It is curiously difficult to get statistics out of the Syndicat General des Crémants Vignerons Producteurs de Crémant de Loire – they seem to treat figures as state secrets.

Anyway here are some figures for the production of Loire sparkling wine in 2007 showing the production of Crémant finally taking the number one position from Saumur.

Crémant de Loire: 103,273 hls
Saumur Brut: 94,284
Vouvray: 76,955
Touraine: 27,754
Montlouis: 10,345
Anjou: 2942

Total 315,553 hls

Total production in bottles: 39,444,125.
The Loire's total sparkling wine production is only 11.5% of that of Champagne, where 338.7 million bottles of Champagne were produced in 2007. However, permitted yields in Champagne are substantially higher than they are in the Loire.

(23rd December 2008)

Fortunately we had booked because Le Pot was full. We kicked off with a coupe de Crémant de Loire Brut from Domaine des Varinelles, owned by the Daheuiller family and one Crémant de Loire Rosé from Domaine de la Petite Roche in Tremont, which is well to the south of Saumur. We were particularly impressed by the rosé.

The four of us enjoyed four good first courses: compote de lapin, onion soup, feuillette de champignons and oeufs en cocotte, the house speciality. With this we made a start on our rich and pruny 2005 Les Adrialys, Saumur-Champigny, Domaine Saint-Vincent from Patrick Vadé. As well as making good reds, Patrick’s Saumur Blanc is often impressive. The problem at Le Pot is that there is such a choice of interesting wines on the wine list that selection is not easy.



Patrick’s rich wine went particularly well with the deliciously tender biche aux girottes that two of took as well as the fine ris de veau à la crème that the other two took.

Profiteroles au chocolat followed by coffee completed an excellent meal. Le Pot de Lapin is great – just make sure you book, especially at lunchtime.

Bottles of Crémant de Loire rosé in the cellars of Langlois-Chateau

An article on the success of Loire sparkling wines in the Sunday edition of the Nouvelle Republique – unfortunately rather long on poetic gas and short on facts. The headline cites rapidly expanding sales but gives no details. An average price of 5-6 € in the supermarkets with 10€ as a maximum price virtually the only figures given along with praise for its rapport-qualité-prix.

With 5-6€ as an average price it is difficult to see how the producer makes much money or can afford to take the measures necessary to produce quality sparkling wine. Strip out sales tax at 19.6% and you come down close to 4€ on a 5€, include the retail’s margin, the cost of the bottle, capsule, cork and the minimum of nine months sur latte and how much is left to cover the base wine?

Furthermore the permitted yields for sparkling Saumur or Vouvray are significantly lower than the very generous yields allowed in Champagne. 65 hl/ha is permitted for Montlouis, Saumur, Touraine and Vouvray, while for Crémant de Loire it is only 50 hl/ha.

One of the tunnels in the cellars of Langlois-Chateau

Once you start looking at the price of the top Loire sparkling wines then the price is substantially higher than the 5-6€ supermarket average. A bottle of Bouvet-Ladubay’s Crémant de Loire is 9.98€ from their site, Langlois-Chateau’s is 11.40€ with Bouvet’s Cuvée Trésor at 14.50€.

One encouraging sign is that for the 2007/2008 campaign the sales of Crémant finally overtook those of appellations like Saumur and Vouvray. The Crémant de Loire appellation was created in 1975, so it has taken more than 30 years for it to become the established leading Loire sparkling wine appellation with its stricter rules – lower yields, hand picking into small cases, less juice allowed to be extracted from 100 kilos of grapes and a longer minimum time sur latte.

The Crémant appellations in Alsace and Burgundy date from the same time and here they replaced the existing sparkling wine appellations. With just one regional sparking wine appellation, this enabled Alsace and Burgundy to both increase the quality and communicate a coherent message to consumers.

The Loire ought either to have done the same or to have tightened up the regulations for the other appellations, which would have boosted quality and made it possible to give a more convincing message about the overall quality of Loire sparkling wines.