Comments on romorantin
(Other Jan/Feb 2012 notes are here for Beaujolais, and here for chenin)
The idiots at the INAO don’t seem to know it, but a big part of the joy of the Touraine is the diversity of cultivars. Menu pineau, anyone? Pineau d’aunis? Hell, there isn’t so much great chenin in the rest of the world either. (I say idiots at the INAO because they keep urging that sauvignon blanc be the only allowed white grape in the Touraine, the better to go have a clear brand identity in the market as the “New Zealand with baguettes and berets,” or some such lunacy.) I had a demi-sec pinot gris from the Touraine from 1911 a few days ago. PG is illegal now, and the grapes that made it have been torn up, but that wine would make you a believer. Not that there isn’t delicious SB from the Touraine, about which more in another installment.
Anyhow, romorantin is resolutely an entry in the column of geeky obscurity. It has enough acid to discourage many palates, it takes time in most vintages for the aromatics to develop, and there aren’t so many great producers to develop a name in the market. The region around Cheverny was getting its own AOC in the ‘90s and the political negotiations were fraught, as they often are with the INAO. Touraine growers outside Cheverny were worried that Cheverny would be seen as a fancy cru and lord it over them, so they sought to distinguish Cheverny in the market by forcing the wines to be a blend of sauvignon blanc and chardonnay. This went through, and seems not to cripple the Cheverny growers in the market. But there had long been a significant plantation of romorantin in the neighborhood, and it was tough to figure out how to get it covered. The solution, finally, was to give romo its own room (MS Word spell-corrects “romo” to “room” unless you tell it to stop, btw), its own AOC, Cour-Cheverny, in which romorantin is the only permitted grape. The terroirs are not always so distinct, it’s more that Cour-Cheverny is romorantin planted within Cheverny, though it does better on argilo-calcaire (clay with limestone). SB, OTOH, needs better drainage and is OK with sand. Romo is prone to high yields and late ripening, so in the wrong hands in the old days you could get some shrill wines. The vines really need to be 30+ years old to moderate both those tendencies. It is extra tricky, because romorantin has thin and fairly fragile skins, so it can rot fast if you wait too long for ripeness and get caught by rain.
There are only 15 or so growers who make Cour-Cheverny, so it is one of the smaller AOCs in France. I had a chance this year to visit Francois Cazin, one of the best of them, at his estate for the first time. I will comment quickly on recent wines, but the real excitement was a vertical of his Cour-Cheverny and I want to get to that.
Francois’ regular Cheverny is well-made stuff, but it usually doesn’t do too much for me. It’s not really his fault, I prefer my SB without chardonnay to pump it up. I think plenty of consumers take the opposing view, so I the wines do fine in the market without my blessing. Anyhow, the components of Cazin’s 2011 regular Cheverny seem likely to be more my style than usual. He had very low yields of chardonnay in 2011, and the SB has good pyrazinic qualities but also relative richness. It probably tastes more like Touraine SB. One potential assemblage had 13%, 3g rs, and 4 g TA.
The 2010 regular Cour-Cheverny is very attractive. An unusually sweet and ripe nose, tasty and refreshing and not overly lean on the palate, it’s a very nice vintage of this. Cazin says his romo goes through MLF more often in recent years. (To my surprise. I would have thought the pH too low for it to be common). I will get some, I think. 2011 was a bit tougher, he had to select out grapes for rot. Once again in marginal climates, hand harvesting is key. There is a Renaissance in 2011 (essentially a ripe VV bottling, occasionally with botrytis or passerillage, but not always), it reminds of 2008, 12.5% and about 20 grams of rs.
We went down into the cellar to taste older vintages. Cazin has half a dozen cats, which I didn’t know in advance, and I didn’t have any Zyrtec with me, so my abilities declined a bit as the sneezing took effect. Cats became something of a theme in the Loire from that point on. Every time I would turn around, there would be another cat, just staring at me. I’m just glad I wasn’t in Bodega Bay. Cazin had planned verticals of both his regular Cour-Cheverny and his Cuvee Renaissance, but we ran out of time for the latter. Folks who go to the Salon this week in Angers will have a crack at the Renaissance. The big lesson for me from all this was how well the regular wine ages. I had never truly appreciated that before. I fear that I have mostly the Renaissance in the cellar, and I wish I had 2002 and 1996 regular in quantity. Anyhow, some comments on the vertical:
2009 Boom! Big wine, rounder and softer than most, also underwent 30% MLF. But still plenty of acid and long potential, needs years.
2008 More classic, no MLF, nice early complexity in the aromatics, good stuff. Cazin likens to 2002.
2007 Very straight up vintage. He put the Renaissance into the regular in ’07, so it gets the extra benefit of the old vines. Still a bit tight.
2006 Frost in the spring, so low yields. Late summer was quite hot, and they had some botrytis, so this is 14%, quite powerful. Not the most elegant vintage.
2005 Good ripeness and structure, but isn’t showing a lot of complexity yet. Maybe too young, or maybe this will always be a bit simpler.
