Last fall, I had the opportunity to drive down from Paris to Vouvray, in the Loire Valley, to look into an argument between the town and the French railroads. It seemed that the S.N.C.F. -an abbreviation for the railroad system – had drawn the route for its new high-speed train, the T.G.V. Atlantique, through some famous vineyards. Understandably, the locals were up in arms. It was a good story. It was also a chance to meet Gaston Huet, the Mayor of Vouvray and one of its best-known wine makers.
Mayor for 40 years and a wine maker longer, Mr. Huet had yet to encounter a problem in politics or nature that could not be eased by a glass of wine. To that end, he produced a 20-year-old bottle of his sparkling Vouvray. After a glass or two, the Paris bureaucracy seemed far away and, sure enough, within months the S.N.C.F. had changed the train’s route.
Aside from the train story, the visit with Mr. Huet was a serendipitous reminder that all that bubbles in France is not Champagne. Champagne has been relatively cheap in recent years, and there has been a tendency to forget that the country produces lots of other sparkling wines, some of them quite good.
They come from every corner of the Hexagon, as the French call their country: the Loire, the Jura, Burgundy, Alsace, the Rhone, and from Limoux and Gaillac and even Bordeaux, in the southwest.
My normally superior $3.99 vintage.
Americans are in love with sparkling wine. It all started, most recently, five or six years ago, and even now no one is sure why. There is talk of more sophisticated life styles, the switch away from hard liquor as an aperitif and the not inconsiderable discretionary income of the yuppie generation. Whatever the reason, sales of sparkling wines, from the cheapest California and Spanish stuff to the most exclusive vintage Champagne, are running about 200 percent ahead of still -non-bubbly – table wine.
French sparkling wine has had to contend not only with lower Champagne prices but, for the moment at least, with unbelievably low prices for Spanish sparkling wines. Some Spanish sparklers – the big names are Freixenet, Cordoniu and Paul Cheneau – sell for as little as $3.99 in New York.
But there are French wines that deserve to be known and enjoyed on their merits. Some of the sparkling wines from the Loire region are better than most of the Spanish versions, and Vouvray is probably the best of the Loire wines. Among the best producers are Mr. Huet, Prince Poniatowski and Marc Bredif, whose cellars are up the river a kilometer or two at Rochecorbon. All these wines show up from time to time in this country, but they are not easy to come by.
One of the most attractive of the Loire sparkling wines is produced at Saumur by the firm of Gratien & Meyer, which mixes chenin blanc and cabernet franc to make a wine with more firmness than most French sparklers. The Brut Saumur is its most popular wine and its rose is one of the great summer aperitifs. Champagne prices may be low at the moment, but rose Champagnes are still fairly expensive. Gratien & Meyer rose, if you can find it, is an excellent substitute.
Gratien & Meyer’s sweeter sparkling wines, its sec and demi-sec, should appeal to the vast market of Americans who prefer sweetness in their wine. Unfortunately, they are not often seen in this country. Alfred Gratien, the Champagne house, is owned by the same company.
Many Vouvray and Saumur wine houses, Gratien & Meyer among them, are troglodytes. Their cellars – in some cases their offices and wine-making facilities as well – are in caves dug into the limestone cliffs that overlook the Loire from the north. Gratien & Meyer store more than five million bottles of sparkling wine in its three miles of caves.
Monmousseau, nearby at Montrichard, has some eight miles of limestone caves under the cliff. Its best-known brand is Brut de Mosny, made entirely of chenin blanc grapes.
One of the better-known Saumur wines in this country, and not without reason, is Bouvet Brut, another all-chenin blanc wine. It is vintage-dated in Europe, but even the undated wine, which is surely a blend of several years, is a superior sparkling wine.
The company is owned by Monmousseau, which in turn is owned by Taittinger, the famous Champagne house.
Sparkling Burgundy has a long and not particularly glorious reputation in this country, and there is nothing in the market at the moment that is about to change that assessment. Any good grapes in Burgundy are used to make genuine Burgundy, not inexpensive sparkling wine. The Wassermans, Sheldon and Pauline, in their book ”Sparkling Wine” (New Century, 1984), say kind things about the Burgundy sparklers. The Burgundians should be grateful.
The newest member of the French sparkling wine club is cremant d’Alsace, which is a type of wine, not a brand. It has been around a long time, though French regulations only permitted its commercial production in 1976. The wine is made from Alsatian grapes, of course, but don’t expect a bubbly riesling or gewurtztraminer.
Most of the wine is made by big cooperatives, but several private producers, among them Dopff-Irion, have their own brands of cremant d’Alsace, Dopff au Moulin and Clos St. Landelin. The wine is good everyday sparkling wine, but it has none of the fruity intensity that is the hallmark of good Alsatian wine.
Some good sparkling wine is made in the Jura mountains between Burgundy and Switzerland -sparkling Arbois, sparkling Seyssel – but the best-known is something called Vin Fou – crazy wine – made by Henri Maire, one of the most industrious wine promoters in France. It has a cloying quality that newcomers to wine sometimes like.
Probably the biggest of all the French sparkling wines – 13 million cases a year – is one that is almost never seen in this country: Blanquette de Limoux. It comes from the town of Limoux, near Carcassonne, in the southwest of France, and it’s made from chardonnay and a grape called the mauzac. For what it’s worth, the French love it.
