down in the valley... the valley loire

Forgive me if this goes astray. I started the blog, sitting in front of a roaring fire with a glass of Vouvray, a chunk of double cream brie and a baguette of bread, and ended it with 2 packs of frozen veggies strapped to my bruised ribs, thanks to a soccer game.


The Loire Valley was once the county seat of the French Royal Family, up until the late 1500’s when Henri the IV decided to relocate the Royal Court to Paris (I doubt they had the amazing back alley Curry houses back then -- but I’m guessing he must have had some sort of good reason). Pre move to Paris the Loire Valley was a happening place! They were setting the bar in all things culture, art, architecture, and of course food. When Catherine di Midicis came to france she brought her arsenal of Italian Chef. The area remained the movers and the shakers of the Country until the court moved to Paris

After the move of the Royal Court, the Loire Valley lost it’s clout and it’s only been in the past 50 (and even more recently say 20 years here in USA) that the Loire Valley has re emerged from it’s local shell.

Farming has been a huge part of the Loire Valley for a long long time. Grapes in the area date back to the time of the first buildings of Chateaux dotting the hillsides. As time evolved the Loire Valley wines became the highest regarded and thanks in part to the longest river in France which shares the same name, getting the wine of the Loire Valley to everywhere else proved to be pretty easy. However, because of those trendy royals being what everyone wanted to be like, when they moved to Paris and gained access to other things and their focus shifted - so did the following publics.


Whine Wisdom: For as large as the Loire Valley is, only 1/3 of the area is AOC approved.

The entire Loire Valley is so big, you can split it up into 4 regions - to make disecting it a little easier.

First you got the Upper, that has a very continental climate and Sauvignon Blanc does really well there, also you will see Pinot Noir from this region - the Appellation names are the names of the small communities from which it comes.

Pouilly - Fume Whine Wisdoms: AOC status began in 1937, mostly Sauvignon Blanc, and the soil is a Clay-limestone mix. Fume (smoky) not because there is necessarily a smoky taste to the wine, but named for the smoke like appearance of fog that fingers its way across the vineyards. <- great party trivia!

Sancerre Whine Wisdoms: - Whites got AOC status in 1936, but reds took til 1959. Soil is mostly limestone with some clay and sloping.

Menetou - Salon Whine Wisdoms: AOC in 1959, wines and soil are a lot like Sancerre, but thought to be more focused and elegant.
Quincy Whine Wisdoms: AOC in 1936 - 2nd Appellation in France to be granted status. Soil is more Calcareous temps are a little cooler here too.

Reuilly Whine Wisdoms: Tiny tiny little area right outside of Quincy.


Then you got the Center of the valley -

Touraine makes a variety of wines. Sometimes in this area you will find wines blended from commune appellations and the wines are then given the appellation name of Touraine. Reds and whites are produced almost equally here.

Whine Wisdoms: When you see a Touraine label, you will also tend to see varietal. Looking at a label and it says Touraine Mousseaux? well, it’s made mostly of Chenin Blanc incase you were wondering and has bubbles!

Vouvray - Chenin Blanc is king here. The grape is made into several styles in this area.

Whine wisdoms: When it’s dry, it bears the name of it’s appellation Vouvray, when it’s sweet Vouvray Moelleux and when it’s bubbles Vouvray Mousseux

Chinon - mostly Cabernet Franc although some Cabernet Sauvignon is AOC as well. Light soft, and fruity - good table drink now with friends (or enemies) wines. Sandy gravel soil seems to be the primary ground here

Bourgueil - Much like Chinon, but the soils are more clay, which tends to make the wines a bit fuller in body. Same grapes grown as Chinon.

Anjou has 19 AOC appellations, and not I’m not listing them all! They also have generic Saumur - some names you will see from this region: Rose d Anjou, Cabernet d’Anjou and Cabernet de Saumur (the two Cab ones are actually Cabernet Franc)

Method Champenoise sparklers from this area can be fund under the names Saumur Mousseux, Saumur d’Origine and Anjou Mousseux. - Lots of grapes varieties are allowed into this arena, which is kinda shocking given some of the rules.

Savennieres - a Chenin Blanc (primary) white wine that is made to age. Possibly not something most of us think about when we are looking in the market for white wines, but Savennieres, will evolve over time in the bottle.

Coteaux de Layon - This area is restricted to sweet and semisweet wines from Botrytized Chenin Blanc grapes (another strict wine law hard at work!) Considered some of the best of the dessert wines of Europe.

Quarts de Chaume: A small area within Coteaux de Layon - essentially a single vineyard appellation with even more stringent standards on sugar, yield and alcohol level. Bonnezeaux is just like Quarts de Chaume, a little larger, just as strict but not as well known (yet)

Whine Wisdom: Depending on how deep your pockets are… don’t be snob and turn down the Coteaux de Layon - it could have been made with grapes from across the street of Quarts de Chaume!

