Loire 2019 First Taste: Touraine
As we move upriver from the vineyards of the Nantais, Anjou and Saumur and into Touraine we begin to see a different story to the 2019 vintage. Whereas these more westerly vineyards were bitten hard by frost in 2019, here in Touraine there is more variation in this matter. Whereas some unlucky appellations were hit, others escaped with no damage at all.
Chinon & Bourgueil
The most significant of the ‘western’ Touraine appellations are of course Chinon, Bourgueil and St Nicolas de Bourgueil, and here the story of the vintage followed that described downstream in Saumur and Anjou. The year started with a very difficult frost, and as with some domaines and appellations already mentioned in my 2019 Nantais and 2019 Anjou & Saumur reports, this means some vignerons took their third hit in four vintages, 2018 being the only recent vintage where there was absolutely no frost damage.
In Chinon, Jérôme Billard of Domaine de la Noblaie had a busy time in early April. On April 3rd, after a long day at the cellars taking delivery of several new vats which he had ordered two years previously, he saw that the nocturnal temperature was predicted to drop below freezing. He and his team were up all night, positioning anti-frost candles throughout the vineyard. The temperature dropped into negative figures just for one hour, at about 6am on April 4th, and there was some damage but thankfully nothing like that seen downstream (although other vignerons in the appellation were more affected). The combination of long-pruning (when I visited Jérôme a few weeks later, in May, he was busy with the mammoth task of debudding) and candles seemed effective, at least for the Cabernet Franc, with just a couple of parcels hit. The Chenin Blanc suffered more, with 4 hectares damaged. In the end though the yield was 38 hl/ha (the average in the Chinon appellation was 32 hl/ha), less than ideal but a decent yield all things considered.
On the far side of the Vienne, Arnaud Couly of Couly-Dutheil also took some measures against the frost. He has joined forces with some colleagues to purchase an éolienne, which they used to protect the vines for his Les Graviers cuvée which are positioned on low sandy soils close to the river. He also lit some candles in some vineyards, although it is a labour-intensive process, requiring seven people to position and light candles across just 3 hectares. The vines took a hit all the same, as the yield here was down to 25 hl/ha, compared to 38 hl/ha in the more benevolent 2018 vintage. Indeed, everybody I spoke to in these appellations, including Pierre Gauthier at Domaine du Bel Air, Kevin Fontaine at Charles Joguet (the harvest here is pictured), Kathleen Mareels-Van den Berghe at Château de Minière (who has two new éoliennes which were positioned out among the vines) and Olga Raffault among others all reported some losses to frost.
