APPRECIATING SAVENNIÈRES
by Peter Gibson

To many wine lovers, and I include myself without hesitation, the wines of Savennières are the greatest expression of Chenin Blanc as a dry wine. Sure Vouvray sec with its lilting, floral aromas beguiles me, but Savennières somehow captivates me more. Granted, from the best producers, both wines are sublime, but the aromas of a great Savennières grab my attention, as few wines can, with their uncanny ability to speak with rare clarity and authority of a singular place.

Many of my favorite wine writers and fellow Savennière advocates have offered excellent and insightful reasons why Savennières has not attracted as strong a following as it deserves. A few of the most notable have called Savennières “the world’s most cerebral wine” (Jacqueline Friedrich), “a wine for intellectuals, not neophytes” (Jancis Robinson), and perhaps the most vivid of all referring specifically to Savennières most famous cru, le Clos de la Coulée de Serrant, “too stony, too minerally, so much so that it seems feculent” (Matt Kramer).

If Savennières is so difficult, so intellectual, so overpowering, why would anyone, save for the most adventurous wine enthusiast, ever bother to sample it? Is it these foreboding warnings or a simple lack of understanding that turns people off to the wonder of this very special wine?

In my experience both as a student of wine and as a professional, I have found that the world’s most underappreciated great wines are misunderstood because of their inherent lack of familiar flavors and obvious impressions.
To a person accustomed to buttery Chardonnays, one whiff of Savennières, without a proper introduction and a gentle guiding hand, is guaranteed to alienate the potential devotee. Now if you give the Chardonnay lover a little background about the wine and a hint of what to expect, he or she will approach it with more confidence and assuredness. This may be the difference in response between an impulsive “I don’t like it!” (read: “I don’t understand it”) and a intrigued “Hmm, this is different” (read: “tell me more”).

I believe Savennières deserves a wider audience and I hope through the course of this essay that I can offer a proper introduction to this underappreciated and undervalued wine.

Understanding Savennières

To understand Savennières, one must give brief consideration to its geology, its site, and then its sole permitted varietal, Chenin Blanc. All three factors are essential to create this fascinating and unique wine.

In the Anjou sector of the Loire Valley, the geology is primarily volcanic in origin. In Savennières specifically, the soil type is predominantly metamorphic schist. These soils were originally volcanic rock, but over the course of millions of years they have been metamorphosed by heat and pressure to create a rock type of an entirely different crystalline structure. The structure of slate and schist allows for easy, near linear fracture, which permits roots to break through the rock, establish the vine, and gather its minerals.
Savennières’s soils are dark, usually ranging in color from brownish tan to greenish and purplish black. These dark soils are especially rich in aromatically assertive minerals, and can also contain rocks and striations leftover from the area’s original volcanic epoch. As such, these volcanic remnants further increase Savennières’s palette of available minerals and, thus, complexity of aromas and tastes.

Savennières’s distinctive personality can also be attributed to the fact that it’s the Loire Valley’s only Appellation d’Origine Contrôlée on the north bank of the river. (More on this at the end of the reviews.) The three hills which make up the Savennières appellation face south and southwest, allowing the grapes to ripen fully in the full day’s sunlight. The sub-climate here is cool and dry, much less humid than the great sweet wine terroirs on the opposite side of the river. Though the noble rot, botrytis cinerea, can and does grow here, the north bank’s cooler, drier environment makes botrytis’s effect far less pronounced in most vintages.

Finally the Chenin Blanc, often called Pineau de la Loire locally, is an atypically late-ripening variety. A very transparent and impressionable grape, Chenin is among the world’s finest varietals for capturing and conveying its underlying soil. Like Riesling, Chenin offers great wines throughout the entire sweetness spectrum, from bone dry (sec) to off-dry (sec-tendre) to semi-sweet (demi-sec) to fully sweet (moelleux). Chenin gives its best results when its allowed a long, cool growing season, and its yields are limited by poor soils and severe pruning. Chenin’s inherent transparency also allows the varietal to benefit from late harvesting, which can balance Chenin’s naturally high acidity with a touch or sweetness. In Savennières, any residual sugar – rarely more than three grams per liter – goes completely undetected by even the most sensitive tasters.

None of these factors alone could elevate a wine above the ordinary but when you consider them all together, it’s as if Mother Nature created this site specifically for the purpose of making a singular wine. And in the right hands, Savennières is one of the world’s most authoritative, compelling and long-lived white wines.

The Taste of Savennières and How Savennières Evolves

Savennières often begins life pale, taut, minerally and ungenerous. It rarely offers any clue to the aromatic complexity, palate richness and a waxy texture it will acquire as it matures. As Savennières ages, it gains a rich topaz hue and its mineral aromas become smoky, flinty and petrolly. Its youthful flavors evolve and new flavors emerge. What was originally dominated by lime, honeysuckle blossom, chamomile and citrus peel becomes more honeyed and ripe with notes of pear, quince, apricot, ginger, acacia, vanilla and almond. The Savennières’s mineral nature is amplified as well with a fascinating suggestion of beeswax developing with time. Finally, Savennières’s texture evolves from lean and angular to rich, waxy and caressing. Most interestingly, regardless of its age, somehow Savennières always seems to retain a aristocratic sense of restraint and firmness, even when fully mature.

