After a day of Loire Valley Wine tasting, here are my goodies I brought home. We met Nathalie and her brother Antoine, who are the owners of the winery, Antoine is also the grower. On the left the name, Vendages du 14 Oct 2009, comes from the date the grapes were picked- for a special reason that reminds me of the movie The Good Year. On a very rare excellent year, the grapes are harvested and made for this special bottle. So it's a special wine for a special years. And on the right is the award-winning Anjou-Villages, one of my favorites from the day made from Cabernet Franc and Cabernet Sauvingon.
It was fascinating for me to learn about the AOC (appellation origine controllée) label which I had always thought denoted the best wines. However, I learned at our wine tasting that if a wine is mediocre consistently but follows the many, random, sometimes political rules for that area, they will be AOC. But if one year that wine is excellent, it's not longer consistent so will not get the AOC label that year. As for with organic growers, they might make an excellent wine but by not using sulphur during the process they could not receive the AOC label either.
And another happy point for me was the price point of Loire Valley wines. Both of these bottles were less than 10€. At the tasting our educator/expertise was laughing about the tourists from Australia or elsewhere who wouldn't be impressed by the wines from the region since the price wasn't high enough. One lady actually just drank green tea the whole day, since the prices didn't compare to those found in Bordeaux. She explained that for wineries around here, the most expensive bottle you could find will be 75€.
Dessert... And pretty clay decanter in the background
Le Tasting Room is where Aunt Nancy and I spent the morning and lunch. It's a lovely British couple's old house in the country side outside of Angers. I didn't take any pictures from the winery, but hopefully one day I'll have an excuse to go back!
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