Slate, Energy and a Wink at the Bus Stop

Savennières, Loire Valley

Savennières is very famous for its wine and wow, what a beautiful little village this was. Clean, well kept and very friendly, but also very tired, because harvest had just finished and you could feel that the whole village had just come through it. I'd come out from Angers to learn about and understand their wines.

I went to Domaine du Closel, who own the most hectares in the Savennières appellation, which I think is why they were open, because I couldn't get into any of the other wineries. Antoine, their winemaker, took me through how they work. The whole appellation is 160 hectares and the vines sit on slate in the coulées, the small valleys that run down towards the Loire. Everything is hand picked. They work at 35 hectolitres per hectare, and if you're producing 50 hectolitres per hectare it's not allowed to be Savennières. Yield sounds technical but it's really simple. The fewer grapes you ask each vine to carry, the more of everything goes into the ones that are left, so a low yield is a big part of why these Chenins taste the way they do.

Antoine looks for energy when he's picking and he wants it in his wine. Then at the finish it's about texture, which comes from the lees, the yeast that settles after fermentation. Leaving the wine sitting on them gives it a rounder, fuller feel in your mouth, so you get the energy from picking at the right moment and the texture from the time it spends on its lees.

While I was wandering the streets just to see what I could find, a lovely lady called Janette saw me and tried very hard to help. She asked me in to stay, gave me a glass of water and let me charge my phone, and her friend since school, Danielle, had just arrived from Paris. Danielle is a famous writer and spoke very little English, but we managed to chat. It was such a small part of the day but it showed me how friendly people can be.

Then came getting home. To be fair, I wasn't sure which platform to get on, whether the train was going down the line or towards Angers, and it can be really confusing if you don't know what to do. The next train was going to be another 50 minutes, and then a bus came around the corner. I gave the driver a wink and he stopped to grab me.

"Are you going to Angers?"

"Oui, Angers."

"Oui oui, Angers," he said, in his very French way, kind of gruff and stern.

So I caught a bus just by standing on the corner instead of the train, and off we went. We went through Épiré, La Pointe and the other little villages on the way home, and the driver seemed to be in a real rush, with very little room on each side going up the tiny wee cobbled streets of each village and even over the bridges.

Back in Angers, the St Julien hotel right on the square would be a great place to stay. I stayed just behind it and picked up my keys from there.