As in many regions best known for austere and age worthy wines (Brunello di Montalcino and Barolo come immediately to mind) many Savennières producers are now trying to make their wine – or at least one bottling of their portfolio – more flattering when young. These wines show more overt fruit character, less dominating acidity, and less assertive minerality. Often these wines come from young vines or from sites with more sandstone in their subsoil. Some enthusiasts dismiss these “modern” or precocious examples as unrepresentative of the appellation. Many even believe that Savennières should return to being a sweet wine. Despite my old school leanings, I think these new interpretations are absolutely necessary to bring deserved attention to this much overlooked appellation.

In preparation for a week-long visit to the Loire in February, I tasted side by side five examples of Savennières from the terrific 2002 vintages. While in the Loire and since my return, I have tasted many more. I found the three wines below to represent a superb range of Savennières, from a precocious, modern example, to one I believe represents the classic profile, to one which is exceedingly backward, angular, mineral and potentially long lived. All are exemplary wines and together, I believe, they represent a terrific introduction to this most fascinating appellation.

	2002 Domaine des Baumard Savennières … 22.99 / 230.00 case Jean Baumard built his impressive domaine and its many holdings on a university professor’s salary. His dedication, passion and inventiveness always place the Domaine des Baumard among the Loire Valley’s elite. Jean’s enthusiastic and dedicated son Florent is now in charge, and the domaine continues to flourish and impress under his stewardship. Baumard’s “basic” Savennières opens with a pale straw gold color. Its aromas are distinct and immediate – fruity with suggestions of ripe pears and peaches, and minerally with an impressive bouquet of slate and smoke. The wine’s palate impression is very dry and rich in minerals, yet somehow more approachable and less severe than Baumard’s Clos du Papillon below. Notes of lime zest play with suggestions of beeswax and honey on the back palate, leaving an early impression of the waxy texture great Savennières achieves with maturity. The wine finishes smoky and soil-driven with further notes of pears, quince and slate. Baumard frequently makes Savennières that can be approached in their youth. None in my experience has combined the crystalline purity and distinctive minerality of Savennières in such an approachable wine than does this exemplary 2002. This is an impressive example of Savennières in the modern aesthetic.
	2002 Domaine des Baumard Savennières Clos du Papillon … 29.99 / 295.00 case As discussed above, Le Clos du Papillon is one of Savennières’s finest and most famous sites. The name Clos du Papillon derives from the vineyard’s shape, which resembles roughly that of a butterfly. In addition to its special shape, the geology here is especially complex, with multiple variations of volcanic rocks mixed with Savennières’s famous green and purple schist. The result is an exceedingly intense and mineral wine, which often requires many years before revealing its latent complexity. This is Savennières at its most lithe, sleek and linear. For its first few months, Baumard’s Clos du Papillon was impenetrable. Its riveting acidity and intense mineral nature made it nearly impossible to evaluate. Tasting this wine upon its arrival was akin to biting into a fresh lemon. Thankfully, the extra few months on our shores have allowed the Clos du Papillon to settle and begin to show its many facets. The nobility of the site is apparent from the first whiff. The Clos du Papillon offers a broader, more complex mineral bouquet than Baumard’s basic Savennières. The minerals here are both flinty and salty; the wine’s flavors run the full Savennières spectrum from fresh straw to pears, acacia blossoms, honeysuckle, gardenia and green apples. In addition the Clos du Papillon is sleeker and more elegant than its sibling. The Clos du Papillon’s acidity is simultaneously more pronounced yet more harmonious with the wine’s fruit. While Baumard’s Papillon can be approached now with four to six hours’ aeration, it will reach its apogee in fifteen to twenty years. This wine is a monument to Savennières as expressed by Baumard’s distinctive, polished style.
	2002 Pierre-Yves Tijou Dom. de la Soucherie Savennières Clos des Perrières … 31.99 / 341.50 case If I must go out on a limb, I would say that this is the most ‘classic’ of these three Savennières. The reason is the Clos des Perrières’s deeper golden color, its unbelievably fresh and pure bouquet of acacia, honeysuckle, chalky minerals, and its late harvest richness. Combined with this extra ripeness, Tijou’s Clos des Perrières has an acidic backbone that will raise the hair on your neck. What this wine lacks in the sleekness of the Clos du Papillon above, it offers in its impressive balance of richness, intensity, minerality and purity. Beyond the wine’s immediate bouquet are hidden nuances of straw, apricot, quince and pear. With extended aeration the Clos des Perrières’s fruit nature gives way to the its intense mineral expression, which combines smoky schistose notes with a chalky impression and a sense of saltiness. There’s already great richness and intensity on the Clos des Perrières’s palate, but the wine’s superb acidity and complex minerals bode extremely well for extended aging. As is rarely the case, this wine’s amazing purity and clarity seems to belie its late-harvest richness.
Extra Credit Your friends at Liner & Elsen also love Savennières and have a superb array of the appellation’s finest offerings. If you wish to take the next step, please consider the baroque and autrefois 2002 Roche aux Moines Cuvée d’Avant from Pierre Soulez Château de Chamboureau. I drank this wine over the course of an entire week, and my last glass was my finest! For those who are ready for the graduate-level example and have a few extra bucks in their pocket, do not miss Nicolas Joly’s 2002 Clos de la Coulée de Serrant. The greatness of the 2002 vintage and the superiority of this special cru have created the most compelling Coulée de Serrant in recent memory.

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