|
 This month’s feature White Wines of the Loire
Loire wines are great for the summer. They offer good value and
some delightful drinking at reasonable prices. As a rough guide wine prices tend to
increase from west to east, with the western area
offering the cheapest wines. Let’s take a short tour along the Loire from West to
east, starting in the Loire Atlantique region
Muscadet and Gros Plant
Starting in the west we have two grape varieties Muscadet and Gros
Plant – these are grown mainly to the south of the Loire. I think Gros Plant is best
used as a mixer in maybe a spritzer or Kir. Muscadet is a better quality wine from the
same area. It is better to buy Muscadet sur Lie. Sur lie means the wine has been left to
mature with the sediment before being bottled. This gives the wine a lot more depth and it
is worth paying the extra. A bottle of Muscadet
sur lie costs around £4.50. Muscadet is very dry wine and some will find it too dry to
drink on its own. However it transforms when drunk with shellfish and is delicious with
oysters.
Touraine
 Moving further east we enter the Touraine (the area around
the city of Tours). Tour region produces many reasonably priced sauvignon blanc wines.
Sauvignon blanc is a dry crisp fruity wine, perfect for drinking by itself or with light
meats and fish. Sauvignon blanc can be recognised by its citrus/gooseberry nose –
sometime it can have the smell of cat’s pee! However the taste is a wonderful
refreshingly, crisp mixture of lemon citrus fruits and green herbs. Touraine Sauvignon Blanc is very reasonably priced
at around £3.50 to £4.00
Sancerre
Sancerre starts to get a bit more pricey – and the extra
money is not always worth it. Sancerre is also made from the Sauvignon Blanc grape and is
famous for its “flinty” flavour. As with Touraine, Sancerre is a dry wine but it
has many more complex flavours than Touraine. If you are not familiar with Sancerre then I
would start with a few different wines from Touraine before lashing out the extra few
pounds on Sancerre. I find the cheaper Sancerre not worth the money. A good substitute to
a pricey Sancerre is Menetou Selon – It may be difficult to find in the UK but
definitely worth a try if you should see it. A
search on Google revealed Menetou Selon for about £9
Some other Loire white wines
 Pouilly Fumé – one of the more expensive wines. So called
for its smokey flavour
Chenin Blanc
- Moderately priced – medium dry- uninspiring
Vouvray Sparkling – Chenin Blanc grapes put to much better
use. Can be great
Recommendations
The wines this month are focused around Waitrose and Tesco Wines.
If you can’t get to a store you can always order from their web sites. Alternatively
most of the other bigger supermarkets and wine stores will stock equivalents.
Try this. Buy a bottle of Touraine Sauvignon at about £4 and a
bottle of Sancerre about £9.50 Open both
bottles and try each side by side. Is the Sancerre worth the extra £5.50? Note you can
keep the opened bottles in a fridge for 2 to 3 days, and repeat the experiment later!
My recommendation this month:
Waitrose Touraine £3.99 (£3.29 until 3rd
August)
Other examples
Waitrose Muscadet sur lie
£4.99
Tesco Muscadet sur lie
£3.29 when buying 6 bottles
Waitrose Sancerre
£9.59
Tesco Sancerre and Pouilly Fume both
£9.49 when buying 6 bottles
Tip of the month -
Kir
Kir is named after canon Felix Kir the mayor of Dijon. His
favourite drink was to mix white wine with the blackcurrant liqueur Cassis. Kir is a very
popular aperitif all over France and it is a great way of improving cheap white wine.
To make Kir add cold white wine to some Cassis (black currant
liqueur). I like a small drop of Cassis - about
two teaspoons - to a glass of wine.- but vary it to your taste. The great thing about Kir
is that it only needs cheap white wine – it would be sacrilege mixing with anything
too decent. It transforms the cheapest of wines into something very pleasant. I often buy
cheap Muscadet in France at about 75p a bottle specifically for Kir.
An alternative to Kir Cassis is Crème de Mure (blackberries) or
if you really want to splash out make a Kir Royale with sparkling wine (again it is
sacrilege to use Champagne – use a cheap sparkling wine)
|
August 2003
Personalised
Champagne and Wines for celebrating laterlife events
