The Loire Valley

The Loire Valley is a diverse and giant french wine growing region. Consisting of four major zones: Central Vineyards, Tours, Anjou, Pays Nantais, each producing their own wines of note. From continental to maritime climate and a multitude of soil types the Loire valley produces an immense diversity of wine.

The Central vineyards produces some of the greatest Sauvignon Blanc in the world and a very interesting rose of Pinot Noir.

Tours is centered around Vouvray which produces a wide range of wine from dry to lusciously sweet, along with still and sparkling wines, from Chenin Blanc. Also in the tours region are Chinon and Bourgueil which make lovely wine from Cabernet Franc.

Pays Nantais makes wine from the Muscadet grape that is minerally and has an interesting bready note from extended sur lie aging, the aging takes place in tank with the wine resting on the dead yeast cells from primary fermentation, this imparts extra texture to the wine and some examples also pick up biscuit and toast flavors. Anjou produces primary off dry wines that do not broaded get imported into the united states but are lovely if your looking for easy to drink off dry wine.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Brandywine Creek in Wilmington

Image
This is a photo of the Washington Street bridge and the Brandywine Creek in downtown Wilmington Delaware. I went down to the creek to shoot a youtube video, and I was successful in that but I did realize that I cannot just go and wing these walk and talks. I need to come up with a plan and then execute it I only managed to get a 2:45 video out of a hour long walk and at least 20 mins of raw footage. I am starting to get better at the filming portion of the skill but I still need to pause more between expressed ideas I talk at about the right speed maybe I could get a hair faster, but I need to figure out how to have a coherent topic and perhaps even a structure to the discussion. Hopefully, by this time next year an hour long walk will make at least a ten minute video.
Read more

The Maconnaise

Image
The lush rolling limestone hills of the Macon form a natural interlude between the Cote d’Or and its satellite the Cote Chalonnaise. As in the Cote d’Or the white grape is Chardonnay, while the Red grape can be either Gamay, or Pinot Noir. The more serious wines are produced to the south of the region under the appellation Pouilly-Fuisse and its satellites.The wine is classified in three broad tiers: Macon, Macon-Villages, and Pouilly-Fuisse and its satellites.
Read more

The Wines and Domaines of France by Clive Coates MW

Image
In this six hundred page tome you encounter an encyclopedic examination of the entirety of french winemaking in the year 2000. One might think that that wouldn't be enough room to cover all of france but Mr. Coates does a great job. The book is divided into eleven sections with forty maps The maps are some of the best I have seen covering the wine regions of france and they also show the locations of famous estates. One of the ways I like to solidify my knowledge of wine regions is to trace maps so that I can really spend some time getting immersed in the geography of the region.
Read more