Chenin Blanc

This page is Loire Chenin Blanc, the grape's home ground, from bone dry through demi-sec to traditional method sparkling. Domaine Pichot Vouvray Clos Cartaud Sec 2022 sits at the dry end, grown on the tuffeau limestone that runs under Vouvray and under its cellars. Clos Berger Demi-Sec 2022 keeps a few grams of sugar that the acidity swallows almost whole, so it reads as gently fruity rather than sweet, which is the point of the demi-sec category and the thing most people get wrong about it. From Saumur, Arnaud Lambert works limestone slopes at Breze and Saint-Cyr-en-Bourg, and both Les Perrieres 2021 and Coulee de St Cyr 2020 show the taut, chalky, savoury side of the grape rather than the fruity one. Clos Thierriere Les Pleurs 2023 is another dry Vouvray to set beside them. For sparkling there is Louis de Grenelle Saumur Ivoire Brut, made in the traditional method and aged in old quarry tunnels beneath the town. More of the region sits in French wines.

History

Chenin Blanc has been growing in Anjou for well over a thousand years, and the name is usually traced to Mont Chenin in Touraine, where it was recorded in the fifteenth century. It ripens late and unevenly, and its thin skins take botrytis readily in the damp autumns along the Loire, which is precisely why the region built a tradition of picking the same vineyard several times over. In a cool year the fruit goes into dry Vouvray and Saumur, in a warm one it becomes demi-sec or the sweet moelleux wines of Vouvray and Coteaux du Layon, and underripe or high acid parcels have always gone to sparkling wine. The cellars themselves are part of the story. Both Vouvray and Saumur sit on tuffeau, a soft chalky limestone quarried for centuries to build the chateaux, leaving kilometres of cool tunnels at a steady temperature that suited slow bottle ferments long before refrigeration. Dutch merchants shipped Loire sweet wines through the seventeenth century, and Chenin travelled to the Cape in the same era, where it became South Africa's most planted grape under the name Steen. Growers today pick earlier and chaptalise less than they did in the 1970s, so a modern dry Vouvray such as Coteau de la Biche tastes leaner and more mineral than its equivalent did a generation ago.

How to drink it

Serve dry Chenin at about 10 to 12 degrees, not straight from the back of the fridge, because the cold flattens the quince and chamomile aromas that make it worth drinking. Use a normal white wine glass with a decent bowl rather than a narrow flute, and give young dry bottles twenty minutes in the glass. Dry Vouvray and Saumur blanc are excellent with roast chicken, pork belly, scallops and anything with cream and mustard. Demi-sec Vouvray is the one to open with Thai or Sichuan food, where the touch of sugar takes the heat off chilli, and it is also the classic partner for blue cheese and pork rillettes. Sweet moelleux Chenin such as Le Marigny works with apple tart or foie gras and can sit in a cellar for decades. Sparkling Chenin belongs at the start of the night alongside other sparkling wine, poured cold at around 8 degrees. An opened bottle of dry Chenin holds up for three days in the fridge with the screwcap or cork back on, and sweeter styles last a week. Start with Clos Cartaud if you want to know what the grape tastes like dry, then look through white wines for the next step.