2004 Showing well, starting to see some development here. Good balance, a bit of botrytis. Makes Francois Pinon’s point about difficult vintages sometimes offering more complexity. They had to do considerable triage. A partial malo softens this a bit.
There was no regular Cour-Cheverny in 2003 (!), it is all Renaissance. Cazin: “It didn’t ripen in ’03, it burnt.” SFJ: “This exact part of Europe had some of the largest excursions from normal summer weather in 2003 seen that year.”
2002 No MLF, about 5 g rs. Fabulous wine, echt-romo. Wish I had some. Starting to get a little truffle/cep thing in the nose, but retains its calcairian minerality. Very long. Drink now to 2030?
2001 Big frost, tough harvest. More botrytis on the nose, I think, but I am wrong. No botrytis. Slight oxidation, not terribly long, prominent acid. Cazin: “It’s no 2002.” Good natured laughter from the crowd.
2000 Nicely developing aromatics on this. Jake mentions Riesling. I haven’t had a chance to look it up, but my recollection is that romo is a cousin of Riesling via gouais blanc. Will check. Cazin thinks the acidity is a little low, but for drinking soon you might find folks who don’t object.
1999 He lost a lot to rot, waited too long for ripeness. It’s a bit delicate, but very pretty. No MLF. I wouldn’t hold it more than a few more years.
1998 No Renaissance this year. Unusual, less evolved, slightly funky, but tons of room to run.
1997 In keeping with the vintage in the Loire, this is a warmer, riper wine. A more plush texture, nice aromatics. Drinking well now and for another decade, but not forever.
1996 Also in keeping with the vintage, this is classic, fabulous stuff. The vintage was cool and slow, with long even ripening. It is quite ripe, and retains 10 grams of rs. Powerful, yummy, drinking beautifully now but will last for decades is my guess.
1995 A passerillage vintage, no rot or botrytis. Classic and concentrated, pretty, and young.
1989 Begins to get some color. Ripe and warm on the palate, maturing mushroom flavors and extra complexity. This was Francois’ father’s last harvest. He bottled it with 30 mg or so free SO2, and you can taste that in the wine, but it’s delicious nonetheless.
Francois adds some SO2 to the must, and a bit on first racking. His wines are consequently fairly classical and clean. He is no hipster. But he seeks 15 mg free for his dry wines, which is fairly conservative.
We also had the ’96 Cuvee Renaissance with lunch, a wine known to many of you and also one I still have in the cellar. It keeps some big acid and more rs than the regular. It remains tasty and young.
(Other Jan/Feb 2012 notes are here for Beaujolais, and here for chenin)
The idiots at the INAO don’t seem to know it, but a big part of the joy of the Touraine is the diversity of cultivars. Menu pineau, anyone? Pineau d’aunis? Hell, there isn’t so much great chenin in the rest of the world either. (I say idiots at the INAO because they keep urging that sauvignon blanc be the only allowed white grape in the Touraine, the better to go have a clear brand identity in the market as the “New Zealand with baguettes and berets,” or some such lunacy.) I had a demi-sec pinot gris from the Touraine from 1911 a few days ago. PG is illegal now, and the grapes that made it have been torn up, but that wine would make you a believer. Not that there isn’t delicious SB from the Touraine, about which more in another installment.
Anyhow, romorantin is resolutely an entry in the column of geeky obscurity. It has enough acid to discourage many palates, it takes time in most vintages for the aromatics to develop, and there aren’t so many great producers to develop a name in the market. The region around Cheverny was getting its own AOC in the ‘90s and the political negotiations were fraught, as they often are with the INAO. Touraine growers outside Cheverny were worried that Cheverny would be seen as a fancy cru and lord it over them, so they sought to distinguish Cheverny in the market by forcing the wines to be a blend of sauvignon blanc and chardonnay. This went through, and seems not to cripple the Cheverny growers in the market. But there had long been a significant plantation of romorantin in the neighborhood, and it was tough to figure out how to get it covered. The solution, finally, was to give romo its own room (MS Word spell-corrects “romo” to “room” unless you tell it to stop, btw), its own AOC, Cour-Cheverny, in which romorantin is the only permitted grape. The terroirs are not always so distinct, it’s more that Cour-Cheverny is romorantin planted within Cheverny, though it does better on argilo-calcaire (clay with limestone). SB, OTOH, needs better drainage and is OK with sand. Romo is prone to high yields and late ripening, so in the wrong hands in the old days you could get some shrill wines. The vines really need to be 30+ years old to moderate both those tendencies. It is extra tricky, because romorantin has thin and fairly fragile skins, so it can rot fast if you wait too long for ripeness and get caught by rain.
There are only 15 or so growers who make Cour-Cheverny, so it is one of the smaller AOCs in France. I had a chance this year to visit Francois Cazin, one of the best of them, at his estate for the first time. I will comment quickly on recent wines, but the real excitement was a vertical of his Cour-Cheverny and I want to get to that.
