Anjou Coteaux de la Loire
France has its fair share of long-lost vineyards and disappearing wine regions. The Auvergne is a classic example; once covered by tens of thousands of hectares of vines, today only a few high-quality nubbins tended by the most motivated vignerons remain, dotted across the Côtes d’Auvergne, Côte Roannaise and Côtes du Forez appellations. There are many vineyards which now exist only as ghosts, hillsides shaped into terraces devoid of vines, the occasional cabane lying in a state of disrepair.
It is not just in the less accessible reaches of the Massif Central that such viticultural wraiths exist; there are others to be found much further downstream. Along the banks of the Loire, downstream of Angers, there exists an appellation today rarely seen, a fragile remainder of a once significant vineyard, one that gave birth to the modern-day Chenin powerhouse of Savennières. What vines remain are scattered here and there, in small pockets, located on gentle slopes which lie, like Savennières, close to the banks of the Loire.
These slopes are, in French, the coteaux de la Loire, and the corresponding appellation is named, sensibly enough, Anjou Coteaux de la Loire.
History
Anjou has an ancient viticultural history which can be traced back a thousand years, to the time of Foulques Nerra (970 – 1040), who donated land – the future Chaume and Quarts de Chaume vineyards – to the Abbaye de Ronceray in Angers. This history is peppered with references to viticulture along the banks of the Layon, but the earliest references to the Coteaux de la Loire are much more recent, dating to 1749. For this first mention of the region we must be grateful to the agronomist Nicolas Bidet (1709 – 1782), who wrote of the coteaux in his Traité sur la Nature at la Culture de la Vigne (published 1749) as “very difficult to clear, but now perfectly cultivated and entirely planted with vines.”
