writer and journalist

2012 Salon des Vins de Loire: more portraits

Sébastien David: Bourgueil

Philippe Boucard: Lamé Delisle Boucard, Bourgueil

Alexandre Monmousseau, Château Gaudrelle, Vouvray

Bertrand Minchin, La Tour Saint Martin, Menetou-Salon and Valençay


... et quelle surprise!

Joël Taluau (Taluau et Foltzenlogel), Saint-Nicolas de Bourgueil

Thierry Foltzenlogel (Taluau et Foltzenlogel)


Comte Henry d'Assay, Château de Tracy


Charlotte Carsin, Domaine du Clos de l'Elu, Saint-Aubin-de-Luigné

Salon des Vins de Loire + Les Salons-off: stop the blame game and talk!

Empty aisle@the 2102 Salon des Vins de Loire yesterday mid-morning

The official press release from the 2012 edition of the Salon des Vins de Loire announced a fall of between 15%-20% in the number of visitors and blamed the cold weather:


Coup de Froid à Angers
‘C’est sous la neige que le salon des Vins de Loire a ouvert ses portes lundi. Cette première journée du salon, habituellement jour clé, a été coupe d’environ 700 visiteurs. Les autres jours n’ont pas rattrapé ce retard. Le salon qui ferne ces portes ce soir, announce d’ores et déjà une baisse de frequentation qui devait être comprise entre 15 et 20%. Les conditions climatiques delicates, les conditions de circulations difficiles, ont surtout affecté les acheteurs CHR (café-hotel-restaurant) du grand-ouest ainsi qu’un petit nombre d’acheteurs étrangers de proximité (Belgique et Angelterre) qui fréquentent fidèlement le salon.’


There is no doubt that the freezing and snowy conditions had a considerable impact on the number of visitors at this year's Salon des Vins de Loire – the 25th edition. It is, however, far from the whole story. As widely predicted the failure of the various Salons-off and the Salon des Vins de Loire to coordinate their events and produce a coherent programme for visitors has proved disastrous. One has to hope this failure will not prove to be suicidal. (See my open letter to Loire organisers: December 2011).


Unfortunately each side blames the other for the week's gap this year between the Salons-Off (last weekend of January) and the Salon des Vins de Loire (6th-8th February. Over its 25 years the Salon start date has ranged between 29th January (1990) to 6th-8th February (2006 and 2012). This year the Salon might well have been better advised to opt for 30th January - 1st February as they did in 1995 and 2011. This would have produced a much more coherent programme for foreign visitors who could have started at Millésime Bio (23rd-25th January) then moved north for the various Salons-Off and stayed on for the 2012 Salon des Vins de Loire. This month also sees Vinisud in Montpellier – 20th-22nd. There were undoubtedly foreign visitors, for example Trevor Gulliver (HG Wines), a group of 20 American importers amongst them Louis Dressner Selections and Alice Feiring, who went to the various Salons-Off and then headed home before the Salon des Vins opened.

But this is all past and the essential now is that the various people organising these events stop sniping at and blaming each other and instead sit down and sort out a coherent programme for 2013. Otherwise the Loire and its producers will be the loser.


There is little time to lose for although some producers like the Vacherons (Sancerre) were happy with the quality of the people they had seen at the Salon they were other exhibitors who were disappointed and were wondering whether they would return next year or whether they wouldn't do better concentrating on fairs like Prowein. Don't wait – talk!


If there is a compelling and coherent programme for 2013, why the Salon might even manage to persuade a UK wine journalist with a column in one of our national papers to attend – the first time for at least 10 years.

The last morning of the Salon is always less busy than the first two days but yesterday mid-morning was particularly quiet 

By coincidence Vincent Pousson has a post on the same theme on his blog with respect to Vinisud and its various Salons-Off. See here.  

2012 Salon des Vins de Loire: a few portraits

 François Audebert: Audebert et Fils

 Frédéric Brochet, Ampelidae

 François-Xavier (FX) Barc (Complices de Loire)

Pascal Delaunay (Château Putille) 

 Matthieu Vallée (Château Yvonne, Saumur and Saumur-Champigny) 

Sébastien Treuillet (Pouilly-Fumé)

Vincent Siret-Courtaud (Quincy and Châteameillant)

My most interesting wine of Loire Salon 2012: Climat No 2

Climat No2, Vin de France, Lionel Gosseaume

Lionel Gosseaume (Stand H137) has finally bottled his Meslier Saint-François, an old grape from Touraine which has virtually disappeared. It can be very productive and once used to be exported to Germany to make sparkling wine because of its high acidity. Lionel has blended his Meslier Saint-François, whose yield he limited to 45 hl/ha, with an equal amount of Sauvignon Blanc. It was aged for two years in an old foudre. Climat No2 has rich, very ripe opulent fruit but well balanced with marked acidity and is fascinatingly different. Very limited production – only 2000 bottles.    

