Louis de Grenelle, NV Blanc de Noir, Crémant de Loire
Founded in 1859, Louis de Grenelle is one of the last family-owned sparkling wine houses in Saumur. Today, it is sister and brother Françoise Flao and Antoine Bodet who are continuing the work that their father Hubert Bodet began in 1976. They are farming 40 hectares of vineyards, of which about 23 hectares are Cabernet Franc, as well as sourcing from grower partners across the Anjou-Saumur region to produce their diverse range of traditional method sparkling wines, as well as Saumur Blanc and Saumur Rouge from their parcels at the family estate Château de la Durandière. Their maitre de chai, Guillaume Potevin, has been with the estate since 2006.
As it has been a long time since I have featured a sparkling Cabernet Franc from the Loire Valley, I will take a moment to give an overview of this category because it represents an important part of the Loire Valley both historically and in terms of production. With a similar climate to that of Champagne and miles and miles of tuffeau caves ideal for the production and storage of sparkling wines that dug out over centuries beneath the city of Saumur, it was Jean-Baptiste Ackerman who is credited with producing the first traditional method sparkling wines in the Loire Valley back in 1811.
Today, sparkling wine represents around 20% of the Loire Valley's production. And as it relates to Cabernet Franc there are two main categories of traditional method sparkling wine that represent a combined 79% of the sparkling wine produced in the Loire, and these are Crémant de Loire and Saumur Fines Bulles.
Crémant de Loire represents 55% of the Loire Valley's sparkling wine production, and it is the second largest appellation for crémant in France after Crémant d'Alsace. Production is centralized in the Touraine and Anjou-Saumur regions, and the principle grapes are, of course, Chenin Blanc for the whites and Cabernet Franc for rosé, and rosé accounts for around 15% of the appellation's production.
Saumur Moussuex or Saumur Fines Bulles represents around 24% of the Loire Valley's sparkling wine production, and it represents an impressive 68% of the Saumur AOPs production. The principle grapes are the same, Chenin Blanc for the whites and Cabernet Franc for the rosés, and rosé accounts for around 10% of the production of Saumur Mousseux.
Both Crémant de Loire and Saumur Mousseux are produced in the traditional method, with the second fermentation taking place in the bottle, just like Champagne, and there are slight differences between the two appellations in terms of yields as well as time on lees, with Crémant de Loire being 12 months minimum on lees and Saumur Mousseux 9 months minimum.
So, this wine is a Crémant de Loire, and it is coming from parcels in the commune of Montreuil-Bellay, which I actually covered at length in a video earlier this year featuring the Clos Durandière made by Etienne Bodet, Antoine's son, but I will summarize briefly a couple things we should keep in mind about this commune particularly as it relates to the production of sparkling wine.
Firstly, because this commune is about 15km south of the village of Saumur, climatically speaking there is less of a moderating influence from the Loire, so generally budbreak will be a little earlier here, and the growing season as a whole a touch cooler and short compared with the communes close to the Loire in Saumur-Champigny. And this cooler and shorter growing season favours sparkling wine production, particularly for Cabernet Franc, as the grapes don't need to achieve full phenolic ripeness.
Secondly, in terms of the soils, because of the presence of the Montreuil-Bellay fault, which stretches about 150km, and through tectonic activity over hundreds of millions of years, this has exposed a complex patchwork of soils in Montreuil-Bellay. What is notable about this commune, which is particularly interesting for sparkling wine production, is the presence of several different types of Jurassic-era limestones. These limestones are harder and denser than the Turonian tuffeau chalk that dominates the other Cabernet Franc appellations of the Central Loire. Because of the properties of these limestones, they are a cooler terroir overall, and also making them ideal for the production of sparkling wine with Cabernet Franc.
So, the blanc de noir is coming from a 2 hectare parcel of 30 year old vines from a single lieu-dit of Les Chirés, which is situated on the east side of the Thouet River and the parcels have a gentle slope to the northeast. In terms of soils, we have a little over a metre of clayey-sandy silt (Limon argilo-sableux), followed by a bedrock of Oxfordian marl, and marl is a type of limestone with a higher percentage of clay minerals. And Guillaume noted that they use the fruit for the Blanc de Noir because it is a rather cool, and late ripening site, and Cabernet Franc is better adapted to sparkling wine here as it struggles to achieve both technical and phenolic maturity.
From a winemaking perspective, the fruit for this wine is from a single vintage, rather than an assemblage across multiple vintages. And the fruit is hand-harvested, and then whole cluster pressed. The primary fermentation of the clarified juice takes place in stainless steel with selected yeast, then the wine is bottled with the liqueur de tirage and aged on fine lees in the estate's underground tuffeau cellars for upwards to about 18 to 24 months. Following disgorgement, the dosage is around 3 to 4 g/L, which would be classified as extra-brut.
Key wine wine facts below:
Producer: Louis de Grenelle
Appellation: Crémant de Loire
Region: Anjou-Saumur
Commune: Montreuil-Bellay
Lieux-Dits: Les Chirés
Soils: a little over a metre of clayey-sandy silt (limon argilo-sableux) over a bedrock of Oxfordian marl
Alcohol: 12.5%
