Franc & Chenin with Catherine Breton
This time I had the right address.
The high hills of Sancerre and dappled forests gave way to the sun-baked autoroute, then I was back in the gently sloping fields of Bourgueil. It was flatter here, endless stretching vineyards and little centre-villes, and rows of houses with vintner names and tasting rooms advertised on wooden signs. I passed the giant cluster of grapes in a wine glass in the roundabout, and sped past green rows of vines until I came to the warehouse complex where Pierre and Catherine Breton made their wines--not the cottage in the middle of vineyards I had visited yesterday. Pierre wasn't there, and Catherine was in a frenzy, for harvest was starting and she was rushing around from vineyard to facility. She apologized for being short on time, and lamented that I hadn't been able to visit yesterday, when things were a little calmer. She had giant splashes of purple grape juice on her khaki corduroy pants.
"I liked these pants!" she said regretfully, laughing at her misfortune. Her face crinkled with humor. I suggested she fully dip them into a vat of juice, a natural dye job. She brought me inside to show me the tanks, foudres, and concrete eggs that housed her and her husbands natural cuvees of Cabernet Franc and Chenin Blanc.
Catherine and Pierre have been making wine together since the early 1980s. Pierre comes from the land of Cabernet Franc, and Catherine may as well have Chenin coursing through her veins. Their wines have been certified organic since the early 1990s, and they began introducing biodynamic practices shortly thereafter. They are now certified biodynamic as well. They have been a huge influence on the natural wine movement both in their region and in the wine drinking world as a whole, starting a natural wine fair in 1999 with a band of their winemaking friends called "La Dive Bouteille." Their "Trinch" Cabernet Franc was one of the first natural wines I remember trying when I worked at a different shop across the river three years ago. It was a major player in my (ongoing) love affair with Loire Cabernet Franc. I hope next February or the one after I can go La Dive Bouteille in the caves of Saumur.
We started the tasting with a 2015 Chenin, "La Dilettante Tranquille." Its grown on silex soil, a mixture of flint and sand. My tasting notes read, V mineral, herbs & chalk & fruit & hint of oxidation. I could drink Chenin like this every day. I want to buy another wine fridge, build a wine cellar, add on rooms to my house, to fill with Chenin like this. Nevermind that I don't own a house. I'll erect one, for and to Chenin. Textured, deep, honeyed, stinky, herbal--like peaches and stinky cheese served on warm stones, drizzled with honey and sprinkled with crushed herbs and almond skins.
We moved on to an old-vine Bourgueil, "Nuits d'Ivresse," vinified entirely without sulphur, grown on clay and limestone soils. It was crunchy, vegetal, spicy, starting out juicy and ending dry. Next up was a Bourgueil from an old enclosed vineyard dating back from before the the French Revolution, "Clos Sénéchal." Aged in foudre, it is bottled without fining or filtration. We tasted the 2011, and in my tasting notes I scribbled, Strawberres, mushrooms, earth.
Catherine gave me a couple of their wine posters, recommendations for dining in Saumur, and the address of a wine bar on the scenic route back to Saumur. I thanked her profusely. I could see why she and her husband were darlings of the natural wine world--why a server at a natural wine bar in Paris, when she heard I was visiting them, exclaimed, "Could you give her a message for me?" and scribbled a note on the back of her business card and pressed it into my hand. Catherine was passionate, a force of energy and movement, but kind and unassuming. She should have been harvesting her grapes, but she was concerned that I enjoy the best of Saumur and her beloved Loire.
I drove into the evening. I hit the river and sailed along its slow steady path turned gold by the sun. I pulled off the road and walked down the damp earth and grass until I got to its bank. A man was fishing upstream. I drove away in search of the wine bar Catherine had suggested. I found it in a tiny hamlet along the river, with a CLOSED sign taped in its window. I parked my car and roamed the cobbled streets of the little village. There were remains of a limestone château looming above the village, and I tried to get up into it, but instead got lost in back alleys and spied into gardens tangled with late summer blooms. The ruins of ancient caves and troglodyte passageways were these people's backyards, where old tractors were rusting and chickens pecked.
I had dinner in a restaurant at the base of cobbled steps leading up to the village cathedral. I sat outside, and ordered salade and the poisson course, with a carafe of local Chenin. The young Austrian couple next to me were on some sort of cycling holiday. They struck up conversation with the older English couple on the other side of them, who were also touring the region on bicycle, and exchanged stories of the scenic roads. I ate my fish and let the Chenin wash over me. It grew dark and the streetlamps lit the cobbles and the cathedral slowly faded into darkness, an ominous shadow.
I leaned my head out into the cool night on the road back to Saumur. The sky was black and velvety, but the ridge of limestone soaring up on my left was blacker, puncuated by châteaux glowing gold like limestone candalabras. A million stars winked and the river cradled me on the right and I laughed in disbelief.
