Coteaux du Loir
“The Loir Valley, so favourable to good grape varieties and good wines”
– L’Étude des Vignobles de France, Jules Guyot (2nd edition, published 1876)
The words of Jules Guyot (1807 – 1872), renowned physician, viticulturist and creator of the Guyot system (single and double) of cane-pruning for vines, are an obvious choice with which to open this guide to the vineyards and wines of the Coteaux du Loir appellation. Not least because, at first glance, Guyot seems intent on heaping praise upon the vineyards along the course of the Loir, vineyards he clearly saw as hospitable to the Vitis vinifera he knew so well, and which produced wines of good quality.
In truth, however, Guyot’s words were part of a longer lament for the decline in viticulture in the valley of the Loir and in the broader Sarthe département during the 19th century. He had visited the region and observed numerous vineyards which appeared to have been abandoned, while others were in the process of being pulled up. Many of these vineyards were around Le Mans, about 40 kilometres northwest of the Coteaux du Loir appellation, but he also saw this decline in viticulture in more prestigious sites including the banks of the Loir despite them being, as he put it, “so favourable to good grape varieties and good wine.”
In these few words we have, in a nutshell, the story of wine in the Coteaux du Loir and Sarthe during the past two centuries. The vineyards of Le Mans have of course long since disappeared, the city now a mecca for motor-racing fans who visit not to tour the ghostly shadows of long-lost vineyards but to watch the 24 Heures du Mans. Further south the majority of vines once rooted into the soils along the banks of the Loir have also gone, thousands of hectares of once actively cultivated vineyards disappeared. Much of this was, perhaps unsurprisingly, down to phylloxera, the louse having first been spotted in the region in 1876.
The decline seemed interminable, but as with Jasnières recent times have seen the Coteaux du Loir appellation experience something of a revival. It is of course only right that both appellations should experience this together; the two are closely intertwined, historically, geographically and viticulturally. For this reason, in this guide to the vineyards and wines of Coteaux du Loir I provide detail on the appellation as it was, and as it is today, always with reference to its partner-appellation, Jasnières.
