Wehlener Sonnenuhr – early morning 10th June 2006

The world famous Mosel vineyards are threatened by the building of a new motorway bridge. Here is an opportunity to add your name to the petition protesting against the construction.

Message from Sarah Washington:
'A small practical task to help save the Mosel valley and Riesling vines from desecration.

The German gourmet magazine DER FEINSCHMECKER has begun an online petition to help save the valley and vines from the politician's bulldozers and concrete.

On the left hand side of the following web page you will find an English translation of the petition and instructions on how to fill it in. The petition is further down in the centre of the same page.

http://www.b50neu.de/feinschm_e.html

You have until the 1st of December to sign the petition and circulate this link wildly. (After so doing you will accrue undying appreciation from all corners of the planet.)

News in brief:

Building work is moving ahead in several places (digging holes and clearing land). To counter this the debate is finally hotting up here in Germany. On Tuesday 3rd November the story was covered on the highly respected investigative news show Frontal21: http://frontal21.zdf.de/ZDFde/inhalt/13/0,1872,7921069,00.html'

Related articles

Jancis Robinson MW: Please fight Mosel madness 11 May 2009
Jancis Robinson MW: Last chance to stop the bridge 17 August 2009
Mike Steinberger (Slate: 10th September 2009): I'm tasting tar, traffic cones, motor oil...

Echoes from the New York Times of an earlier fight to save the vineyards of Vouvray from the TGV. The plan to build a cutting through the vineyards was abandoned. Instead the line was moved a little further east and sent through a tunnel with the tracks laid on a rubber carpet so that bottles of Vouvray being stored above would not be shaken.

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• A tragedy unfolds in Germany's Mosel region (wineanorak.com)

Hugh Johnson’s Wine Companion 6th edition, Mitchell Beazley £40, $US60

Hugh Johnson and Jancis Robinson: The Concise World Atlas of Wine, Mitchell Beazley £18.99, $US29.99

Hugh Johnson’s Pocket Wine 2010, Mitchell Beazley, £10.99

Francis Gimblett: In and Out of Africa – in search of Gérard Depardieu, The Wine Adventurer Press, £7.99

Hugh Johnson’s Wine Companion 6th edition, Mitchell Beazley £40, $US60, 672 pages (publication date: 7th September 2009)

This sixth edition of Hugh’s Wine Companion, which was first published in 1983, has been revised and updated by Stephen Brook. Subtitled The Encylopedia of Wines, Vineyards and Wine revising such a book virtually single-handed in today’s wine world is a huge and daunting undertaking.

When I receive any new book I naturally turn first to the Loire section, assuming that’s relevant – not even I expect to see the Loire covered in a book on Argentina!

So far I have only had time for a quick look through the Loire section and particularly at the selected producers, who are assessed on a scale of one (sound and steady wines) to four stars (exceptionally fine or great quality, consistent over many vintages). The following estates are given four stars for all or part of their production: Coulée de Serrant, Philippe Delesvaux, Château de Fesles, Clos Naudin (Philippe Foreau) and Didier Dagueneau.

Overall I wouldn’t argue with the assessments given to the producers selected, nor the selection itself given that space is, of course, limited. I would, however, have made Clos Rougeard (Les Frères Foucault) a four star producer, especially given their consistently high quality over many years. I noted the comment that Baron Patrick Ladoucette’s ‘Pouilly-Fumé wines are inexplicably expensive, and always have been.

Inevitably there are some minor errors mainly relating to changes in ownership:

Saint-Pourçain is in the process of being promoted from VDQS to AC – awaiting the appropriate Minister to flourish their pen over the document. (I’m sure this news came through after the Companion went to print.)

The Coteaux de l’Aubance AC is for sweet wines only not off-dry whites. The appellation rules require that the grape must should have 230 grams of sugar before any chaptalisation (added sugar) and after fermentation the wine must have a minimum of 11% alcohol and 34 grams of residual sugar. (Quite why producers are still allowed to add sugar when making sweet wine with an AC is completely beyond my understanding but I digress.........)

Muscadet négociant, Marcel Sautejeau, is no longer family run – it has been bought by Castel. Nor is Sauvion et Fils still family owned – bought by Grands Chais de France at the end of 2007.

Château de Fesles is no longer owned by Bernard Germain – it was bought in 2008 by Grands Chai de France. Château de la Roulerie is now owned by Philippe Germain, a son of Bernard.

Raymond Raffault of Domaine du Raifault (Savigny-en-Véron) unfortunately died of cancer a number of years ago and this Chinon estate is now run by Julien Raffault.

