Tour de Loire pt. 5 (Grange aux Belles)
Boy were we excited to visit the world famous Grange aux Belles house! These guys make such incredible wine. We spent a really wonderful afternoon hanging out at their beautiful vineyards, eating YET MORE barbeque, trying all the new wines. There are few barrel rooms in the world that get me more excited than this one. These guys are quintessential vingerones who foster every single bottle with exquisite care. From the dirt to the glass, Grange aux Belles is what real wine is all about. We couldn't be more proud to partner with these guys. What an awesome visit! Damn!
Where to begin? Of all our trips to France, we've never had a better stretch of weather. Two straight weeks of sunshine made the already very handsome vineyards at Grange aux Belles look like some of the most choice parcels in the Loire. Roche de Mûrs, in particular, represents a really unsung category of great terroir. Anjou is split into two distinct regions: Anjou blanc and noir. Anjou blanc has chalky limestone and Anjou noir is mostly black schist. Naturally, the limestone vineyards have made up most of the very famous spots. This includes AOCs like Coteaux de Layon and Bonnezeaux that were traditional sweet wine regions, and today produce a lot of the world's most esteemed Chenin, dry and sweet. The exception is Savennières which (like Roche de Mûrs) is part of Anjou noire where more and more incredible Chenin is being cultivated.
This is Roche de Mûrs here. About zero topsoil and all pure schist. We all know it's getting hotter, so the alluvial character of a rock that acts a bit like a sea of broken glass is a benefit here. There's a slight pitch to the hill, so the character of grapes from the top and the bottom have a marked difference that's even more pronounced by the paucity of soil. In the barrel room we always make a cuvée from different barrels to get a sense of the wine to come. It's a highlight of every trip. This year, the boys had another special stop on the tour: the incredibly beautiful vineyard of Pierre Michel. That's down below:
This was another gorgeous vineyard named for the last proprietor. It's schist as well, but of a white, nearly pink color. The wine is normally just this color as well. And maybe as a result of this color we get a wine that's maybe a little closer to its limestony neighbors. A bit softer, a bit fruitier, etc. All this to say that these two sister vineyards really were so impressive and a sign of an incredibly bright future for what is already a crown jewel in our portfolio. But of course it's not just Chenin! Great red wines come from Schist as well, as any fan of Grange aux Belles knows. La Chaussée Rouge is the lieu dit where the cellar sits, and the name of the cuvée that started our importing business.
Oh yeah, we also ate a shitload of barbecue, again. It was glorious with these juicy reds with nearly Tropicana acidity and tart fruit. These wines seem to get better and better. They accompanied us through the afternoon and late into the evening where great frivolity ensued -- par for the course at La Grange aux Belles.
