Loire Valley

[lsanderson]

A Great Year Lifts an Unsung Region
By ERIC ASIMOV

GREAT vintages send prices surging for wines from high-status regions like Bordeaux and Burgundy.

Money-conscious consumers can either avoid these coveted years or employ another value-hunter’s technique: looking beyond those regions for areas that are largely ignored or that make wines that are unfashionable or confusing or that for one reason or another have not won over mass-market wine drinkers. Case in point: the Loire Valley.

Right away we have a problem. It makes as little sense to speak of the Loire Valley as a single wine district, as many wine publications do, as it does to think of states along the Mississippi River as a single entity. Minnesota, Missouri and Mississippi are all linked by the river, but not by much else.

Similarly, to think of Muscadet, Savennières and Chinon, for example, as one region is nonsensical, even if they all share the river. Each wine is made with different grapes in different lands under different conditions.

Even so, they do have one thing in common: they are all laughably undervalued.

Take Chinon, for example. These red wines are made largely from the cabernet franc grape, although since 2000 it has been legal to add up to 25 percent cabernet sauvignon.

In cold years, when the grapes struggle to ripen, or when they are grown in too much quantity, these wines take on a vegetative, bell pepper or even canned green bean quality that can be a turnoff.

In a good year, the wines offer savory berry flavors, with herbal, earth and mineral tones that add a welcome complexity. Good acidity makes them lively and refreshing, and they can age and improve for 10 to 20 years.

In a great year, these wines are absolutely delicious, with spicy raspberry and cherry flavors. They show intensity and elegance while remaining fresh and vivacious.

And make no mistake: 2005 was a great year, as the wine panel confirmed in a recent tasting of 25 bottles of 2005 Chinon. More

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