Sadly the wines of Château de Chenonceau are no longer made at the château but by Bourgrier. This is a pity not because Bougrier make bad wines but that as vines have been part of the Château de Chenonceau, at least since the time of François 1, and it was one of the first places in Touraine where Chenin Blanc was planted it would be good if the link with the past history was maintained.

Pascal Cotat is based in Sancerre not Chavignol, although the vineyards are in Chavignol.

•

Hugh Johnson and Jancis Robinson: The Concise World Atlas of Wine, Mitchell Beazley £18.99, $US29.99, 352 pages (publication date: 7th September 2009)
This is the first time that Hugh’s famous atlas has appeared in a paperback version. Described as concise, so that this is a more portable version of the full-sized atlas, concision has come at the expense of photos and wine labels rather than the maps and the text.

First published in 1971, the Atlas has long been one of my favourite wine books and I’m sure I will find this new concise edition useful.

A small quibble in the Loire section – Anthony Hwang bought Domaine Huet in 2003 (correct in the Companion) not in 2005 as asserted by the Atlas. I have a rather larger quibble, however, on the assessment of Menetou-Salon – ‘The best can certainly rival the laziest exponents of its neighbour to the east Sancerre.’ This underestimates the quality of the best Menetou-Salon from producers like La Tour Saint-Martin, Henry Pellé, Prieure de Saint-Cérols, Domaine de Chatenoy and others. They are way better than bottles from Sancerre’s ‘laziest exponents’. The sentence seems more to have been written for effect, although, of course, it is always difficult to sum up in the very few words available.

Hugh Johnson’s Pocket Wine 2010, Mitchell Beazley, £10.99, 320 pages (publication date: 7th September 2009)
I cannot make any comment or complaint about the Loire entries here as I’m responsible for revising them. I’ll leave others to throw stones!

Francis Gimblett: In and Out of Africa – in search of Gérard Depardieu, The Wine Adventurer Press, £7.99
I'm including this self-published travel book to the vineyards of North Africa on the most nebulous of excuses – Gérard Depardieu owns Château de Tigné in the Layon. Not that Francis Gimblett searches for Gérard in the Loire. Instead he was inspired by tasting Gérard's new Moroccan red on a TV programme to set off in a Land Rover to discover the vineyards of North Africa.

The book is an amusing and fun read with a number of one liners, or extended on liners in this case: 'One producer cited global warming as a reason for beginning to make red wine in England; though on tasting his Pinot Noir – the experience not unlike crashing face-first from a bicycle into a patch of nettles ('rather herbaceous', I think he put it). He and his travelllng companion, Philip, get into a number of scrapes, so it is far from a standard wine book.

In and Out of Africa can be bought on-line from http://www.thewineadventurer.com/

Francis Gimblett and Philip@the Vintners' Hall launch party 20th October 2009

Francis accompanied by Philip held a launch party recently at the Vintners’ Hall in London and bravely put on a tasting of around 50 wines from Tunisia, Morocco and Algeria. Unfortunately the majority rather confirmed the view that North Africa is too hot to make wine that is attractive to drink. The selection from Algeria was particularly poor.

••

Taste Languedoc blog
Well-known wine writer and author Rosemary George MW has recently launched a blog on the wines of the Languedoc. She has been visiting the Languedoc since 1979 and has a house down there near Pézenas, so you can be assured that the blog will be authoritative. The url is http://www.tastelanguedoc.blogspot.com/

(Winter sunrise at Saumur, taken from the Quai
close to the Hotel Anne d'Anjou.)

I decide it is finally time to put together a website concentrating on Loire wines. Initially this will be through these notes, while I put together a more ambitious site aiming in time to cover all of the Loire wine regions and a number of its producers. I don’t, however, have the time or the ambition to cover them all.

My interest in the Loire and its wines was kindled by visit and tasting with Gaston Huet in late August 1979. Carole, my partner, and I had spent five weeks driving around France and Italy covering some 6500 miles in a Renault 5. We were on our way back home to London but wanted to visit Vouvray to taste its sweet wines. We both taught in a comprehensive school in Southwark, then part of the Inner London Education Authority. I had no inkling that nine years later I would change my life and start writing about wine.

Clutching the then current edition of Hugh Johnson’s The World Atlas of Wine, which recommended the wines of Gaston Huet, we searched the by-ways of Vouvray looking for Le Haut Lieu. In those days there was no sign only the name carved in the limestone gateway. We wandered into the courtyard of Le Haut Lieu, an attractive manor house. It hadn’t occurred to us that we might need to make an appointment but we were in luck as Gaston Huet was around and had time to give us a tasting.

