GITES
WITH POOLS
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VENDEEN
WINE
Vendéen Wine - A Personal View
Our family have had a holiday home in the Vendée since 1991, that’s enough wine tasting you might think to make me an expert on the local brew, but in my opinion wine is as much about personal taste as music, there’s no good or bad there’s just whether you like it or not..
Our family have had a holiday home in the Vendée since 1991, that’s enough wine tasting you might think to make me an expert on the local brew, but in my opinion wine is as much about personal taste as music, there’s no good or bad there’s just whether you like it or not..
I’ve always preferred reds to whites. I’m old enough to remember
when you could afford to drink Nuit St. Georges and Chambolle Musigny and I’ve
occasionally let the quality suffer in the name of quantity, working on the
theory that after the first bottle we all suffer from the law of diminishing
returns, in terms of taste and often in terms of consciousness. I’ve also drunk
some of the world’s finest wines, my spectrum consequently is broad and I’m not
interested in all the nonsensical self ingratiating wine speak that I’ve too
often heard from the so called wine experts. So whether you agree with me or
not, at least you’ll know that what I say comes from the heart.
When I first came to the Vendée I had never heard of “Fiefs
Vendéen”, that’s not surprising as the wine is not an Appellation Controlle but
ranges from Vins de pays to VDQS. It is normally drunk young and rarely leaves
the region. There are 4 main areas of wine production, and I use the term
loosely, Vix is in the South Vendée surrounded by the Marais Poitevin, which
produces a Rose that is purportedly drunk in Buckingham Palace, Pissotte is
small area a little further north, Brem-sur-Mer is on the coast just above Les
Sables d’Olonne and Mareuil-sur-Lay which is in the heart of the Vendée, and is
without doubt the principal wine growing area. Of course it doesn’t stop there,
after all this is France and wine we’re talking about. Every farmer has his own
plot of vines and grows enough to keep himself and his family in wine for the
year. Some farmers grow far more than they can consume and the excess
occasionally sneaks its way illicitly into the public domain.
Take care if offered this wine, it should come with a public
health warning. It is often made from old grape varieties such as Oberlan,
Juracian and Noah that predate the dreaded phylloxera epidemic which wiped out
most of France’s major vine stocks in the late 1800s. These wines though
normally young are smooth and delicious, incredibly easy to drink, often
extremely strong, frequently 17 o and will lay waste to you with a
smile before you’ve even realised you’re drinking them. Just remember
drinking them is legal, but it is “sans etiquette” and as such it is always
highly illegal to buy or sell.
To get a true flavour of the Fiefs Vendéen you could do worse than
take a trip through the Mareuil-sur-Lay wine region. A few years ago we had some
friends over to stay, they were regular visitors and we thought that as a change
we would investigate the Lay Valley and the wine route to Mareuil-sur-Lay and
Rosnay. We already drank a Mareuil wine which we thought was OK but we decided
look for the Domain and buy the wine direct. It was one of the best decisions we
would ever make. A pleasant drive through the beautiful Lay Valley was
punctuated with a lovely lunch at La Petite Taverna in Moutiers-sur-Lay, a small
hostelry that we stumbled across quite by chance. We then drove on through
Mareuil-sur-Lay and followed one of the wine routes which criss-crossed the road
to Rosnay.
Next out of the magician’s hat was a red, now we were in my
comfort zone, this one was a mixture of a couple of grape varieties, and though
it was OK it didn’t grab me, which left me completely unprepared for the next
offering. His penultimate wine was named Saveur D’Antan, it was a single grape
variety that I’d never heard of, called Negrette. I later spent some
considerable time with a very large French dictionary, trying to fathom out the
translation and the closest I could come to it was “little black girl”. The wine
was dark, no, it was very dark and when I asked Claude if it was a pre-
phylloxera grape variety he seemed impressed by my knowledge, but not as
impressed as I was, this was altogether a different taste. The wine was full
bodied, smooth and dry, it immediately struck me that this was an unusual yet
sophisticated wine escaping from an ancient grape variety, the like of which
you’re unlikely to find anywhere else. Claude’s final offering was a beautifully
rounded red raised in oak; it wasn’t cloying like so many highly oak flavoured
wines (more often than not from the antipodes). It was a delight to drink, and I
could understand that this was his most stylish, complicated and consequently
most expensive wine.
As I write this in 2008 this wine comes in at just over 4 euros a
bottle so for me in terms of quality, variety and value for money his wine was
hard to beat. Claude is just one of many Vendéen producers for whom wine is
their life. Maybe if you take the wine route and search out a little cave
somewhere along the way you may just find something better. Good Luck.
Tate
Tate
About the
author: Tate spends the summers in the Vendee and is passionate about good wine
and good food,he writes exclusively for the http://www.gites-with-pools.co.uk/website.
The coping of this article is permitted as long as the complete article along with its credits are published.
The coping of this article is permitted as long as the complete article along with its credits are published.
Try as we might we never found the Domain that we were searching
for but we did fortuitously stumble across the Domain de L’Auderie. Greeted by
Jackie Galerneau and later joined by her husband Claude, who had been toiling
amongst the vines, we were invited into their cave to taste the wines. I’m
reminded of the Hot Chocolate classic “It Started With A Kiss” only on this
occasion it started with a white, it was full of flavour yet not too sweet and
fruity (I’m not keen on sweet and fruity, at least not in wine) it was crisp it
was dry, it was perfect for me. Next we sampled the Rosé. Rosé seems to be the
most popular locally produced wine amongst the tourists, perhaps it’s the colour
co-ordination with their first week’s pink skin, or perhaps it’s just
particularly good, after drinking Claude’s Rosé my money was on the latter. It
was another full flavoured wine and reached my pallet with much the same result
as the white, namely pure delight. Now at this stage you may think that this is
just a cheap commercial for a local pal, but I can assure you that even the
French friends that I’ve taken to Claude’s have been knocked out by the quality
of his wine. Even those who would previously not have given Vendéen wine house
or maybe cellar room have been converted.
