May 17, 2011 France Adventure

Bonjour tout le monde!  Hello, everybody and welcome to Cépage et Cuisine, Mary’s and Brian’s wine and food blog.  We’re still on our wine, food, and cultural vacation in France.  We’re posting notes and photos about our daily experiences, beginning with May 8, 2011.  If you haven’t read the blog in a while and you would like to see the earlier posts, you can see a couple by reading and scrolling through today’s and yesterday’s article.  The earlier dates can be accessed by clicking on dates on the right side of the blog page.

Tuesday, May 17 was a day to go to market (and the boulangerie in Le Puy Notre Dame is closed on Tuesday!).  Many towns and villages have outdoor markets where local and regional producers can sell fresh products.  The nearby town of Montreuil-Bellay has theirs on Tuesday.  It is not huge but it has a beautiful variety of vegetables, meats, fish, flowers, and other items.  It is great fun to browse the market and talk to the vendors.  We bought freshly cut pork chops, saucisse aux herbes, the local seasoned sausages that are so popular, vegetables for a sauté, and framboises, or fresh raspberries.

Our host at the gite, Brian Barcroft, took us on a detailed personalized guided tour and tasting at a nearby producer, Domaine de la Paleine, lasting almost three hours.  The domaine has over a century of history in grapegrowing and wine production.  They produce a variety of wines, ranging from still to sparkling white wines from Chenin Blanc, including a luscious dessert-style sweet wine from Coteaux de Saumur.  Red and rosé are made almost exclusively from Cabernet Franc.  Once again, the effect of varying terroir on the wine experience was apparent, particularly the effect of limestone.  Grapes grown on limestone tend to have greater minerality and freshness in their profile, even in vintages when acidity is low because of warm weather.  In addition, differences in use of oak barrel aging among some of the wines help us understand how oak can both enhance and sometimes detract from wine.

Walking through the caves beneath the modern chai, the winery, is itself an interesting lesson in the history of the region.  The tuffeau sandstone, composed of ancient fossilized sediment and sand, compressed over millions of years into the stone, has been mined or quarried for construction materials.  Many structures, ranging from grand castles to ordinary homes, are made with the light-colored stone.  It gives many of the villages a kind of luminous appearance.

Just in Le Puy Notre Dame, which is a fairly small village, there are about 140 kilometers of interconnected caves and tunnels, about 87 miles.  As our host said to us, there is about as much going on under the ground as above it.  The swimming pool at the gite is above ground because of tunnels beneath it.  Much of the cemetiere, the cemetery, is also above ground.

The resulting caverns with large columns remaining to support the roof are perfect for storing wine.  They maintain a nearly constant temperature of about 55 degrees year around and high humidity.  The humidity is a reason for the formation of mold you have seen in some of the cellar pictures in earlier blog posts.  Over the centuries, the caves have been used for living quarters, for mushroom growing, and for storing wine.

They have even been used to hide precious wines and other objects, such as when the French hid wine in cellars and caves from the occupying Germans during World War II.  Although nearby Saumur did experience fighting and bombing, Le Puy Notre Dame was not the scene of battles during World War II.  Le Puy was, however, occupied by the Wehrmacht and later the Waffen SS.  German soldiers knew wine and possibly weapons were hidden in the caves and searched the caves.  In this photo you can see a swastika left by a long-ago soldier.

We were both ready for some good seafood again and went to Le Grand Bleu in Saumur on the recommendation of Brian and Sheila.

Moules, or mussels, are very popular in France and I love them, too, especially in that white wine, butter, garlic, and onion mariniere sauce.  After I finished the mussels, I spooned up that sauce like a soup!

Mary had the filet of Dover sole with a lemon butter sauce and said it was delicious, flaky, perfectly cooked, with a variety of small vegetable portions.

Dessert for Mary was a warm apple tatin with a scoop of vanilla ice cream.  Tarte tatin is a French dessert we have made at home and described in previous blog posts.  It is thought to have originated right here in the Loire Valley.

Of course, we both had coffee.

A dinner like this cries out for a white wine and we wanted a Loire Valley white.  We selected a Savennières by a producer we have had before, Domaine des Baumard.  I’ll describe Savennières in more detail in the next blog post, but the cépage or grape variety is Chenin Blanc.  This particular cuvee was the 2006 Clos de Saint Yves.  Putting it delicately, Savennières is not a wine for someone who hasn’t explored wine a bit before, preferably another Chenin Blanc.  Some might say it is an acquired taste.  Mary and I both find it delicious, but it requires a little work.  Flavors and textures like almond, beeswax, spiciness, and lanolin sometimes appear in Savennières and it usually needs several years to reach optimum drinkability.  Nonetheless, we were glad it was available to us and it did just fine with our dinner.  It usually isn’t all that expensive in retail shops if you can find it, typically within the $20-$30 range.  Try it and see what you think.  Here are my notes on the wine.

Domaine des Baumard Savennières Clos de Saint Yves 2006.  Like many good Savennières, this is a wine that requires a little effort to understand and appreciate.  It had complex aromas of flowers, honey, and peach.  The texture on the palate was full and creamy with medium acidity.  The flavor profile was also interesting.  There is a flavor that I can't name because I don't think I have experienced it elsewhere and I think it may be lychee, but there was also a tropical note of peach, apricot, lemon citrus, and a kind of beeswax quality of both texture and flavor.  There may have been subtle notes of almond as well and a spicy quality on the finish.  It was well balanced, complex, and had a long finish.  From a purely quality rating standpoint, it is an excellent wine.  It is not for everybody, but we like it.  13.0% alcohol.  Note: it was under screwcap.  We paid 26€ for the wine.

That’s our post for today.  We hope you’re enjoying our France reports.  It has been a nice way for us to keep a diary and share with friends.  Keep checking back at Cépage et Cuisine for more of our culinary and wine adventures in France.  Until then,

Cheers!

Mary♥Brian