The Cellar: Loire & More Day 3

The Cellar: Loire & More Day 3

Day #3 – Muscadet: Today started out cold and rainy as I set off from Nantes on my second full day of exploring Muscadet. My first visit brought me just outside the town of Mouzillon where the Le Roch family operates a 40 acre Estate called Domaine de la Tucauderie. There I met with Gregory Le Roch – the 3rd generation of the Le Roch family to work at the Estate.

Domaine de la Tucauderie was founded by Gregory’s grandmother Constance who planted the Estate’s first 12 acres of Melon de Bourgogne and Folle Blanche grapes in 1944 (these 70 year old Melon vines are still producing today and are bottled separately labeled called ‘Vieilles Vignes’). Today the vineyards are worked by Gregory, his parents Vincent and Beatrice and Gregory’s two siblings. At round 100.000 bottles of wine produced per year Domaine de la Tucauderie is considered a medium sized producer for the region. Currently, Gregory is pouring 10 different Muscadet, Sevre-et-Maine ‘Sur Lie’ wines in his tasting room – some single vineyard plots and some with a little age on them – not to mention wines made from Sauvignon Blanc, Pinot Gris, Pinot Noir and Gamay, just to name a few.

Domaine de la Tucauderie’s wines are absolutely stunning. Besides from sampling a stellar Sauvignon Blanc, what I thought was the most interesting was to taste the differences between the single vineyard Muscadets: Cap Bel Air, Blazenn Breizh and Clos de l’Osangere. While the windy conditions at the Cap Bel Air plot makes for a drier wine the Blazenn Breizh plot produces a richer, perhaps more fruity Muscadet. I especially enjoyed the Clos de l’Osangere which was from the 2009 vintage and underwent 1 year of sur lie aging and rested for 1 year in bottle before being released. This wine seemed complete – a perfect balance between stone fruit, citrus, minerality and acid - , which adds to my recently acquired belief that Muscadets not only can age, but actually gets increasingly complex when made from a quality producer.

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It was such a pleasure to observe a real family owned and operated winery in full swing. As I was pulling in the parking lot Vincent Le Roch was unloading this morning’s Chardonnay harvest.

Minutes later it was Beatrice’s turn to test the juice as it was being pumped from the press into the underground fermentation tanks. Things would get even better as Gregory brought out the oysters and foie gras to show the diversity of foods Muscadet can be paired with.

Muscadet is such an undervalued and underappreciated wine. In the US for sure, but even right here in the major cities of the Loire. The unfortunate reputation of being some of the driest, most flavorless and acidic plonk was (rightfully) acquired during the 70’s and 80’s when producers were aiming for quantity over quality.  Thankfully, today, there are producers like Domaine de la Tucauderie who have learned how to coax the true character out the Melon grape and continue to showcase the best of what it has to offer – top notch Muscadet.

Unfortunately the wines from Domaine de la Tucauderie are not distributed in the US - yet. In fact, all of their wines are ‘hand sold’ at the Domaine, to restaurants and at farmers markets and trade fairs.  Great visit – great people.

While I did visit another fantastic winery, Domaine de l’Ecu in Le Landreau, I won’t be featuring this visit just yet.  I am heading to Angers tonight and will be reporting from Saumur and Anjou tomorrow. Stay tuned.

Steffen Rasch is a Certified Sommelier and Specialist of Wine. Feel free to email him at [email protected] with any wine-related question or learn about wine in person by signing up for one of his tastings through the Providence Wine Academy.