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G. Ravoin-Cesbron Coteaux du Layon 1970

Later this week I head out to the Loire Valley for yet another round of salons and visits, including the Salon des Vins de Loire. It is now sixteen years since I first ventured out to these salons, to report on the region’s wines for Winedoctor, and I am looking forward to returning to see faces both old and new, and taste wines both familiar and unfamiliar.

A major talking point will of course be the 2024 vintage, not the easiest by all accounts, but given that the vignerons of this region tend to pour their wines once they have been bottled (there is no such thing as primeurs in Vouvray or Chinon) there won’t be too many 2024s up for tasting. So I expect I will be checking out wines mostly from 2023, 2022 and 2021, and perhaps one or two more mature vintages.

Mature, yes, but none I suspect quite as long in the tooth as this weekend’s wine, which hails from a different time altogether.

It is not that often I dip back into the 1970s for my drinking, and this is true regardless of region, as neither the Loire Valley nor Bordeaux were blessed with many great vintages during this decade. Indeed, there are probably only two or three truly memorable vintages in the Loire Valley, the first of which was 1971, an extraordinarily strong vintage in Vouvray, and one which also facilitated the production of sweet wines along the Layon. The other was 1976, a very warm year culminating in a drought which birthed the decade’s best reds in Chinon and Bourgueil, but also yielded some fine sweet wines.

And the third? I would suggest 1970.

While not a highly renowned vintage, there were some good wines produced in this vintage (in Bordeaux too, as it happens). Thinking back to my Moulin Touchais Retrospective a couple of years ago, when I tasted every vintage (well, every available vintage) from 2014 back to 1953, a tasting capped off by the 19th-century La Réserve du Centenaire XIXème, the wines from the 1970s bore this out; 1976, 1971 and 1970 all showed very well, putting the likes of 1975 and 1977 to shame, while 1979 scraped by.

G. Ravoin-Cesbron Coteaux du Layon 1970

My latest foray into the 1970 vintage does not, however, concern Moulin Touchais, although we have not moved too far. This wine also comes to us from the banks of the Layon, but from the vineyards around Faye d’Anjou, one of the Coteaux du Layon appellation’s leading villages.

The renown of the commune of Faye d’Anjou and its vineyards dates back to at least the 18th century, when they were ranked just behind Rablay-sur-Layon and Thouarcé by Claude Robin (1715 – 1794), the curé at the church of Saint-Pierre d’Angers, who listed his favoured wine communes in Ovidianum (published 1782). This curious curate seems to have known his grapes, so it is intriguing to see he favoured the wines of Trélazé, Saint-Barthélemy and Pihardy most of all. If these names seem unfamiliar, there is a good reason for this; although once planted to vines, these communes are now suburbs of Angers, home instead to housing schemes and giant greenhouses where exotic fruit and vegetables are nursed into being. I have wondered if these preferences merely reflected the fact the curate did not have to walk too far for a taste, but I should not be too dismissive; Robin was not the only 18th-century author to praise these communes.

Moving closer to modern times, Faye d’Anjou was more highly ranked by Dr Paul Maisonneuve (1849 – 1927), a viticulturist of repute, professor at the school of agriculture and viticulture in Angers and president of the local union of viticulteurs. Writing in L’Anjou, Ses Vignes et Ses Vins (Imprimerie du Commerce, 1925), he placed it just behind Bonnezeaux, which enjoyed much greater renown in times past than it does today. So wines from this commune deserve our attention, even (especially?) at such a venerable age.

Before I proceed with my tasting note, will you permit me an aside?

Today the Ravoin family still have a presence on the hills of Faye d’Anjou, although they maintain a very low profile; I do not recall ever encountering a bottle of their wine before now. Nevertheless, I have walked amid and around their vines more than once, without realising it at the time. The domaine is located in the lieu-dit of La Pinsonnière, not far from where Pierre Ménard is based, and back in 2010 I spent some time in a gite just one minute’s walk from here. I would wander through the vines of La Pinsonnière at will, treading the ancient Cenomanian sands between rows of aged vines clothed in emerald green leaves, and during the course of several weeks I observed the tiny flower buds turn to fruit.

I never imagined that one day, fifteen years later, I would be drinking such an old vintage from these same vines.

Alright, my reminiscing over, what of the wine? The 1970 Coteaux du Layon from G. Ravoin-Cesbron (I believe the G. in question to be Gilbert Ravoin) sports a fabulously old-fashioned label which I cannot help but admire. The cork was removed with great ease, coming out in one piece, releasing a liquid of a rich, bronze-gold hue into the glass. Aromatically it is rewarding, the nose concentrated and evolved, with intertwined scents of black truffle, caramel, marmalade, cigar smoke and earl grey tea, with a certain freshness and bright energy despite the rich expression. It feels cool and again fresh on the palate, with a rather powdery sweetness and textured presence which carries the herby bergamot notes seen on the nose, nuanced with green tea leaf and perfumed orange. It is coherent, fresh and certainly energetic, yet seems balanced and displays a good length, finishing with bitter citrus fruits and sweetness combined. This is holding up very well for its 54 years, and I suspect – thinking back to my Moulin Touchais experiences noted above – that this has a long way to go before it hits the end of the road. Drink or hold, the choice is yours. No alcohol value declared on the label. 91/100 (27/1/25)

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