4th you have Nantes. The climate is more Maritime, in thanks to the river, and several of the splits it does in this area, with fingers reaching out to the Atlantic ocean. This is where you find the dry white wine Muscadet. This is a pretty big region, and there is more Muscadet made than all the wines of Touraine and Anjou combined in any given year. The grape (Muscadet) has another name Melon de Bourgogne, but it will answer to either, and is easy to grow, gives you lots of fruit and makes itself into a wine that beautifully accompanies the cuisine of the Nantes area. (what more could you ask for?)

Whine Wisdom Nates: Most of the soil has clay mixed in with sand and gravel.


and with that, I'm going to go find my half drunk bottle of Vouvray, and enjoy it with another wedge of brie!

is it German? or is it French - let's split the difference and call it Alsatian

Alrighty! I am back on course to share with you all what I am going to -- from this point forward refer to as my "whine wisdom" you can take the h in wine how ever you see fit. *smirk*

Next stop on our Tour de France is Alsace. Wow, way to go Alsace in the area of local pride! I stand here (ok sit) slack jawed at the pride that's been cultivated over the years by the natives of this area. Thanks to all the conflicts of war - the peeps of Alsace, rather than aligning themselves French or German are 'repping for their Alsatian roots, and why is this? Well the area has been passed back and forth over the last 1000 years between Germany and France like a shuttle in a game of bloody badmitton. So is it German? or is it French? the end result (and by end I mean right now) well - both are reflected in the winemaking wisdom of the area.

These cats have it down! (well after 1000 years.. ) they speak their own language - Alsacein , which is a local dialect, not necessarily a mix of German and French, it's just their own jive. Much of their culture is a blend of the two, they get to take the best of each, language, art, culture -- and of course wine. Which is primarily French styled - meaning that it's dry, and meant to compliment foods, not be one of them wines that you can drink standing alone in a corner of a bar, talking to anyone who is drunk enough to listen, although many of the varietals have German origin. (There they go with that sharing thing again!)

To look around the region, you might expect Lancelot to come bounding through a small village with their timber cottages, stone churches and ruins of castles. Thankfully, although historic and beautiful they DO use modern method winemaking, but there is a respect to ancient tradition and like their melding of culture, there is melding of old and new in technique.

Here's your nickel tour history lesson from your's truely. Alsace was established as Frank teritory back in the 400 (AD) time period - back then, the Catholic Church (ya, they are still around!) called most of the winemaking shots- and well, hey they were some of the most educated - it was prolly a good thing. Now in the Mid 800's my pal Charlegmane lost part of his kingdom to Louis the German. I doubt it was a friendly game of cards he lost it over.. but needless to say - Alsace got handed over in the meantime to Germany. Now we time travel to the 17th century -- there is another war, it lasts around 30 years (or at least thats what they called it) and at the end France was once the owners of Alsace. (ping pong anyone?) Moving right along, it's the last 1800s and now Germany's back in control.

About this same time our friend Phylloxera sweeps through town and takes out all the nobel plantings. After Phylloxera's wipe out, the Germans decide to only replant the easy to farm flat land -- and I'm guessing they were worried "Phyll" might come back for another visit, they decided the safe route to take was planting a hardier variety that could be blended, and hopefully take the brunt and tolerate of any return infestations. 1918 rolled on in, and it came to the end of World War 1 and what of course happened then? Germany lost, and Alsace moved back to French control.. (are you lost yet? I think the score is 4-love)

This time France moved back into the winemaking area of Alsace with a vengence. Everything on the flats got ripped up, and so did everything on the hillside that had returned to wild - all were replanted with noble vinifera... and guess what? the wines were suddenly good again. (are you seeing a pattern here?)

Then World War 2 struck, and the Nazis took up residence in Alsace. Everything French was banned. (I wonder if weekly bathes were mandated? ok - kidding) Exporting was also forbidden (good bye outside revenue) to top it all off, everything made was shipped to Germany (they know a good thing apparently when the see it!)

Finally in 1945 - Alsace went back to France, quality returned and the '2nd cousin who lives in a trailer' variety of grapes were forebidden and after some practice and more procedure in 1962 - they were granted AOC status.

If it's one thing that I know about the French, it's they love them some Terrior. The Alsace area has (is it any surprise?) their own corner on the Terrior market. Floods, Faults, Freezes, Wars and Volcanos (and apparently French and Germans) have helped shape the landscape into many different soil formations (at least 20 - no I'm not naming them!)

Most of the wine (ok about 90% of it) is white. It's also the only AOC region that uses varietal naming. But because of this nifty difference, they didn't really have a use for classes of vineyards in Alsace either. Although (like with anything else) through the years, some people have felt their vineyards exceptional, and have pushed to showcase the top of the top vineyards (and why not? think of the marketing potential!)

