Loire Valley Chenin

Two of the best wines I've had all year are Loire Valley Chenin Blanc.

That shouldn't surprise me. Chenin was the grape that got me into wine. The moment was a glass of Joan Ramón Escoda's skin-contact Chenin at Frenchette in Tribeca, a restaurant where natural wine dominates the list and every pour feels considered. I didn't know what I was drinking at the time. I just knew something had shifted.

The Escoda detour

Later, Escoda became the first producer I ever visited. I biked from Barcelona out to his estate in Conca de Barberà, a wide, mountainous basin in southern Catalonia where Cistercian monks from the nearby Monastery of Poblet revived winemaking in the twelfth century. Some sources suggest those monks, who came originally from Burgundy, may have brought Chenin Blanc and Pinot Noir with them. Either way, those varieties still exist in the region, and Joan Ramón has made them his own.

He founded Celler Escoda-Sanahuja in the late 1990s with his wife, Carme Sanahuja. They farm 15 hectares organically and biodynamically. All the whites see skin contact. The top cuvées are aged in amphora. No sulfur is added at any point. His Els Bassots, 100% Chenin Blanc fermented and aged in clay, is one of the most quietly radical wines I know.

Joan Ramón likes to call himself "Loire Valley in Catalunya." It's a joke, but not really. He grafted Loire's signature grape onto old-vine rootstock in the hills above Montblanc, at 400 to 600 meters of altitude, and the cold, humid air there lets it thrive. He was also one of the founding creators of the Brutal label, a gesture of gleeful defiance that became a movement.

Back to the Loire

But this post isn't about Catalonia. It's about two bottles of straight Loire Chenin that stopped me this year. (See the photos.)

Chenin Blanc originated in the Loire Valley, likely in the Anjou region, sometime around the 9th century. Ampelographer Pierre Galet theorized it spread from Anjou to Touraine by the 15th century. Its local synonym, Pineau de la Loire, is old enough that Rabelais used it. Today it is the emblematic white grape of the middle Loire, the backbone of appellations like Savennières, Vouvray, Montlouis-sur-Loire, Saumur, and the sweet-wine enclaves of Coteaux du Layon, Bonnezeaux, and Quarts de Chaume.

What makes Chenin endlessly interesting is its range. Bone-dry on schist in Savennières. Off-dry and honeyed in Vouvray. Botrytis-kissed and age-worthy in the Layon. Bright, crisp pét-nat out of Montlouis. The grape's naturally high acidity, driven by tartaric and malic acid, acts as both engine and preservative. Well-made sweet Chenin can age for a century.

The Loire is also now one of the strongholds of natural wine. As Jancis Robinson has noted, "the Loire is now a stronghold of low-intervention wine." Producers are using less and less sulfur, farming biodynamically, fermenting with native yeasts, and letting Chenin's acidity do the structural work that additives once did. The result is a generation of wines that feel more transparent than ever.

Why it matters

I keep coming back to Chenin because it rewards patience and attention. It is not a loud grape. It doesn't announce itself the way Sauvignon Blanc does. It absorbs its surroundings, whether that's tuffeau limestone in Vouvray, schist in Anjou, or clay amphora in Catalonia. Every serious bottle I've had has asked me to slow down.

These two bottles did exactly that. I'll let the photos speak for themselves.