We sat with Gaston in a comfortable room in the Haut-Lieu sipping a 1966 moelleux from the special Vouvray glasses with a small dish of walnuts and attempted to converse in our then very limited French. Even though this was the very late 1970s the price list still had 1966, 1964 and, I think, 1961 moelleux on it. He was charming and we must have spent half and hour or more with him. We selected five bottles of moelleux from 1964 and 1961 – we didn’t have much space in the motor, having already bought some wine in Bordeaux and the Rhône, and at that time you could only bring back into the UK a small amount of wine before paying duty and vat on it. It wasn’t until we got back to London that we discovered that Gaston Huet had given us an additional bottle.

The Loire nearly Savigny-en-Véron

My interest in the Loire continued to grow and in 1987, with a group of friends, we bought a house in a small village in eastern Touraine in the Cher Valley. The next year in August I left teaching following the abolition of the Inner London Education Authority. The abolition meant that the special project I had been working on ceased and I had to choose whether I would return to classroom teaching or do something different. As I had a friend, who had become publisher of the now long deceased Taste magazine, I decided that I would start writing about wine, with the thought that I could always return to teaching if things didn’t work out.

In late 1988 had a chance meeting with David Rowe, who had recently been appointed editor of Decanter, at a smart dinner organised by the Sherry Institute at Mosimann’s. We chatted about what I was doing. At this stage, although I had written several articles for Taste, none of my pieces actually appeared because of the long lead-in times, so some minor embroidering was necessary – glossing over this. To my surprise and delight David asked me whether I would write for Decanter. The first Decanter piece I wrote was a follow on from this dinner at Mosimann’s – suggesting Sherries to go with recipes provided by food writer Jill Cox.

The Loire@Saint-Satur

Soon after David Rowe commissioned me to write a piece on Muscadet, which in those days was still fashionable with vast UK sales, and in February 1989 Carole and I spent four days in the Pays Nantais visiting producers, including Jean-Ernest Sauvion of Château du Cléray, Louis Métaireau, Chereau-Carré at Château de Chasseloir, the Marquis Robert de Goulaine at Château de Goulaine, Jacques Guindon (Muscadet Coteaux du Loire and Coteaux d’Ancenis and a meeting with Jean-Luc Blanchard, long-time export director of Donatien Bahuaud. It was an intensive but fascinating visit and a steep learning curve for me for I knew little about how wine was made and my French was extremely limited. Among the many things I learnt was that well-made Muscadet, contrary to popular belief, could age well.

Looking back after nearly twenty years after my first visit to Muscadet much has changed. Following the severe frost of April 1991 Muscadet has has been through severe problems and, with the upsurge of wines from outside Europe, has ceased to be fashionable. The quality of Muscadet, however, is better than it was. Back in 1988 the négociants were strong in the Pays Nantais and all were locally owned. Since then a number of businesses have changed hands with control moving to pan-France companies like Castel Frères, who bought Sautejeau-Beauquin in 2007, Grands Chais de France who bought Vinival in July 2004 and Gabriel Meffre, who bought Donatien Bahuaud in 2005. More recently Maison Sauvion and Château du Cléray were sold by the Sauvion family to Grands Chais de France in November 2007. Grands Chais has subsequently bought Château de Fesles in Bonnezeaux from Bernard Germain.

Looking from Sancerre along La Loire towards Pouilly-sur-Loire

Why a site not a book
On a few occasions over the years the chance of writing a book on Loire wines has appeared to be coming off. The most serious prospect was a series to be published by the University of California and to be edited by Clive Coates MW. Unfortunately it never got off the ground. Given the current unadventurous state of UK wine publishing – a reliance on a blend of the tried and tested with punts on celebrity wine books – the chances of getting a reasonably detailed book on the Loire published in the UK is probably less than zero. Making any money out of a book would be even more unlikely – sub-zero – nine below even!

Instead I have decided to set up Jim’s Loire as an amuse-bouche before launching a more comprehensive site that will then incorporate this blog. The net has the great advantage of allowing me to amend and add – it is always work in progress whereas with a book time and content are frozen by publication. I will be focusing more sharply on the Loire and spending less time trying to cover the rest of the wine world.

The Google blog launching Jim’s Loire is the easy bit; now I have to find ways of making it pay for itself. I have decided against the subscription route and instead will be looking for sponsorship and advertising – but not from producers. I’m also looking for spin off work – articles, translating from French into English especially websites and booklets etc. as well as organising tastings of Loire wines. I’m often surprised at the laughably bad and often comical English on French producers’ websites. It looks so unprofessional. Fortunately this can be put right. I also have a large and growing library of photos covering the Loire and its producers. I can be contacted on budmac@btinternet.com