 Cathy Henton (The Tasting Room) helping out on Lionel's stand

Salon des Vins de Loire 2012: tastings 4.2.2012

 The Hotel du Mail, Angers – our traditional base

A good day's tasting yesterday: we started with Jean-Hubert Lebreton at Domaine des Rochelles and then onto Domaine Richou with Didier and Damien Richou. The star of the morning's tastings were the 2010 sweet wines – both domaines are in the Coteaux de L'Aubance. Then it was back to Angers to collect Chris Kissack (The Wine Doctor) before heading out for a collective tasting at the Domaine de la Bergerie with Vincent and Catherine Ogereau (Domaine Ogereau), Château Pierre-Bise (Claude and Joëlle Papin) and Domaine de la Bergerie (Yves and Marie-Annick Guégniard). This was followed by a great dinner@La Table de la Bergerie, which is attached to the domaine and is run by their son in law – David Guitton. (This will be covered in another post.)

Jean-Hubert Lebreton: Domaine des Rochelles

An old water heater@Domaine des Rochelles – it has pride of place in their tasting room 

Didier Richou (Domaine Richou)

Damien Richou

Tom King (RSJ Restaurant)@Domaine Richou

Light snow in Anjou

 A light dusting of snow in the Coteaux de l'Aubance from Brissac-Quincé

Left London early this morning to head out to the Loire for the annual Salon des Vins de Loire in Angers, which starts on Monday. No snow in northern France – Calais/Rouen – but from Le Mans onwards the remains of the fall from last Monday. As in the UK it is intensely cold here.   

Vignobles Daviau, Brissac-Quincé

Looking towards the small River l'Aubance – in the trees at the bottom of the valley

Across the vineyards

Frozen cat wanting to be let into the warm

Angry and frustrated François Chidaine resigns from InterLoire's executive committee

François Chidaine  

François Chidaine, a leading figure in Loire viticulture with vineyards in Montlouis, Touraine and Vouvray, has resigned from InterLoire’s executive citing fundamental disagreements. Interloire promote the wines of the Pays Nantais, Anjou-Saumur and Touraine.

“Interloire’s budget is 8.5 million euros and the return is not very good – the money is misused,” said Chidaine.  ‘Take the 900,000 budget to promote Touraine wine – what do they do with it? They promote Touraine primeur every November but the fashion for nouveau is over. There are other events such as a press tasting in Paris but these events have very little impact.”

“The promotion of Touraine wines has no clear objectives and no focus. Overall there is too much emphasis on the generic image of the Loire and not enough on the individual appellations.”

In 2011 the Bourgueil appellation left Interloire and the Fiefs Vendéens, a small appellation, will be leaving at the end of next year. 

Chidaine is also very critical that Interloire has not insisted on changes to the format of the annual Salon des Vins de Loire. “The Salon needs to evolve otherwise it will die,” said Chidaine. “Although the Salon brand name is owned by the Angers Parc des Expositions, Interloire puts up most of the finance, so it should demand that things change.”

Like many Loire vignerons, Chidaine is angry and finds it incomprehensible that this year there is a week between the four Salons-off – la Dive Bouteille, Renaissance tasting, the first Loire bio salon and the Puzelat and friends event – and the Salon des Vins de Loire. The off-events take place this weekend running through to Monday 30th January. Whereas the Salon des Vins de Loire is from 6th to 8th February.  

Many of the Loire producers I spoke to at Millésime Bio hope that next year all of these events will be held over the same period, so that people travelling from a distance do not have to choose between the Salons-Off and the Salon des Vins de Loire. This disharmony only hurts the Loire. 

“Interloire is supposed to bring coherence! The organization has become a big bureaucratic machine and doesn’t deliver value for money,” says Chidaine.

Jean-Martin Dutour, president of InterLoire, responded: “I can only regret that François has resigned in the middle of his term of office at a time when InterLoire is making important changes. In response to the demand for change we are refocusing on the appellations in terms of promotion and in the way Interloire works. This takes a long time but there will be results before the summer.

