Loire Trip

I hope you saw our recent Loire Valley brochure, and were lucky to grab the mixed case offered. At any rate, I thought the internet was a great chance to add some flesh to our recent trip there because there is much more to tell than we could ever manage in a brochure ... over 600 miles and 150 wines tasted, according to the odometer and my sometimes hazy notes!

Let's start at the Atlantic end around Nantes, and with a slight confession ... I've never been too big on Muscadet. I suppose it's from spending so much time in Bordeaux, where winemakers don't think their northern cousin worth a sniff, let alone a spit. They had a point. Had. So, hold your breath, because I intend to show you right now why Muscadet is a wine of the now, and this famous old region (and one of the earliest AOCs, 1936 rings a bell) is gathering a reputation as a place of innovation. Of course, you must choose the grower carefully, but many of these old dogs are learning new tricks and I've even picked up a few tips to take back to Bordeaux for our own Laithwaite Sauvignon. Won't the stiff Libournais love that!

The best writer in the business, Hugh Johnson, calls this region "Neptune's Vineyard", and the tart, blank-faced whites produced by the many laurel-resting makers are famously good with seafood caught around the Bay of Biscay, a frequent choice in fish restaurants all the way down the Atlantic coast through La Rochelle and Arcachon to Biarritz. While upstream Sancerre and Pouilly-Fumé angled their way to world renown, the Nantais caught fish. But something has changed for the very much better.

Before the trip, I caught up with 'gone native' Charles and Philippa, two old staffers from the Laithwaites shops, who moved to the Loire in the 1980s to set up a small wine business. They told me that of all the many wines they are given free by Loire producers, the Muscadets are favourite round the family dinner table. But their opinion is obviously dubious, because they traded in working with me in Reading for life in some old château outside the fortress walls of beautiful Chinon ... complete with turrets, and for less than the price of a leaky bedsit in Bracknell. Obviously dubious.

Where the Muscadet grower is motivated, I noticed the best and biggest noses along La Loire struggle to pick their wines apart from a Sancerre or Pouilly in blind tastings. Imagine how exciting that is for the elite of unfancied Muscadet ... surely recognition must be just around the corner? And so they keep putting in LOADS of work, in spite of the low prices the 'market' will bear.

Tracking down these growers, I flew to Nantes at some ungodly hour with a small team of my best Laithwaites people, to bring you back the most exciting bits of an unfolding story — before journos catch up and prices do the inevitable. Andrew, my wine-obsessed Australian nephew I've imported to help out with the writing at Laithwaites, Edel, a talented Irish lady we were fortunate enough to poach, who is the chef de design for all those colourful brochures to tempt you ... and a great photographer called Steven Morris, who the locals couldn't pick from a line up because his face was permanently glued to the back of the camera. Poor Steven hardly got a sip.

Over dinner, Charles had suggested Muscadet's unfashionable status might have something to do with the grape used, Melon de Bourgogne, originally from Burgundy but long ago exiled in favour of its glittering cousin, the Chardonnay grape. Many exiles come good, though, and with the intensely personal styles now appearing from the likes of Christophe Gadais and Jean Douillard, including oak barrels for some wines, the Melon is marching back to Burgundy ... in style and complexity at least!

Our first stop was with Jean Douillard, who is a bit of a hero of mine and likewise to many local winemakers. He's a pioneer here of Lutte Raisonnée, literally the 'reasoned fight'. Sounds a touch menacing, but really it's a return to the old way for Domaine de la Fruitière, getting out of the cellar, away from the chemistry sets and back into the vineyard — all year round. By way of example, he's trimmed the grass between his vine rows to about 50mm. Long enough that it soaks up the rain (grass being shallow-rooted compared to vines) to concentrate flavours in the grapes and encourage natural life in the soils, though short enough that it doesn't risk holding moisture near the grapes (avoiding the cursed rot).

Likewise he's stretching the height of his vines to increase photosynthesis while removing much of the higher foliage to keep that Atlantic breeze whisking through, just the tonic for grapes as it thickens the skins and literally blows the baddies away. Just quietly, that supposedly telltale iodine aroma in much bog-standard Muscadet is often just unhealthy grapes! A 'reasoned fight' ... and by early-birding in the vineyard, he doesn't need to intervene with sprays like the neighbours do and gets the Melon grape to sing with ripeness and zing. You reap what you sow. Not to mention harvesting at 5am, before the sun can burn the fresh mist off the vineyards. How he gets the kids out of bed, I've no idea.

