Loire 2012 First Taste: Anjou & Saumur
In the second of my regional Loire 2012 reports, I take a look at how the vineyards of Anjou and Saumur fared in this most difficult of vintages, accompanied by a fresh slew of tasting notes from a handful of leading Anjou and Saumur vignerons, including Yves Guégniard, Loïc Mahé, Vincent Ogereau (pictured), Jean-Pierre Chevalier and Régis Neau, among others.
There was plenty of rain during the winter here, with December bringing 125 mm, making it the wettest month of 2011. As with the vineyards of Muscadet a severe cold snap arrived in early February, although here it was really cold. At least the Nantais vineyards have the Atlantic maritime influence to protect them a little; upstream, where the weather is slightly more continental in character, the mercury disappeared from sight for nearly two whole weeks. During this period the highest daily temperatures did not exceed the 30-year average for the minimum temperatures; the thermometers rarely recorded more than 0ºC, which might not be that relevant to the development of the subsequent season’s fruit but it was of great importance to those of us staying in Angers for the Salon des Vins de Loire at this tme. It was cold and miserable, to say the least! The lowest temperature of the year came on February 12th, bottoming out at -10.5ºC, by which time I’m happy to say I was back in Scotland, which seemed almost tropically warm in comparison (there’s a first time for everything). Happily, these temperatures don’t seem to have been low enough to threaten the vitality of the vines.
March was cool at the start, and dry overall, the only significant rain coming in the middle of the month. April more than made up for this, with 114.9 mm of rainfall recorded, more than double the average, and there then followed several cool months, especially June and July. Both saw overall maximum temperatures about 2ºC less than the 30-year average. And both were wet, with three particularly voluminous downpours on the 7th, 13th and 30th of July. As a consequence of all this rain, flowering and early fruit set had been impaired, as in Muscadet. The vignerons here had similar problems with coulure (failure of fruit development) and millerandage (unevenly sized, ‘hen and chicken’ fruit), and there was mildew in the vineyard.
