Anjou's Permanent Wine Revolution
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ANJOU’S PERMANENT WINE REVOLUTION For the past 30 years, Anjou has been one of France’s most dynamic wine regions, with Chenin Blanc—sweet and dry—the ever-evolving focus. Jacqueline Friedrich sets the exciting scene in the Loire, and profiles four of her favorite producers Photography by Jean-Yves Bardin njou is one of France’s most idiosyncratic wine regions. An ancient Roman province, Anjou essentially corresponds to the Maine-et-Loire department, though it briefly extends into the Deux-Sèvres and the Vienne departments as Awell. Located at the northern limits of French viticulture, the Maine-et-Loire is where the metamorphic soils of the Massif Amoricain meet the sedimentary soils of the Paris Basin. The difference is visible everywhere: Homes, castles, and churches in and around Angers and as far west as the Nantais are built from rough-hewn, mottled brown and black schist, hard sandstone, and quartz; cross into the provincial town of Gennes, just north of Saumur, and all is smooth cream and white tuffeau—whence the monikers Anjou Noir, where Angers is the point of reference, and Anjou Blanc for the southeast stretch whose point of reference is Saumur. It’s not (2016) surprising, then, that when most people say “Anjou,” they mean Anjou Noir, and when they say “Saumurois,” they are referring to “Anjou Blanc,” which has more in common with its eastern neighbor Chinon than it does with Angers. Given the radically different geology, it’s remarkable that both Anjou and the Saumurois favor the same grape varieties— Chenin Blanc and Cabernet Franc—though the wines made Behind the Wine Face The Anjou Untamed: from these grapes do differ, often dramatically. And where the Saumurois seem content to have four appellations (not including sparkling wines), the Angevins have 15 (not counting sparkling wines), as well as IGPs and Vins de France. There are appellations named for major Loire tributaries—the Layon, the Aubance—as well as numerous villages—Savennières, Brissac, Chaume—and privileged slopes—Bonnezeaux, Quarts de Chaume, Coulée de Serrant. There’s more on this below, but first some Anjou wine history. And by “Anjou,” I mean Anjou Noir. his book from Bardin, © Jean-Yves All photography 128 | THE WORLD OF FINE WINE | ISSUE 58 | 2017 THE WORLD OF FINE WINE | ISSUE 58 | 2017 | 129 feature / Jacqueline Friedrich / Anjou’s Permanent Wine Revolution The beginning of ceaseless evolution One of the most dramatic aspects of The first time I met Vincent Ogereau was in August 1989 at Le Fief de Vignes, the leading wine shop in Nantes. I was talking the permanent revolution has been with Jean-François Dubreuil, one of the managers of the shop, nothing less than the birth of serious when Vincent and his wife Catherine came in. Jean-François Anjou blanc sec. Stagnation in the introduced them, saying, “Vincent is one of the current generation of winemakers revolutionizing Anjou.” market for sweet wines is nothing Fellow revolutionaries included Victor Lebreton, Jean-Yves new, but the current market has Lebreton, Didier Richou, Mark Angeli, Philippe Cady, Philippe spurred winemakers to concentrate Delesvaux, and Vincent Lecointre. Many of them had studied viticulture and enology in Bordeaux or in local schools like on developing very serious dry the Lycée Agricole de Montreuil-Bellay. They had done stints Chenins outside Savennières in other wine regions. They were replanting the best slopes, lowering yields, renewing cellars, harvesting grapes for their botrytis-affected grapes, and those that were simply overripe. best wines by hand and, for their sweet wines, by successive Sometime in the mid-1990s, producers actively sought passes through the vineyards. botrytis, and today it is frequently noble rot that defines the Among the four producers profiled below, I’ve selected Anjou liquoreux. (As delicious as these wines are, I remain a Ogereau to represent Phase 1. But he, now working with big fan of liquoreux with a high proportion of shriveled son Emmanuel, embodies equally well the ongoing revolution grapes.) Whatever the ripeness makeup, Anjou’s liquoreux are —the ceaseless evolution of winemaking in Anjou. I also now much sweeter than in the ’90s, when a good year would selected Christophe Daviau, who joined the family domaine result in a Layon with, say, 60 or 70 grams of residual sugar per in 1989 and might be said to represent Phase 1.5. The rest of the liter. Today, that might apply to the lightest bottling. For a sense profiled producers work in the Coteaux du Layon—which of the sweetness of the more prestigious bottlings, multiply covers a vast swath of Anjou—whereas Daviau’s domaine is in those figures by two or even three. the much smaller Coteaux de l’Aubance (more on this below). One of the most dramatic aspects of the permanent Eddy