Vintage Story

Epistemological epiphany:
Life must be lived forwards,
but can only be understood backwards
Mercifully, life may be enjoyed sideways!

Full Moon: August 9, 2006. Allen Dale Olson a/k/a the Pontiff of Palate, Story Inn’s Wine Connoisseur. Copyright 2006 Story Bed & Breakfast, LLP, d/b/a Story Inn, all rights reserved.

LOIRE WINES YOU PROBABLY NEVER TASTE

            The Pontiff just returned from the Loire Valley where he learned that wines don’t have to be full of alcohol and oak to be enjoyed.  Enjoyed? When’s the last time you ever enjoyed your wine? Scribbling notes, mentally analyzing, or checking the stock market for daily growth in your futures isn’t what I mean by enjoyment.

            In the Loire we never saw a wine over 13 percent alcohol. Except for an occasional light-hearted red, such as Sancerre, we never got a whiff of oak. Red Sancerre?  You bet. Pinot noir grows very well toward the western end of the Loire, and the producers who make the world-famous white Sancerre (which we get in Indiana at very inflated prices) also make a red version, almost totally ignored by our importers.  Want a nice Burgundy but don’t want to mortgage the house? Find a red Sancerre, probably not possible in the heartland. (Fortunately, the push to open this beverage to a free market is gaining steam, even in Indiana.) 

            Loire wines are never cover girls on wine publications. Their much flashier neighbors in Bordeaux, Champagne, and the Rhone get the starring roles. But Loire sauvignon blancs, chenin blancs, Semillons, cabernet francs, and gamays march right along at 12, 13, 13.5 percent as perfectly refreshing accompaniments to the cuisine of the Touraine and Sologne.

            No experimental cooking along this river. No tapas. No efforts to be the most innovative chef on the block. Just traditional, albeit somewhat lightened, dishes created from the most respected produce grown in Old Europe, the fish and shell fish from the Atlantic and the rivers, and beef and veal from cows which never heard of corn. Whether dry white – Touraine Justine 2002 or Quincy 2004 or Pouilly Fume 2003 – or dry red – Chinon les Picasse or Saint-Nicolas de Bourgeuil 2004, our Loire wines were an integral part of each meal. Food and wine blended together in harmony, nether overpowering the other. But do they age? We ended our week in the Loire with a 1996 Chinon Clos du Chene Vert (red) and a 1997 Grand Vallee Vouvray (white), both in splendid fettle.

            The Pontiff loves and admires the great cabernets from Bordeaux and Napa, the gorgeous pinot noirs from Burgundy and Oregon but not when they fill the mouth and dominate the meal or taste like the great white oak trees of our Hoosier National Forest.

            Visiting Loire vineyards differs from most other wine regions. You need to look for them. There are no oceans of vines as in Bordeaux or Beaujolais, no carefully defined wine fields as in Burgundy or Alsace. Often the vines are not even on the river as in the Rhone. They are interspersed among wheat and other grains. Grapes are brought from the fields to caves in the river banks, caves hollowed out originally by nature, mostly by stone quarriers working on the immense chateaux for which the region is most famous.

            To enjoy wine in the sense its producers really prefer, try wines of the Loire. But to paraphrase Edward R. Murrow, “Good Hunting and Good Night.”

Vintage Story is an e-newsletter authored by Ole Olson and published by the Story Inn, and is available free of charge to all who appreciate good wine. Vintage Story is published at each full moon. The author and the Story Inn specifically authorize the republication, reprinting and circulation of any issue Vintage Story so long as due credit is given to the author and to the Story Inn (which holds the copyright).

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