Loire 2014 at Ten Years
The opening scene for this review of the 2014 vintage in the Loire Valley is set in a restaurant, close to the site of the Gare d’Angers Saint-Laud, at the heart of the city of Angers. It is early February in 2016, and while the air outside is bitterly cold – a fact I am reminded of every time a hungry diner with a reservation pushes open the restaurant’s main door, which is located not a million miles from where I am sitting – within the diner’s four walls it feels warm and cosy.
Well, apart from the occasional icy gust each time that door swings open, that is.
A group of us gather around a table; we have all arrived in town in readiness for the 2016 salons – most notably the Salon des Vins de Loire – to open their doors. I have stepped off my train from Paris less than half an hour earlier, crossing the road and heading straight for the restaurant, so I am dining with my tiny suitcase at my side. Others arrived here a day or two ago, having travelled up from Millésime Bio by train, while still others have driven down from London, via the Channel Tunnel.
Our greetings done, I take my seat and check out the menu, which involves scraping the barrel of my linguistic abilities, plumbing the long-forgotten depths of my French vocabulary, installed so many decades ago by Miss Cotton. Ris de veau (something to do with rice? – or veal? – or neither?), lièvre (I know it’s that royale dish with the rich sauce, but what is it again?) and poulpe (err…pulp of what?) provide a sequence of modest challenges, in ascending order of difficulty.
While I ponder my options, our first bottle (and surely not our last) arrives. My knowledge of the dishes being served is sketchy, but I recall the identity of the wine with certainty (although that perhaps does not mean much – these days I recognise I can be certain of something, and still be entirely wrong); it was the 2014 Clos du Breuil from François Chidaine. The cork was pulled, and our glasses filled.
And it was so good, it literally took my breath away, sending shivers down my spine.
Or was that just another rush of Arctic air as the front door was opened?
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