Loire 2018 First Taste: Anjou & Saumur
I am delighted to report that the vignerons of Anjou and Saumur enjoyed the same wonderful weather during summer and right through the harvest as their peers did downriver in the vineyards of Muscadet and the other Nantais appellations. This means across the board this is a region bursting with wonderfully ripe, flavoursome and classically Ligérian styles in this vintage. The white varieties, led of course by Chenin Blanc, ripened without issue, but so too did the reds. The vignerons were out picking the Cabernet Franc, Cabernet Sauvignon, Gamay and Grolleau Noir in a leisurely fashion, under clear skies. The fruit was of exceptional quality, and this much is evident even tasting the largely entry-level cuvées reported on here.
It was not, however, a vintage without any difficulty at all. As I have already explored in my introduction to the Loire 2018 vintage, and in my Muscadet 2018 report, there was a huge problem this year with persistently humid, stormy and wet weather during parts of May and much of June. The vineyards of Anjou were not exempt from this complication, and some vignerons really struggled under these circumstance.
Anjou & Coteaux du Layon
How the vignerons responded to the high level of disease pressure seen during spring is an important part of the story of this vintage. While many met it head on, some seem to have underestimated the severity of the problem, with disastrous consequences. The vignerons to whom this applies in the 2018 vintage in this region include Eddy and Mileine Oosterlinck at Domaine de Juchepie, who lost two-thirds of their crop to mildew. Eddy readily admits that he had become complacent about the threat from mildew in recent years, which have all been about frost; he was badly hit by frost in 2016 (losing 50% of the crop as a consequence) with a presumably similar loss in 2017, a vintage when most domaines in the immediate vicinity lost between 15% and 60% of the crop.
