{"id":15485,"date":"2016-08-16T18:10:05","date_gmt":"2016-08-16T18:10:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/?p=15485"},"modified":"2016-08-16T18:10:05","modified_gmt":"2016-08-16T18:10:05","slug":"a-chenin-blanc-seminar-at-texsom","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/loire\/a-chenin-blanc-seminar-at-texsom","title":{"rendered":"A Chenin Blanc seminar at Texsom"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"chenin<\/p>\n

Patrick Cappiello and Pascaline Lepeltier presented this Chenin tasting at Texsom.<\/p>\n

\u2018I deeply believe that Chenin is the best white grape in the world,\u2019 says Pascaline, a very highly regarded sommelier. She\u2019s been working in New York for the last eight years, but she grew up in the Loire, and is a keen evangelist for Loire Valley wines.<\/p>\n

\u2018Loire is where you can understand the diversity of the grape better than anywhere else,\u2019 she says. \u2018The grape has an amazing potential and we should drink more Chenin.\u2019<\/p>\n

In New York, Chenin is becoming more popular. \u2018In 2001 in wine lists in NYC there was virtually no Chenin Blanc,\u2019 says Patrick. \u2018Baumard and Huet were the only two you could get. When I started buying wines myself a lot of these producers weren\u2019t even available. Pascaline has got everyone excited about it.\u2019<\/p>\n

But this masks a global decline in the plantings of Chenin. It\u2019s really a grape that\u2019s experiencing a tough time. In the Loire it\u2019s really experienced a lot of problems. In the past, Loire Chenin was mostly sweet, and the increasing mechanization and industrialization of wine that took place in the 1950s-1970s resulted in lots of poor quality Loire Chenin, which in turn let to a decline in its fortunes.<\/p>\n

Back in 1990 there were 65 000 hectares of Chenin, worldwide, but by 2014 this had fallen to 37000 ha. The current breakdown is 17933 ha in South Africa, 9728 ha in France (95% in Loire), 2630 ha in the USA and 2320 ha in Argentina.<\/p>\n

Pascaline gave us a brief background to the variety. It was first mentioned by Rabelais in Gargantua in 1534, and its name is said to come from the monastery of Mont-Chenin, near Comery in Touraine. One of its parents is Savagnin. It is easy to grow and gives good yields. There were early migrations to the south west, Holland and South Africa, but it hasn\u2019t spread all that much since then.<\/p>\n

You can make every style of wine with this grape: very few grapes can manage this spectrum. High level bubbles, dry, off dry, sweet, very sweet. Riesling is the only other variety that can do this sort of variety.<\/p>\n

Chenin produces great sweet wines because it takes botrytis well, and that\u2019s one of the reasons it thrived and persisted. The history of Chenin in the Loire is mostly one of making sweet wines, and dry wines are a relatively recent development.<\/p>\n

The Loire is cool climate, but the grape migrated to warm climates such as South Africa is warm climate. Chenin is good because it can keep its acidity, but it was popular because it could make large quantities of wine and keep its acid. It can be a solid workhorse. It can deliver heroic yields. 45-60 hl\/ha would be a typical range for quality dry wines, but this can go up to 150 hl\/ha for table wines. You can do 400 hl\/ha for Chenin if you want, such as in brandy production! There is no mystery about good Chenin: you need to control yields. If you go too high you can\u2019t have a terroir-driven Chenin.<\/p>\n

Chenin gets a lot of its character in the last two weeks before harvest in the Loire. It can be quite neutral when it\u2019s not ripe, but it picks up a lot of aromatics late in its cycle. You have to wait, and botrytis is therefore a big risk.<\/p>\n

It buds really early and so there\u2019s a risk of frost: this is why you rarely see it in cooler climates outside the Loire.<\/p>\n

\u2018Germany should kick out Riesling and plant Chenin,\u2019 suggested Pascaline, but I don\u2019t think she was completely serious. Maybe, though\u2026<\/p>\n

She described the aromas of Chenin:<\/p>\n