“Interloire promotes numerous events – details can be found on the local press and on our website.”  

Jean-Martin Dutour 

Jean-Martin Dutour’s response in full

François CHIDAINE a effectivement participé de plus prés aux travaux de l’interprofession en 2011 comme membre du Comité Exécutif. Nous saluons cette disponibilité et j’en profite pour remercier les élus qui donnent bénévolement de leur temp aux organisations collectives comme INTERLOIRE. Rien ne pourrait avancer sans leur engagement.

Je ne peux que regretter que François quitte le Conseil Exécutif en cours de mandat, au tournant d’une mutation importante d’INTERLOIRE.

A la demande des élus représentants la filière, nous avons entamé un travail profond de réorientation de l’interprofession vers les Appellations, réorientation de la communication mais aussi de notre fonctionnement. Ce travail est important. Il ne peut pas se faire sans la participation active des représentants de ces appellations. Il mobilise en particulier toute l’énergie des personnels d’INTERLOIRE. Ce travail est long mais aboutira avant l’été.

Pour autant INTERLOIRE continue à mettre en œuvre de très nombreuses actions. Il faudrait des dizaines de pages pour les exposer ici. Ces actions sont présentées largement lors des multiples réunions de la filières, par la presse spécialisée locale, sur le site internet d’Interloire ...

Plus spécifiquement pour l’appellation MONTLOUIS, je ne leur ferai pas l’affront de répondre à leurs interrogations par voie de presse ! Nous avons beaucoup discuté avec François et, à son invitation, je viendrai à la prochaine Assemblée Générale de l’Appellation pour évoquer avec eux le détail de tous ces points.'


30th January 2012: Chris Kissack, the Wine Doctor, runs a critical eye here over the Salon des Vins de Loire. 

2012 Wine Blog Trophy – Salon des Vins de Loire

2012 Wine Blog Trophy

The 2012 Wine Blog Trophy organised by the Salon des Vins de Loire and InterLoire has the theme  « Mon bar à vins, les vins de Loire et moi » en partenariat avec un bar à vin. See details here. 

As a past winner of one of these awards I must say that I'm disappointed to see the reduction of the Wine Blog Trophy to a single theme. When the Wine Blog Trophy was launched in 2007 it was well ahead of its time and much more ambitious. One of the awards was for Best International Wine Blog, which was won by Vinography that is based in San Francisco. Perhaps given the explosion of blogs it was inevitable that Salon's Wine Blog Trophy had to become less ambitious. The recent rétroplanning with dates of entry and voting pushed back a week suggests some lack of organisation, especially as this edition was launched in December.  

Anyway enough carping! There are now 13 blog posts entered for this edition and internet voting has been extended to Tuesday 17th January. The blog posts are here. They include one from David Cobbold on Les 5 du Vin blog of which I'm a founder member. You still have 11 days in which to cast your vote.       

  

Open letter to Loire organisers – please get your act together for 2013!

X

Tasting@Le Greniers St. Jean sadly impossible in 2012

To:


Renaissance des appellations: Mark et Martial Angeli, Virginie Joly, Guy Bossard, Philippe Gourdon, Richard Leroy.

La Dive Bouteille: Sylvie Augereau

Salon Les Pénitents: Thierry and Jean-Marie Puzelat, Pierre-Olivier Bonhomme

Salon des Vins de Loire: Jean-Louis David (Interloire), Benoît Roumet (Bureau du Centre) and Clair de Lune

This morning I received an invitation to the annual Renaissance tasting (28th and 29th January 2012) to be held at the Greniers St Jean, Angers. I would love to go but unfortunately this year it will be impossible. Just as it will be impossible for me to go to La Dive Bouteille (29th-30th January) at Château de Bréze as well as the new Salon Les Pénitents starring the Puzelats and friends. Very unfortunate as I am sure all of these events will be very worthwhile.

Normally these various Salons are the weekend before the Salon des Vins Loire. Unfortunately the Salon des Vins de Loire is a week later in 2012 – 6th-8th February, while all the other 'associated' or 'Salons off' are on 28th-30th January. There is no way that I can travel to Angers for the 28th-30th and then return for the Salon des Vins de Loire. I suspect that this is the same for many lovers of Loire wines, who are based outside the valley.

