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, so my spectrum is broad and I’m not interested
in all the nonsensical self ingratiating wine speak that I’ve so 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 wine areas of production, and I use the term
loosely, Vix in the South surrounded by the Marais Poitevins, Pissotte a little
further north, Brem-sur-Mer on the coast just above Les Sables d’Olonne and
Mareuil-sur-Lay in the heart of the Vendée, which is without doubt its 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 was we thought OK but we thought
why not find the Domain and buy it direct. It was one of the best decisions we
would ever take. A pleasant drive through the beautiful Lay Valley was
punctuated with a lovely lunch in La Petite Taverna in Moutiers-sur-Lay, which
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 which was a mixture of a
couple of grape varieties, we were now in my real comfort zone, and though it
was OK it didn’t grab me leaving 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 meaning 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 a different taste. The wine was full bodied, smooth and very dry it
immediately struck me that this was a sophisticated wine escaping from an
ancient grape variety that you’re just never likely to find anywhere else.
Claude’s final offering was a beautifully rounded red raised in oak, but not
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 it
was his most stylish, complicated and consequently most expensive wine.
As I write this in 2008 it 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 there 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 we were searching for
but we did 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 their wares. I’m reminded of the Hot
Chocolate classic “It Started With A Kiss” but 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) it was crisp it was dry it was perfect for me. Then came the
Rosé. Vendéen Rosé seems to be the most popular locally produced wine drunk by
the tourist, perhaps it’s the first week colour co-ordinating with the pink
skin, or perhaps it’s just particularly good after drinking Claude’s Rosé I was
beginning to think the latter. It was again full flavoured 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 and even those who would previously not
have given Vendéen wine house or maybe cellar room, have been converted.
