| | | | | | | Before we start to talk about the wines of Anjou, I think that I should state that we are totally and absolutely
biased about Anjou. We love the region, the people, the food and wine. To put it into perspective, when
we recently sold our first French property, in the Coteaux du Layon, after featuring on the TV. Programme "I Want That House," we proceeded to criss-cross the country to find another. The Massif, Provence, Burgundy, Corsica, the Pyrénées, etc., but then we bought our current house - 20kms from the first - as nowhere else simply came close to having that same feeling of "The Douceur Angevine". .
Brian | | | |
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| | | | | | | | There are 26 wine appellations in the region of Anjou-Saumur, covering everything from sparkling through reds, both elegant and gusty, rosés, to exquisite 'vins molleux'. Anjou has a long, long wine making history and King René, in the 15th Century said:-
" De tous les vins dans mon cellier, Anjou, Touraine et Provence, le meilleur est le premier".
It is true that, because of the incessant demand for cheaply produced rosé in the seventies and eightees, winemakers somewhat lost their way and they felt compelled to produce thin, overstretched and oversulphered wine to meet the demand. But the intrinsic skills and the quality of the terroir soon resurfaced and the region is now the most vibrant in all of the Loire, with a second generation of graduate winemakers building on the advances of their parents. What is sad is that several "expert" winewriters, who really should know better, still talk about the wine as it was, not as it is now, and the world-beating wines from Savenniére and the Layon are often ignored altogether.
For example, this is Jilly Goolden, "...most whites and rosés are mean, wretched individuals, victims of overproduction and over-sulphering!" Really? Well I have a glass of Anjou blanc in front of me now, poured from a bottle filled from a tank in a local chais and it is bursting with fruit balanced by that typical Chenin acidity. Now I admit that this is a young, fresh wine from last years vendange but recently, when we made our successful offer to buy "Le Clos des Guyons", the retiring vigneron, Monsieur Guyon, produced a 1947 demi-sec Coteaux de Saumur to celebrate the occasion and, with tears in his eyes, explained that it was one of only eleven bottles remaining from the exceptional
vintage of that year, and the first cuveé made by his
father, at Le Domaine des Guyon, after six years in a
German POW Camp. It was, without doubt, the most complex, multi-layered wine that I have ever drunk and simply impossible to find the words to describe it.
Perhaps 'Exquisite' is the only one that fits.
So, my message to Jilly is this:- given that your quote was written a long time ago, put aside your bottle of
industrial, Australian Cabernet , and pay another visit to Anjou. I think you will be staggered. | | | |
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| | | | | | Now compare this, a quote from
Jaqueline Friedrich, one of America's foremost wine writers and an
authority on the Loire. In fact her love of Loire wines proved so great that she now lives here:-
"... I discovered wines I had never heard of and rediscovered wines I thought I knew...and became
convinced that the Loire was France's last great unexplored viticultural region, with a broader diversity of wine and a greater assemblage of charming ones than any other I can think of ...... but the revolution in quality, far from over, has made the Loire one of the most exciting regions in France".
Who is right, you can decide, but don't expect me to be unbiased!
Bon Degustations!! | | | |
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