The richness of these wines depends on whether or not the summer is hot enough for the grapes to ripen early, before the autumn rains set in. When fully ripened, they are attacked by a fungus known as la pourriture noble (the English translation, “noble rot,” somehow sounds rather foolish to me), which dehydrates them, concentrating the rich fruit sugars in the withered, moldy pulp, and, of course, the mold itself gives a characteristic flavor. The separate grapes are clipped from the grape clusters as they are sufficiently altered by the pourriture noble, which may necessitate four or five passages through the vines before the entire harvest is realized. The bit of juice extracted from these grapes produces a wine rich in glycerine and alcohol (the fermentation of any must containing such a high natural sugar content stops automatically before all the sugar is transformed into alcohol, with the result that, in rich years, a high sugar content remains in the wine—which nonetheless counts a full 18% alcohol), whose natural enveloping sweetness is never sugary or cloying, whose bright gold turns deep amber with age, and which, in great years, outlives by far the men who make it. Its depth of bouquet and its expansion on the palate can be breathtaking. It should be sipped, sensuously analyzed for a long time in the mouth, but drunk in small quantities.
Therein lies its greatest drawback, for, in order to justify sacrificing a bottle of old Sauternes, there should be at least five or six people at table. Drunk well chilled, with a warm butter-crust apple pie (for which I do not intend to give the recipe in this book), both take on unforgettable dimensions.
Apart from Château d’Yquem (of which it has too often been said that it is the greatest white wine in the world), the Châteaux Rieussec, Suduiraut, La Tour Blanche, Gilette and Rayne-Vigneau, among others, produce wines of perfect quality whose prices are generally far more interesting than that of their famous neighbor.
THE LOIRE VALLEY
The Loire Valley is not, technically, a region, for the Loire River begins far to the south, winds all the way up through central France and across, to empty out into the Atlantic at the southern border of Brittany. The finest wines come from four distinctly different regions, and it follows that certain of them have little in common apart from their proximity to the same river. They are predominantly white.
Beginning at the mouth of the river, Muscadet (the Nantais region), made from the Muscadet grape (transplanted from Burgundy where it is known as “Melon”), is a light and very dry wine, best when drunk very young—one of the best with raw oysters. Its slight acidity renders it a useful and refreshing thirst quencher, but may perhaps proscribe it for certain stomachs. The same region produces a slight little wine from the Gros Plant grape which is a favorite among collectors of the little known.
Savennières (Anjou) makes good white wines from the Pineau grape (spelled differently to distinguish it from the Burgundy Pinots), the best known of which comes from a tiny vineyard, the Coulée de Serrant. Formerly a sweet wine, it has, for the last ten years, been vinified as a dry wine; the grapes are picked before being attacked by the pourriture noble. A suave, delicate wine with a slightly “peppery” taste, it improves greatly with age and is probably best, depending on the year, when five or six years old. It is splendid with smoked salmon, fish in sauce, and such dishes.
Vouvray (Touraine) now vinifies much of its production “dry” also, with less success, it seems to me. The Vouvrays are also made from the Pineau grape. The 1921s are still remembered with reverence. When made in the traditional way, they are perfect apéritif and dessert wines. A certain part of the production is treated like champagne to make a sparkling wine.
Farther along the Loire, Sancerre and Pouilly-Fumé are made from the Sauvignon grape, known in that part of the country as Blanc Fumé because of the wines’ delicate, smoky taste, partly a result of the grape variety and partly of the earth in which it is grown. The Pouilly-Fumés (from Pouilly-sur-Loire–unrelated to Pouilly-Fuissé) have the more pronounced fumé taste of the two. The same vineyards make a wine from the Chasselas grape, which takes the name of the village (Pouilly-sur-Loire)—delicious when drunk very young, but of little interest once it is a year old. Sancerre produces also a small amount of rosé wine, which, like Bouzy and Gros Plant, is much cherished by curiosity seekers.
Close neighbors, but on the banks of the Cher, Quincy and Reuilly (not to be confused with Rully) are light and lovely mid-morning thirst quenchers (Sauvignon).
Three beautiful red wines come from the Loire Valley: Bourgueuil (of which the best is Saint-Nicholas de Bourgueuil), Chinon and Saumur-Champigny (the first two are from the Touraine, the third, from the Anjou). All are made from the Cabernet-Franc grape and experts claim to discern in them the odor of violets and the flavor of raspberry. When young, they have an astonishing deep purple-red “robe” and an exhilarating fruit. They share with the wines of Beaujolais the beauty of youth (and, like them, should be drunk slightly cool), but they age with more grace and eventually come to resemble certain old Bordeaux.
OTHER REGIONS
Alsace, all of whose wines (with the exception of Zwicker, a mixture) are named after grape varieties, produces one, made from the Riesling grape, which, at best, is in a class apart—a splendid wine with light fish dishes and far better than beer with sauerkraut. Gewürtztraminer enjoys great popularity, but its fruit and perfume are so overpowering that, despite its being relatively dry, I cannot imagine it being drunk with anything but a dessert.
The Jura makes a great white wine of a totally different character than that of any other French wine: Château-Chalon. Tastewise it falls somewhere between a fine sherry and the great white Burgundies. It remains in kegs for about six years, evaporation loss is never replaced, and thanks to this particular process of vinification, a layer of special bacteria forms on the surface of the wine that gives it its unique quality. It is powerful and, although very dry, has a rich fruit. It accompanies well certain rich, strongly flavored fish dishes (lobster in various sauces in particular) and can occasionally replace advantageously a red wine—with certain game birds, duckling, or pork dishes whose sauces are slightly sweet, for example. The Jura also produces a very small quantity of vin de paille (“straw wine”), the grapes of which are partly dried on layers of straw before being fermented. I have never seen this wine on the American market.
The Mediterranean coast produces few wines of quality. The white wines of Cassis are pleasant, though a bit alcoholic. (Cassis is the name of the village, and the wine must not be confused with cassis—black-berry liqueur—particularly since one of the favorite apéritifs in Burgundy is vin blanc cassis, a white Aligoté sweetened by the addition of a bit of blackberry liqueur. To an inexperienced ear it sounds much the same as vin blanc de Cassis.) At Bandol, the Domaine Tempier makes a rosé wine as good as any I know and a fine red wine that takes age well. All of the wines of southern France are made from a large number of grape varieties: Grenache, Picpoul, Clairette, Tibourin, Ugni and others. The quality of the Tempier red is due, in part, to the presence of the mourvèdre grape.
Near the Spanish border, in Catalan country, Banyuls enjoyed a great reputation in the past, but a time came when the product had sunk to an indifferent quality. Shortly after World War II, an energetic and impassioned major of Banyuls took the winegrowers in hand, organized impressive installations for vinification and storage, revised vinification techniques, and today the various Banyuls Grand Cru wines are again of splendid quality. They are not “table wines,” although they accompany nicely certain dishes in the preparation of whose sauces they have played a part, but are, rather, of the same family as the great ports, and the vinification is similar. It begins as for red table wines, but the fermentation is “muted” before completion by the addition of an eau de vie, thus raising the degree of alcohol and imprisoning a certain amount of the natural sugar in the wine. Banyuls is aged in kegs out of doors, exposed to the sun. These wines are extremely useful (as is port) in many culinary preparations, and are fine aperitif and dessert wines.