Domaine de Bellivière, 2026 Update
It is at the very limits of viticulture. Harvests in the three appellations of the Loir rarely start before November, and in many years the grapes hardly ripen at all.
– Roger Voss, The Wines of the Loire (Faber & Faber, 1995)
It is clear that the climate of the Loir – a northern tributary of the Loire (via the Sarthe and the Maine) – has changed since the time Roger Voss was researching his book on the Loire Valley and its wines in the early 1990s.
While some of its vineyards have been harangued by a variety of afflictions in recent difficult vintages, it would be wrong to paint the region as existing on the cusp of the northern limit of viticulture today. After all, today there are intrepid individuals replanting long-lost vineyards in northern Brittany and Normandy, and of course there is Chardonnay and Pinot Noir being grown – with increasing success – in England, which last time I checked was north of France.
Life in the vineyards of Jasnières (like those pictured below, at the eastern end of the Jasnières crescent) and the Coteaux du Loir appellations today is very different. And I don’t think I can recall the last time anyone in the Loire Valley was still picking in November.
