Loire 2020 First Taste: Anjou & Saumur
In this short report I take a look at another small selection of wines from the 2020 vintage in the Loire Valley, this time taking a look at the wines of Anjou and Saumur.
As with my report on the wines of the Nantais in 2020, this is a select first ‘bite’ of the vintage. This isn’t that unusual; once you look past the great swathes of Rosé d’Anjou and Cabernet d’Anjou, this is a region dominated by barrel-aged Chenin Blanc both dry and sweet, and the leading red varieties, Cabernet Franc and Cabernet Sauvignon. Most of these wines are still in élevage, and at this time of year many of the sweet wines have yet to finish their slow and rumbling fermentations (although this year there simply won’t be many sweet wines, as described in my 2020 vintage report).
It is thus rare to find local vignerons pouring significant numbers of barrel samples at this early stage, and even rarer are those willing to ship these samples to Scotland, from one locked-down country to another. So I am grateful to the Papin family of Château Pierre-Bise, Alexandre Cady and family at Domaine Cady, Jean-Hubert Lebreton at Domaine des Rochelles, Paul Pisani-Ferry at Château de Targé and the team at Domaine de Sanzay for sending samples.
The wines tasted so far are too few to make sweeping generalisations, and tend to come from the lighter, more entry-level end of the portfolios, so they may not represent the best the vintage has to offer. Having said that I was very taken with the quality of the 2020 Anjou Gamay from Château Pierre-Bise, a wine rich in dark and salty mineral fruits, with an opulent texture and finely knit tannins in keeping with the character of the year as described in my 2020 vintage report. It was in terms of depth, structure and complexity just a notch behind the 2018 Château Pierre-Bise Anjou-Village Les Rouannières on which I reported during the last few weeks, evidence that the Papin clan have just as much skill with red varieties as they do with white. I would happily drink either of these wines again right now (well, once I have had my breakfast, anyway).