Without apportioning blame for the lack of co-ordination in 2012, can I make a plea for some joined up thinking and better co-ordination in 2013. Please hold all the events over the same time period in 2013. I'm aware that not all of you share the philosophy or aims but this failure of co-ordination hurts the Loire.

Sites:

Renaissance des appellations
La Dive Bouteille

Salon Les Pénitents

Salon des Vins de Loire

Pithon-Paillé: forthcoming dates

A number of dates from Pithon-Paillé including Portes Ouvertes on Sunday 5th February at their winery in Saint-Lambert-du-Lattay

Madame, Monsieur

Voici quelques dates de salons professionnels où nous serons présents début 2012 et où vous pourrez déguster nos vins.
 

Nous sommes à la fois Négociant-Eleveur et  Vigneron  dans les appellations Anjou, Savennières, Coteaux du Layon, Quarts de Chaume, Crémant de Loire, Chinon, Bourgueil, Saumur-Champigny… Nous travaillons en culture biologique.

Notre cave sera ouverte le dimanche 5 février de 10 à 18 heures, la veille du Salon des vins de Loire, pour une dégustation de nos vins et une visite de notre cave. Nous sommes à 25 kms au sud d’Angers, A 87 – sortie 24. Nous aurons quelques amis vignerons qui vous ferons aussi déguster leur production. Un casse-croute sera à votre disposition.

Si vous ne pouvez venir à ces manifestations, contactez nous.

Cordialement
Jo Pithon – Wendy Paillé

Dear Sir and Madam,

Here are the dates of the professional wine salons early 2012 where we will be presenting our wines.

We are wine growers and Negociant-Eleveur (grape buyers) and work with the following appellations:  Anjou, Savennières, Coteaux du Layon, Quarts de Chaume, Crémant de Loire, Chinon, Bourgueil and Saumur Champigny. We proudly work in organic methods certified by Qualité France.  

Our cellar will be open on Sunday 25thFebruary from 10 am to 6pm for a tasting of our wines and a visit of our cellar. We are located 25 kilometers (15 miles) south of Angers on the A87- exit 24. We will be hosting winemaking friends who will propose their wines also for a tasting. There will be snacks available for your convenience.

If you are unable to make it to any of the salons and would like more information about our wines, feel free to contact us.  

Yours sincerely

Jo Pithon – Wendy Paillé

2012

Janvier          Du lundi 23 au mercredi 25   

Millésime  Bio, Montpellier Hall 10 – 306
 

Janvier          Samedi 28 et dimanche 29                       

Renaissance des Appellations      Angers

(sur la table de Richard Leroy)

Février          Dimanche 5                                                    

Ouverture de notre cave à Saint Lambert
February      Sunday 5th                                                    

Our cellar will be open in St Lambert du Lattay

Février          Du lundi 6 au mercredi  8                          

Salon des Vins de Loire, Angers Stand M 297
February:     Monday 6 to Wednesday 8th

Jim's Loire is happy to post details of Portes Ouvertes etc. from other Loire vignerons.

Salon des Vins de Loire 2012: 6th-8th February – note change of date

The 26th edition of the Salon des Vins de Loire will held at the Parc des Expositions in Angers from Monday 6th to Wednesday 8th February 2012. The Salon remains France's only annual regional wine fair and is a great opportunity to taste wines from the whole of the Loire Valley from the Côtes de Forez right through to the Pays Nantais and the Fiefs Vendéens. 

Please note that the dates of the Salon have changed. Earlier it was announced that as in 2011 the Salon would open on Sunday 5th February. This is no longer the case and the Salon will revert to its traditional opening on the Monday.    

Greniers Saint Jean 2012: 28th and 29th January 2012! Why not a week later?

 Mark Angeli@Greniers Saint-Jean 2011

Mark and Martial Angeli kindly sent me an invitation to the 2012 tasting at the Greniers Saint Jean. As in previous years it will be over the last weekend of January. Unlike previous years I sadly won't be there as the Salon des Vins de Loire will be a week later this coming year: 5th-7th February.

Pity they didn't change the date as I imagine there will be many people who normally attend this tasting because its timing links in with the Salon.  

Report here on the 2011 late January tasting at the Greniers St Jean.

2011 Salon des Vins de Loire

The 2011 edition of the Salon des Vins de Loire attracted over 9000 visitors for 594 exhibitors. The 2012 edition will again start on a Sunday and will run from Sunday 5th February to Tuesday 7th.