Francois’ regular Cheverny is well-made stuff, but it usually doesn’t do too much for me. It’s not really his fault, I prefer my SB without chardonnay to pump it up. I think plenty of consumers take the opposing view, so I the wines do fine in the market without my blessing. Anyhow, the components of Cazin’s 2011 regular Cheverny seem likely to be more my style than usual. He had very low yields of chardonnay in 2011, and the SB has good pyrazinic qualities but also relative richness. It probably tastes more like Touraine SB. One potential assemblage had 13%, 3g rs, and 4 g TA.
The 2010 regular Cour-Cheverny is very attractive. An unusually sweet and ripe nose, tasty and refreshing and not overly lean on the palate, it’s a very nice vintage of this. Cazin says his romo goes through MLF more often in recent years. (To my surprise. I would have thought the pH too low for it to be common). I will get some, I think. 2011 was a bit tougher, he had to select out grapes for rot. Once again in marginal climates, hand harvesting is key. There is a Renaissance in 2011 (essentially a ripe VV bottling, occasionally with botrytis or passerillage, but not always), it reminds of 2008, 12.5% and about 20 grams of rs.
We went down into the cellar to taste older vintages. Cazin has half a dozen cats, which I didn’t know in advance, and I didn’t have any Zyrtec with me, so my abilities declined a bit as the sneezing took effect. Cats became something of a theme in the Loire from that point on. Every time I would turn around, there would be another cat, just staring at me. I’m just glad I wasn’t in Bodega Bay. Cazin had planned verticals of both his regular Cour-Cheverny and his Cuvee Renaissance, but we ran out of time for the latter. Folks who go to the Salon this week in Angers will have a crack at the Renaissance. The big lesson for me from all this was how well the regular wine ages. I had never truly appreciated that before. I fear that I have mostly the Renaissance in the cellar, and I wish I had 2002 and 1996 regular in quantity. Anyhow, some comments on the vertical:
2009 Boom! Big wine, rounder and softer than most, also underwent 30% MLF. But still plenty of acid and long potential, needs years.
2008 More classic, no MLF, nice early complexity in the aromatics, good stuff. Cazin likens to 2002.
2007 Very straight up vintage. He put the Renaissance into the regular in ’07, so it gets the extra benefit of the old vines. Still a bit tight.
2006 Frost in the spring, so low yields. Late summer was quite hot, and they had some botrytis, so this is 14%, quite powerful. Not the most elegant vintage.
2005 Good ripeness and structure, but isn’t showing a lot of complexity yet. Maybe too young, or maybe this will always be a bit simpler.
2004 Showing well, starting to see some development here. Good balance, a bit of botrytis. Makes Francois Pinon’s point about difficult vintages sometimes offering more complexity. They had to do considerable triage. A partial malo softens this a bit.
There was no regular Cour-Cheverny in 2003 (!), it is all Renaissance. Cazin: “It didn’t ripen in ’03, it burnt.” SFJ: “This exact part of Europe had some of the largest excursions from normal summer weather in 2003 seen that year.”
2002 No MLF, about 5 g rs. Fabulous wine, echt-romo. Wish I had some. Starting to get a little truffle/cep thing in the nose, but retains its calcairian minerality. Very long. Drink now to 2030?
2001 Big frost, tough harvest. More botrytis on the nose, I think, but I am wrong. No botrytis. Slight oxidation, not terribly long, prominent acid. Cazin: “It’s no 2002.” Good natured laughter from the crowd.
2000 Nicely developing aromatics on this. Jake mentions Riesling. I haven’t had a chance to look it up, but my recollection is that romo is a cousin of Riesling via gouais blanc. Will check. Cazin thinks the acidity is a little low, but for drinking soon you might find folks who don’t object.
1999 He lost a lot to rot, waited too long for ripeness. It’s a bit delicate, but very pretty. No MLF. I wouldn’t hold it more than a few more years.
1998 No Renaissance this year. Unusual, less evolved, slightly funky, but tons of room to run.
1997 In keeping with the vintage in the Loire, this is a warmer, riper wine. A more plush texture, nice aromatics. Drinking well now and for another decade, but not forever.
1996 Also in keeping with the vintage, this is classic, fabulous stuff. The vintage was cool and slow, with long even ripening. It is quite ripe, and retains 10 grams of rs. Powerful, yummy, drinking beautifully now but will last for decades is my guess.
1995 A passerillage vintage, no rot or botrytis. Classic and concentrated, pretty, and young.
1989 Begins to get some color. Ripe and warm on the palate, maturing mushroom flavors and extra complexity. This was Francois’ father’s last harvest. He bottled it with 30 mg or so free SO2, and you can taste that in the wine, but it’s delicious nonetheless.
Francois adds some SO2 to the must, and a bit on first racking. His wines are consequently fairly classical and clean. He is no hipster. But he seeks 15 mg free for his dry wines, which is fairly conservative.
We also had the ’96 Cuvee Renaissance with lunch, a wine known to many of you and also one I still have in the cellar. It keeps some big acid and more rs than the regular. It remains tasty and young.