and Milene Oosterlinck-Bracke (of Domaine de Juchepie) revolution has been nothing less than the birth of serious Anjou and Thomas and Charlotte Carsin are outsiders who chose to blanc sec. Stagnation in the market for sweet wines is nothing make wine in Anjou. And the Carsins, who created their new, but the current market has spurred winemakers to domaine in 2008, more or less exemplify the youthful, concentrate on developing very serious dry Chenins outside naturalist-ish, amphorae-ifying generation. Savennières. And producers now often make at least as many Historic highs and lows ubiquitous in Paris bistros as Muscadet and Beaujolais, Before getting to the profiles, I’d like to outline the current different bottlings of dry Chenin as they do of sweet. Alas, if only In the 6th century, Apollonius sang of an Angers that “Bacchus becoming the vinous identity of the region as a whole, to state of the ongoing revolution in broad strokes. Viticulture: they could find a name more dignified than Anjou Blanc. The had showered with his gifts.” The Plantagenet dynasty (1154– the detriment of the great liquoreux. Hillside vineyards were increasingly organic, biodynamic, and some form of naturalista; best suggestion to come along—and it’s not bad at all—would be 1485) popularized Anjou’s crus among the English nobility. abandoned, and flatlands were planted with Grolleau and lower yields; later harvesting; a higher degree of phenolic to do as the Vouvrillons do and simply denote the wines as, say, And the great agricultural expert Olivier de Serres (1539–1619) Cabernet. Then the postwar decline in the popularity of ripeness. Vinification: greater use of wild yeasts; less reliance Coteaux du Layon sec or Quarts de Chaume sec. declared that Anjou was so “well endowed with fine white sweet wines struck the rosés, as well as the liquoreux. And a on, or total abandonment of, additives, particularly sulfur wines and clairets that it seemed good father Noah had chosen dry rosé—Rosé de Loire—was created. But the region was left dioxide, the use of which is now generally limited to a DOMAINE VINCENT OGEREAU it as the land in which to make his masterpieces and to teach without an identity. “medicinal” dose at bottling. Producers are now streamlining My first visit to Vincent Ogereau’s domaine was in September his science to its inhabitants.” To survive, vintners sold their wines door to door. Vincent the range of their wines. They may be producing as many 1989. A fourth-generation winemaker who had studied at the Curnonsky, Prince of Gastronomes and Angevin by birth, Ogereau (profiled below) spoke of his father’s experience: cuvées as before, but increasingly the focus is on Chenin— Lycée d’Agriculture in Beaufort (Bordeaux), he had taken over extolled the local wines thus: “Our Angevin wines are among “We had trouble selling our wines. Anjou had a tradition of in particular, dry Chenin. On a smaller scale of importance is the family’s 20ha (50 acres) of vines in and around St-Lambert. the noblest in the world; they are part of the history of France. direct sales. We’re a leader in direct sales to clients. Producers the delightful evolution of Cabernet d’Anjou. Now made from He was one of the many young vignerons working with They incorporate the douceur angevine, that gentleness that went on tour to visit clients—mostly in the west of France—in ripe grapes and with less residual sugar, it’s a lovely apéritif consulting enologist Didier Coutenceaux, and his cellar looked never degenerates into blandness; that sweetness that does Brittany and La Sarthe. Our wines were not known. Our and would nicely accompany a fruit tart. like an experimental lab bubbling with microvinifications. In not exclude force… Tasting them, one imagines strolling with clients asked for a range of styles, so we met their demands But I digress. It really must be said that the story—not to one corner, part of the first tri of Layon St-Lambert was a beautiful young blonde along a path of flowering linden and made everything. Clients always found at least one wine mention the glory—of Anjou wine is Chenin Blanc. And never fermenting in new oak barrels. The rest of that tri had been trees as the sun sets in all its sumptuousness” (my translation). they liked. These people had only Anjou wines in their cellars more so than today. Indeed, the greatest changes in Anjou wine divided in three to try out different approaches to skin contact. Curnonsky died in 1956. Given the state of the Angevin because we could provide them with anything: two rosés, concern the cultivation and vinification of Chenin. In the bad Ogereau subsequently bottled three versions of Layon that year, vineyards at that time, he must have been sipping pre- a Cab d’Anjou and a Rose de Loire; an Anjou blanc, which was old days—and even in the getting-better days—you couldn’t each a gorgeous, nuanced wine.