Loire 2017 First Taste: Anjou & Saumur
As was also the case for the vignerons of Muscadet and the other Nantais appellations, those tending vines in the various appellations of Anjou also endured a frosty onslaught during the spring of 2017. It was the same cold air mass which moved down from Normandy which did the damage, performing a perfect pirouette on the sandy and schisty soils of Savennières, seemingly pausing here to inflict as much harm as possible, before heading off downstream towards Muscadet and the Atlantic. It left a trail of frost-burnt buds in its wake.
Savennières
Even though a number of domaines in the Muscadet Sèvre et Maine appellation suffered near-total wipeout, Savennières suffered a worse fate in the 2017 frost. In Muscadet the damage done varied greatly from one parcel to the next, while in Savennières just about everybody lost the majority of the crop. Some immediately declared that they had lost the entire harvest, although in a handful of cases this turned out to be an over-estimation. In the end, everybody in the appellation I have spoken to declared frost damage ranging from 70% to 100%.
The Joly family lost 70% of their crop. “The loss was more severe on the lower sections of each vineyard, and ultimately the yield was somewhere between 10 and 15 hl/ha across the whole domaine. Although it was better in the Clos de la Coulée de Serrant, where we had maybe 35 hl/ha”, said Virginie Joly. Tessa Laroche of the newly revitalised Domaine aux Moines reported something similar. “The frost came on April 26th”, she told me, “and we lost 70% of the harvest. I thought we had lost more, and I didn’t think we would have enough fruit to make our two wines in this vintage. But in the end it turned out that the harvest was sufficient to make both Berceau des Fées and the Roche-aux-Moines cuvée, but it will be a very small production of each.”>
