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Twice a month I leave Paris to drive two hours south to a small village near Sancerre and Pouilly-sur-Loire. There aren’t many castles in this part of the Loire, but there are endless vineyards: 330 vineyards in the Sancerre region growing pinot noir grapes and 165 vineyards in the Pouilly-sur-Loire region growing sauvignon blanc grapes.
It’s a magnificent sight driving through these gentle sloping hills, watching the vineyards change with each season. In cold spells, wine growers place small fires along the vines to warm them, a breathtaking view from higher villages like Saint Andelain or Sancerre. Most of the vineyards have been handed down from father to son, some going back as far as eight generations. But its true origins go back all the way to the 5th century when the Benedictine monks first began harvesting wine here.
I wanted to find out more about the history of the earth of this land and how that defined the grapes’ taste. I knew that each vineyard made its own unique wine and that the taste depended on the plot of land, the way it was grown and harvested, whether it was put in inox or in an oak barrel, and many other details. I knew some of the vocabulary used for these wines too: hints of cassis, cherry or cinnamon, or being full-bodied, nervous, or persistant in the mouth. But I wanted to know how the earth contributed to making these wines different from other regions of France.
The earth is hard and dry here, and you wonder how the vines can possibly grow. It’s rocky, white, and pebbly. I learned that the land goes back 150 million years, as far back as the Jurassic period. This is what gives the wine its particular taste. Depending on the plot of land here, you find flint, limestone, even fossils of oysters and other sea creatures from the era when the region was submerged in water, an ocean in fact. The grape vines make their way deep into the rocky soil, reaching water sources below, and thanks to a sort of alchemic reaction, the vines absorb the minerals, giving Sancerre and Pouilly-Fumé its distinctive mineral taste. “The earth is the mother of the wines. It is the earth that gives the wine its identity,” wrote one of the local wine growers.
I’m told that the oldest vines produce the best grapes. Their roots have struggled, crawled deep down into the hard rocky earth, searching for nutrients, surviving year after year. The result is that these old vines are the most complex, and make the finest wines. I find that reassuring. I like to think that we, like old grape vines, get better as we age and the more we struggle the more complex and interesting we become.
By Mary Thompson, our local Parisian
For September 2017
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