Quick whine wisdom: the Noble varieties in Alsace: Riesling, Gerwertz, Pinot Gris, Pinot Noir (yes it's red) Muscat, Pinot Blanc, Chasselas & Sylvaner (ok and a little Pinot Auxerrois to blend with the Pinot Blanc, and a few of the cutting edgers have planted Chardonnay, but it's totally not approved yet...)

Since the 80's regs have come into place - Only 4 of the nobel varieties (Riesling, Gerwerts, Pinot Gris and Muscat can be planted in the classified vineyards (aka fancy pants or um Grand Cru I think is the offical name) Got the right grape? now make it yield less than 4 tons to an acre - and by the way, when the wines done, you can't blend it - it's gotta be one varietal only - Now THAT'S pretty strict if you ask me.

If you've ever picked up a bottle of wine from Alsace, you might have thought it to be German. Well, it LOOKS like a German wine in that package design (bottle) but does it quack like German wine -- I mean is it sweet? cause you may have seen the bottle and just instantantiously thought it to be sweet - based on judging the bottle by it's shoulders and color (not unlike judging a book by it's cover) -- Don't think yourself bad - most of us think of German wine as sweet (they aren't all, but it's easy to see why we might think that thaks to the majority of German wines exported to the US being sweet) ... what's my line here? oh, yeah, next time you see a bottle from Alsace, take a look and reconsider if you haven't tried it - you might like it... and they are great companions for food - so perhaps invite them to your next party.

More Whine Wisdom(s)

Most Alsace wines are chapitalized, thanks to low sugar at harvest but of course - French Law forbids Acidification, not that they need any thanks to Mother Nature.

Many use natural yeast in the fermentations - and ML ferment is typically only used on the Pinot NOir to soften and stablize it. The Alsatian style uses mostly stainless steel or old oak because they don't want the flavors of the terroir to compete with the oak. (of course this makes the question, how do they get old oak? and what did they use it on when it was new? well - I'll leave that question up to you to ponder)

Final whine wisdom of the day - we all know that a varietal wine has that grape (primarily in it - and apparently in the case of the AOC and Grand Crus in Alsace, ONLY that grape in it - so I won't bother you with details, a Pinot Blanc, is a Pinot Blanc.. But there are a few other styles of wines made in Alsace that are blends and not necessarily so dry. A little 411 on a few of them

Cremant d' Alsace: A sparkler mostly Pinot Blanc sometimes with a little Pinot Noir (really! a red one!) and some Riesling.

Vendange Tardive: What we could call a late harvest - the words mean "late picked" This too can only be made from a single Vintage, and has to be one of the following A-OK varieties -- Riesling, Gewurtz, Muscat or Pinot Gris -- also they can't add sugar to these gems, it's gotta be au natural.

Selection de Grains Nobel (SGN) These little gems have the wonderful noble rot in them (which if you have ever seen this - it's not pretty to look at infact, it makes you ask -- really? I'm gonna drink something that came from... THAT?) These wines are rich, and sweet, and little sticky and viscious and delish.

and that my friends is your nickel tour of Alsace -- stay tuned. I'll be back for more.

my take on the world of French Wines

Ok, as promised, a real wine blog- well kinda

Last week I started one of my new classes, it’s a class on French Wine. If you know me, then you know that in general, I’m not usually a big fan of French wines, so it’s with a bit of skepticism that I signed up, but chalked it up to a chance to learn something either about myself, or about wine that I didn’t know before. (oh yeah, and to give me topics to talk about when I blog too.. )

My goal is totry not to bore you to death, and perhaps be a little educational, or minimally entertaining. Think of my writing as a wine version of mental floss (yes, the incredible knowledge cheat sheets) - great little tidbits to pull out at a party when some wine snob is hogging too much of the conversation.

In no particular order, or continuity - some stuff to know about French Wine:

There are 8 indigenous varieties of “noble’ grapes in France. The white ones would be Chardonnay, Riesling, Sauvignon Blanc and Chenin Blanc. The reds Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Pinot Noir and Syrah. (There are a couple of others, but they are indigenous elsewhere also, so they don’t get the same kinda special treatment… Sangiovese, Nebbiolo, Tempranillo) Note - Riesling is also in Germany, but the French seem to still be nicer to it than other halfkids.

Less than 3% of the wine consumed in France is imported, so the French definitely understand the concept of drinking locally when it comes to supporting their own economy.

