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Blanc
Al-ThR tasting several wines made from this, as I thought, unappreciated grape variety, I had two related feelings: the first was that I had made a mistake in choosing the subject of this month's wine column, and the second was an unpleasant one in my digestive tract. Almost all the white wines of central and northern France are particularly acid (Muscadet is an excep- tion), but the Chenin wines, especially when young, must be the most acid of all. Chemists will tell me that there are diffe- rent kinds of acidity, and wine-growers on the Moselle distinguish between Apfel- seiure (apple acidity or malic acid) and Weinseture (wine acidity), but whatever compound the fermented Chenin produces is the harshest and most raspingly rebarba- tive I have encountered since unwisely experimenting at school with concentrated hydrochloric. The Chenin does not even have a fruity aroma, like the almost equally acid Sauvignon: it tends to smell, as it tastes, chemical and repellent. At times, even, it carries an unmistakable suggestion of vomit.
In which case, why bother at all with such an unattractive subject? The first answer is that, like it or not, the Chenin is the most widely planted grape in the whole of the Loire valley, despite the additional hazard that it ripens two weeks later than other varieties like Sauvignon and Char- donnay. Growers of Chenin Blanc are in a Catch-22 situation: replanting a vineyard is a very costly operation, and if you grow Chenin you do not make enough money to be able to attempt it. Thus it continues to dominate the central Loire areas of Anjou and Touraine, as well as isolated outposts like the Coteaux du Loir to the north and the little VDQS district of Thouarsais to the south.
The second, somewhat more positive answer is that for all its shortcomings the Chenin is a versatile grape. It is equally good at producing dry and sweet wines, sparkling and still. The gparkling wines are perhaps the best commercial bet for the Chenin grower. Around the town of Saumur, chalk hills reminiscent of the champagne country are planted with Che- nin, rather than Chardonnay and Pinot Noir, to produce a clean, fresh, sparkling wine at half the price of champagne.
These pleasant but not very interesting sparkling wines are not, however, the ultimate justification for writing about Chenin Blanc. The real answer is that this vilified grape makes some of the best still wines, both sweet and dry, in France: it certainly makes the best wines of the Loire, of a far greater complexity than those fashionable upstarts from the extreme western and eastern limits of the valley, Muscadet and Sancerre. The sweet wines are perhaps more famil- iar: it has certainly been hard to miss the publicity campaign for J. Touchais's pro- lific sweet Anjou Blanc, Moulin Touchais. Doubts raised by the sudden discovery 01 millions of bottles of a wine never pro- duced in enormous quantities, and a rather heavy sweetness in the wine itself, do not affect the fact that vintages like 1959 and 1964 are good value: some of the older vintages, especially 1949, are very fine, and like all good sweet Loire wines age asto- nishingly slowly — more slowly than allY wine except madeira, which is almost equally acid. Moulin Touchais, however, despite the publicity, is by no means one of the hest sweet Loire wines. It carries only the simple appellation Anjou and so does not come from the favoured area of the Coteaux du Layon, let alone the two prime sites within that area, Quarts de Chaume and Bonnezeaux. There the Chenin Blanc, attacked by the noble rot, magically ac- quires the qualities of delicacy, elegance and fineness of balance whose lack it normally epitomises, and produces one of the world's greatest sweet wines, less rich than Sauternes but equally satisfying, and much less expensive.
On the other (north) side of the river, opposite Chaume, is the small commune of Savennieres, which produces the best drY white wine of the Loire, more refined than Vouvray, and, according to Gault et Mil" lau, one of the five best in France. The bank of volcanic debris, washed down the Loire from the Massif Central, on which these wines are grown gives them the depth of extract which the Chenin needs to counteract its harshness: the result is poss- ibly the most austere white wine in the world when young, which in time develops into one of the most satisfying. Good stockists of Chenin Blanc wines include Yapp Bros, Mere, Wilts (try their racy dry Thouarsais), Oddbins (an honest, well-priced selection) and Morris & Verdio of London (the superb Bonnezeaux Ch. de Fesles 1979).
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