Cab Franc Chronicles - Your source for all things Cabernet Franc!
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Analysis and commentary of the Louis de Grenelle, NV Blanc de Noir, Crémant de Loire Extra Brut, Saumur, Loire Valley, France
Founded in 1859, Louis de Grenelle is one of the last family-owned sparkling wine houses in Saumur. Today, it is sister and brother Françoise Flao and Antoine Bodet who are continuing the work that their father Hubert Bodet began in 1976. They are farming 40 hectares of vineyards, of which about 23 hectares are Cabernet Franc, as well as sourcing from grower partners across the Anjou-Saumur region to produce their diverse range of traditional method sparkling wines, as well as Saumur Blanc and Saumur Rouge from their parcels at the family estate Château de la Durandière. Their maitre de chai, Guillaume Poitevin, has been with the estate since 2006.
As it has been a long time since I have featured a sparkling Cabernet Franc from the Loire Valley, I will take a moment to give an overview of this category because it represents an important part of the Loire Valley both historically and in terms of production. With a similar climate to that of Champagne and miles and miles of tuffeau caves ideal for the production and storage of sparkling wines that dug out over centuries beneath the city of Saumur, it was Jean-Baptiste Ackerman who is credited with producing the first traditional method sparkling wines in the Loire Valley back in 1811.
Today, sparkling wine represents around 20% of the Loire Valley's production. And as it relates to Cabernet Franc there are two main categories of traditional method sparkling wine that represent a combined 79% of the sparkling wine produced in the Loire, and these are Crémant de Loire and Saumur Fines Bulles.
Crémant de Loire represents 55% of the Loire Valley's sparkling wine production, and it is the second largest appellation for crémant in France after Crémant d'Alsace. Production is centralized in the Touraine and Anjou-Saumur regions, and the principle grapes are, of course, Chenin Blanc for the whites and Cabernet Franc for rosé, and rosé accounts for around 15% of the appellation's production.
Saumur Moussuex or Saumur Fines Bulles represents around 24% of the Loire Valley's sparkling wine production, and it represents an impressive 68% of the Saumur AOPs production. The principle grapes are the same, Chenin Blanc for the whites and Cabernet Franc for the rosés, and rosé accounts for around 10% of the production of Saumur Mousseux.
Both Crémant de Loire and Saumur Mousseux are produced in the traditional method, with the second fermentation taking place in the bottle, just like Champagne, and there are slight differences between the two appellations in terms of yields as well as time on lees, with Crémant de Loire being 12 months minimum on lees and Saumur Mousseux 9 months minimum.
So, the blanc de noir is coming from a 2 hectare parcel of 30 year old vines from a single lieu-dit of Les Chiré, which is situated on the east side of the Thouet River and the parcels have a gentle slope to the northeast. In terms of soils, we have a little over a metre of clayey-sandy silt (Limon argilo-sableux), followed by a bedrock of Oxfordian marl, and marl is a type of limestone with a higher percentage of clay minerals. And Guillaume noted that they use the fruit for the Blanc de Noir because it is a rather cool, and late ripening site, and Cabernet Franc is better adapted to sparkling wine here as it struggles to achieve both technical and phenolic maturity.
From a winemaking perspective, the fruit for this wine is from a single vintage, rather than an assemblage across multiple vintages. And the fruit is hand-harvested, and then whole cluster pressed. The primary fermentation of the clarified juice takes place in stainless steel with selected yeast, then the wine is bottled with the liqueur de tirage and aged on fine lees in the estate's underground tuffeau cellars for upwards to about 18 to 24 months. Following disgorgement, the dosage is around 3 to 4 g/L, which would be classified as extra-brut.
0:00 Intro/History
0:56 Loire Valley sparkling wine
2:04 Crémant de Loire
2:35 Saumur Mousseux
3:31 Montreuil-Bellay commune - microclimate
4:40 Montreuil-Bellay commune - soils
5:35 Blanc de Noir - vineyard selection
6:34 Winemaking
7:32 Tasting notes
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Originally posted to Instagram December 22, 2024
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Key wine facts below:
Producer: Louis de Grenelle
Appellation: Crémant de Loire
Region: Anjou-Saumur
Commune: Montreuil-Bellay
Lieu-Dit: Les Chirés
Soil: a little over a metre of clayey-sandy silt (limon argilo-sableux) over a bedrock of Oxfordian marl
Alcohol: 12.5%
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