French wine law dates back eons - to Charles the Great (aka Charlemagne) who introduced the first wine laws. Charlemagne was king of the Franks and according to mental floss, it’s quite possible if your ancestry is European the, well you are related to Charles the Great (if you want to know more, check out their books and their website at http://www.mentalfloss.com/cheatsheets/?p=12 here is the link to the dirty details of Charlemagne. I happen to be a HUGE fan of their book of cheat sheets for Cocktail parties and it’s here, that I learned about Charlemagne, Don’t worry people, I do read more than just chick lit. But back to French Wine/History/Culture, yada yada…

Parts of the fancy pants laws, were to designate certain grapes to be grown in certain areas, and to typify the types of wine from the areas. This worked great until certain wine regions made outstanding wine, and the demand for them skyrocketed and greed reared it’s ugly head, as greed often does (is greed ever anything but ugly?)

The laws were intended to set quality standards and make people know what they were getting themselves into when they plunked their hard earned money (or traded their oxen or what ever) for some wine, but corruption happened, people were being sneaky and at one point the overage calculation of just Champagne alone was something like 11 million bottles. Ok, I’ve heard of fibbing, but wow.

This fibbing caused 2 pretty big uprisings in France all over wine. One happened in Champagne in 1911 and the other in Chateauneuf -du-pape in 1923.

Fancy vocabulary that wine snobs may though around:
Gout de terroir = taste of the soil
Chateauneuf -du -pape = new castle of the pope
INAO = Institut National des Appellations d’Origine
and here is a wikipedia version link incase you want more info.. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Institut_National_des_Appellations_d'Origine

4 quality levels used in all the regions of France
(The quick and dirty about each)
1) AOC (high quality, limited areas of designation) AOC stands for: Appellation d’Origine Controlee (yes, I’m missing accent marks.. I don’t accent in speaking or writing- sorry) Not that anyone will actually ask that, but hey, it could come up in random trivia some time, and you will thank me for know that.

To qualify to be a AOC wine you have to meet certain criteria:

100% of your grapes have to be appellation approved grapes (no sneaking in some Thompson seedless that’s growing around your arbors… or anything else into the mix)

The grapes have to be grown within the limited approved areas in the appellations, and if you really want to be fancy about it, then those grapes should be grown by highly rated vineyards aka vin des grands cru or vin des premier cru.

There is a minimum brix (sugar) and a min alcohol that must be achieved thru fermentation. (don’t forget that chapetalization is legal here though)

You gotta keep your crops small and tonnages low, because there is a certain amount of allowable yield for your crop.

You gotta use AOC winemaking methods (I’ll spare you)

You gotta bottle it in the same region as you grew it

Lastly - you gotta get it past a taste test panel of the INAO, the panel doesn’t judge if it’s good or not, just that the flavors are “typical” of the region.

1/3 of all French wine meets this criteria.


2) VDQS (quality wine) VDQS stands for vin delimite de qualite superieure (again missing accents)
This started in 1949. Same idea as the AOC, but not as strict, and only about 1% of wine falls into it.

3) Vin de Pays (Country wine) With this one, you gotta put a varietal and region on your label - but aside from that you can have as much variation in quality, style (and of course price) as you’d like. Putting the varietal and region on it, helps to make it marketable to us Americans who like that info on their label.. I can’t tell you how many people have tasted a proprietary named wine in front of me and asked.. But what is it? Apparently we can’t just like or dislike a wine, we need to know what went into it.

To fit this one, you gotta fall into 3 different region categories if you will
Regional,
Departmental
(which would be the American state equivalent) or Zonal, and there are about 100 or so Zones

Departmental and Zonal, aren’t too hard for us to equate into US wine logic (State or County, AVA etc) But Regional is a bit harder for us to grasp considering how large our country really is in comparison to France… I think it’s kinda funny, if you think about it in terms compared to here, can you imagine a label on a bottle that says Washington and California or Western US (regional)

4) Vin de table (table wine - duh)
Grapes grown anywhere in France. No Yield limits. No Varietal Specs
The French equivalent to our version of box wine, but I’m sure more eloquently packaged.

So you have these fancy laws that regulate what you can grow, and where you can grow it, and that your wines are typical of that region, so as a consumer, you can sorta generalize if you like or dislike something based on that info.. But no where in the law does it account for a wine’s quality. Some will say that thanks to the ratings AOC for example, it helps direct the consumer to higher quality, but like in life there is no guarantees.. This is one of the hugest weaknesses of the French wine law system - it does shelter and protect the growers and producers, but not the customer.
Another big fault? Say your grapes have a really good year, and you get more tonnage than you expected - well, your whole crop isn’t downgraded, only the part of the crop that went over tonnage. Which is like squeezing OJ into two glasses and saying that the one in the red cup is better than the one in the blue, even though it’s the juice of the same orange. Not really fair.

So next time you are stuck in a corner with a blowhard carrying on about Terroir, you can nod, smile and pretend to follow along and maybe even challenge them a little to see if you can throw ‘em off the blowhard trail. I’m betting your new knowledge of Charlemagne can do just that…