Muscadet by number (1952)

[Don Rice]

An interesting book about Muscadet from the 1950s by Joseph-Henri Maujouan du Gasset. Number-crunchers especially might appreciate it.

Drawing on over a century of harvest and price data, the author used numerical and statistical techniques to try to understand the conditions most conducive to successful (=profitable) grape growing, winemaking and marketing of Muscadet. He was 28 when this book was published in 1952. During his political life he was, among other things, the mayor of Gorges, one town West of Marc Ollivier's Maisdon-sur Sevre. A short bio is here.

At the time of publication, vignerons in the Loire-Inferieure were still recovering from the disaster of the 1945 harvest.

Below are a few pages from it. Barely a sampling.

            

            

            

 

[SFJoe]

Fascinating, Don.

Very interesting to see the average alcohols, particularly since I had a 1911 pinot gris from the Touraine this week, and it seems to have been an exceptional vintage in the Muscadet, at least.

What was so bad about 1945? (In weather terms, of course, ignoring the global disarray.)

 

[Cory Cartwright]

As I recall there was a terrible frost in the spring that killed off a good number of vines.

 

[Don Rice]

Thanks Cory I was wondering too.

In the first table you can see - in 1945, yield at harvest was tiny. The next table shows high prices for the year - there just wasn't enough wine to sell. But for the next few years prices per hectoliter sank, right up to the book's publication date. A rough patch of vintages there, and I'm not yet sure why.

      

 

[Cory Cartwright]

Additional from Richard Kelley on '45:

"1945
L’année de la victoire ranks alongside 1947 as one of the greatest ever vintages. A frost on 1st May, one of the latest ever recorded, greatly reduced but helped concentrate the crop. The summer months were excellent with excessive heat. There were two specified harvest dates; 1st and 22nd October."

From here:

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www.richardkelley.co.uk

I remember reading that in some places the frost was bad enough to have damaged or killed some of the vines entirely, which may explain the awful years following 45. I'm guessing the postwar economy has more to do with that than anything, however.

 

[Brad Kane]

originally posted by Cory Cartwright:

I remember reading that in some places the frost was bad enough to have damaged or killed some of the vines entirely, which may explain the awful years following 45. I'm guessing the postwar economy has more to do with that than anything, however.

Well, '47 and '49 were pretty stellar in the region and throughout much of Europe.

 

[Cory Cartwright]

I was referring specifically to Muscadet since, as the prices and yields above suggest, something was amiss.

 

[Don Rice]

Must be tough to have a good vintage that yields very little wine to sell.

 

[SFJoe]

For a minute there, I was trying to parse a tiny vintage Muscadet harvest on 22nd October.

But yes, the frost did affect Vouvray. Many of the vines set a second crop, some of which were harvested in some estates, giving extra acidity to the rich wines.