All this is a change in the last five years and one you really must taste to understand. Ideally, in the company of Mme Douillard and her salty fish terrines, fresh Brittany oysters and spider crabs in beurre blanc. The Douillards also made a big feature of the local lettuce and samphire over lunch, with a delicious chive sauce.

Before I forget ... one clue to the ongoing potential of an estate are keen children. You may laugh, but I know from experience that top growers in Muscadet become disheartened when their children move to Tours or even Paris chasing careers in commerce, marketing, shiny things. When you've spent a hard life farming your vineyards and pulling the reputation of a place up by its bootstraps, I can understand why older growers sometimes let things slip when the kids run to the hills.

So in spite of his parent's embarrassment, I was happy to get a passionate lecture from the mini-Douillard on the future of Muscadet. Son comes back from wine college brimming with new ideas, and next thing you know Jean is invigorated and out in the vineyard all day long with his son, pruning, discussing, "sure, we can try that" ... until the sun's gone down and Mme Douillard is shouting at them across the vineyard because they're late for dinner ... again.

One for your shopping list: Jean's wine aged on its lees over the winter, called Sur Lie, is the pick of the bunch and has just won another top medal. Call 0870 444 8282 or order here online if you'd like a taste of Domaine de la Fruitière Sur Lie, and we'll check in the cellars for you. Oddly enough, Sur Lie is a new take on a very old tradition here, that of leaving the best stuff in barrel over the winter months to be enjoyed at the spring weddings. And a big step up in quality it is, too.

From Jean's table, the team drove to see Christophe Gadais and his family, outside the village of Saint-Fiacre in between the Sèvre Nantaise and Maine rivers — tributaries of the Loire. This little triangle is probably the best place for growing grapes in Muscadet, and has its own AOC ... Muscadet Sèvre et Maine. If you're a windmill fetishist (never met one but sure they exist), there are moulins as far as the eye can see, used as signalling towers by royalists after the Révolution.

Christophe spent 10 years working in Sancerre before returning to the family domaine in Saint-Fiacre in the mid 1990s. His dad still isn't convinced by the son's minerally, intense wines (what have the Sancerrois done to my boy?) but that's more to do with family dynamics than anything in the glass. Besides, deep down his dad is more interested in breeding old-fashioned carthorses, for which they've also won trophies!

To give you an idea of how good the Muscadet Sèvre et Maine is for grape growing, 85% of the village is under vine ... the highest percentage in France. The oldest vines of Domaine Gadais Père et Fils date back to 1929, and Christophe's grandad (second generation Gadais winemaker) was the first local to escape the clutches of négociants — who to this day have a monopoly on featureless Muscadet — and was also the first exporter — to New York in 1959.

A small aside, and news to me, is that the "vieilles vignes" tag on many local labels is not the quality indicator you might think. If you are talking 1970s vines, then all very well. But interestingly those planted in the 1960s were in a gold rush of "more, more, more", so they are higher-yielding versions of the Melon vines ... where old vine normally means better quality through lower yields, the younger ones are actually the better. As I said before, know your grower!



The vineyards and view of the two rivers from the high ridge behind the winery are amazing. Still more windmills. There's almost no soil here ... it's straight to rock, so perfect drainage and crisper, healthier grapes. And of course the Lutte Raisonnée is on the lips of everyone at Gadais, because they have a proud family name to protect and keen young sons who hope to better their father. Still, a 4am start is a 4am start, and Team Laithwaites are noticeably flagging by the end of the tastings!

I mentioned the "more, more, more" mentality ... Christophe loses his breezy manner to tell me a story ... he answered the phone one morning to a supermarket wine buyer (I'm not even going to bother the lawyers by asking if I can name which one). "What's your cheapest Muscadet?" asked the supermarket man. Christophe replied "in Saint-Fiacre, we are aiming for quality Muscadet" at which point the phone went dead. Good to see a supermarket approaching wine with the same pile-em-high mentality as they approach 'chicken' nuggets and toilet paper.

Meanwhile, Christophe is losing sleep because he thinks the world has gone mad ... but with more and more insiders discovering the new Muscadets like Christophe's own Grande Réserve du Moulin, I don't think he has too much to worry about.

I'm a convert, and I can't wait to tell the Bordelais where they're going wrong ...