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| Minière “Bulles de Minière” rouge VdF Thibaud Boudignon Rosé de Loire 2023 Chateau Yvonne Saumur blanc 2021 Olga Raffault “Les Barnabés” Chinon 2021 Julien Pineau “Les Sucettes á l’Aunis” VdF 2023 |
| As a kid I was deeply affected by Karen Carpenter, singing “rainy days and Mondays always get me down.” Mondays, I get it, as that’s the start of the work week and the end of the weekend, during when we try to pack in as much as we can (or simply vegetate and eat pizza, exhausted by it all) in the two days that our economic system meagerly allots to us—that’s the Faustian bargain we make with it. Yet rainy days, I loved them then and still do today unless I’m stuck in traffic on the 405. For tonight’s tasting, we’re pouring a flight of five Loire valley wines which you could enjoy while vegetating and eating pizza, but also with a range of savory, rainy day food or just with a cat or dog, sitting at your side.
Loire valley wines are a never-ending treasure chest, an effulgent crystal with many facets. Ranging from briny, mineral whites that make you fear in a lean, cool vintage, for your teeth enamel, ephemeral, nervy light reds made from the renascent grolleau grape, profound, chalk-grown chenin, which may or may not be fizzy, to structured, savory reds from Chinon, the heartland of cabernet franc, not to mention exquisite, long-lived sweet wines that no one buys, the Loire offers quite a wide spectrum of varied expressions, as well as a some of the most stimulating natural wines made in France today. We’re starting with a bone-dry sparkling red wine that feels like it should be fruity because it is so deeply pigmented, but is instead light and earthy, a touch austere. Then, a rosé from Thibaud Boudignon—a chenin specialist making very special chenin—but tonight we’re trying his dry rosé made mostly from cabernet franc. Following, a dry, chalk-grown super-mineral chenin that’s aged in a combination of barrel and amphora, and then a juicy pineau d’aunis/gamay blend from Julien Pineau, who farms the old Clos Roche Blanche property to good effect. Finally, a medium-bodied Chinon from a traditionalist, cabernet franc grown on sandy soil, yielding a fresh, less-tannic wine. |