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| Bodet-Herold “Physis” Brut Nature 2021 Domaine Bretaudeau “Theia” Muscadet 2024 Roman Guiberteau Saumur blanc 2024 Fouet “La Rouge et Noire” Saumur-Champigny 2019 Philippe Alliet Chinon 2023 |
| Folks often ask me, “What is your favorite wine?” I can point to the first wine that caused the scales to fall from my eyes, many years ago: a half-emptied bottle of Lafarge’s Clos du Château des Ducs that an unnamed wine importer sent back to the kitchen where I worked in the early 80s. I had zero conception about this wine, zero knowledge of Burgundy, much less grand cru Burgundy, or really any wine in general, but lord, it fucked me up. True, it’s not a wine that I can afford to drink today, yet the memory of it lives on in my heart. Is it my favorite wine? I dunno; my favorite wine? That’s a painful question to respond to, akin to asking to pick amongst my children (ok, I’m childless), so the answer to the question of what’s my favorite wine is “yes.” Am I eating, and if so, what? Is it warm out, or cool? Am I in a foul temper, or giddy? All of these factors affect my desires for wine, and what distinguishes wine from soda. No one elegiacally murmurs about the 2022 vintage of Dr. Pepper, or how a Dr. Pepper changes as the can is opened and the soda is exposed to air, or how Dr. Pepper works wonderfully with a fatty cut of meat. Paraphrasing Heraclitus, with wine, at least the non-industrial stuff we like to stock and drink, you can never step into the same stream twice.
One part of France that can satisfy all of my animal urges is the Loire Valley, a territory from which I can and do drink nearly every week. The Loire is a river whose headwaters are in eastern France, adjacent to the Rhône valley, and it flows westward to the Atlantic. It bisects the heart of the country, and there you will find a wide spectrum of wines, from briny, mineral whites grown near Nantes, well-crafted sparkling wine, both méthode traditionelle and pét-nat, as well as savory, earthy reds, mostly from cabernet franc, but also gamay, grolleau, and pineau d’aunis, and don’t get me started with the late-harvest sweet wines (which I adore, but no one else seems to, so I rarely stock them). You will find majestic Châteaux there, as well as a troglodytic village and a monstrous, medieval, gluttonous giant living in the town of Chinon. The Loire is both a loosely defined territory and a sensibility, a weltanschauung. Tonight, we’re pouring five wines from the Loire—not as a survey, an impossible task for such a differentiated wine space, but just as an expression of some of what we love about the wines from this region. We’re starting with some fizz, as we like to do, a complex blend of both red and white grapes, brut nature (no added sugar), and then a stunningly mineral white from a grower who is pushing the edge of the envelope with what to expect and demand from the largely deprecated grape, melon de bourgogne. To follow, another dry white, this from chenin blanc, equally as mineral, but with a delightful, bruised apple finish that makes you want ever more. To finish, two savory, cabernet franc-based wines, one from Chinon, the home of Gargantua, the other from Saumur-Champigny. |