Anne-Françoise drawing a sample of 2008

Visit this morning to the Domaine de la Taille aux Loups to taste the 2008s, which are still fermenting gently. Tasted with Anne-Françoise, the daughter of Jacky and Joëlle who are currently sunning themselves in the West Indies, having sensibly fled the cold of the Loire for a brief holiday before getting ready for the Salon des Vins de Loire.

Although still babies, the 2008 Montlouis and Vouvrays here look very promising, although it is too early to write detailed notes on them as they are still fermenting. They have a similar precision and purity as 2007, although perhaps with a little more weight. However, as they are still fermenting it is really too early to say.

Anne-Françoise: 'There was a very big difference between the level of acidity when we started to pick in early October to when we finished on the 29th October: levels started at 7 g and we finished on 5.5. So we see a big difference between le 1er passage and le 2eme passage. In 2008 Rémus is the heart of our Montlouis harvest."

Jacky Blot believes that 2008 is a great vintage for dry Chenin. Today's tasting, even at this early stage, suggests that he may well be right.

Anne-Françoise joined her parents at the domaine in 2006 after working for 11 years as a librarian. She had a six-month stage in Edinburgh in 1994 and then from 1995 to 2006 at the Bibliothèque Universitaire de Tours as well as some time working in Paris. "But I was always involved in the wine and came back for the vendange," she says.

Family dinner for eight starting with Jacky’s Blot’s 2000 Extra Brut Millésimé La Taille aux Loups – nicely rounded out and developed from its additional time in bottle – some toastiness and a hint of honey.

The 2007 Château du Cléray Muscadet Sèvre et Maine was brilliant with the first course of prawns having both weight and freshness but without sharp acidity. There was some surprise that Muscadet can be this good. The 2007 can clearly be drunk with pleasure now but should happily last for a good five years.

A magnum of the 2006 Expression de Cécile Sancerre Rouge from Henry Natter was perfect with the baked salmon trout – the wine’s soft red fruits being a fine foil to the trout’s quite delicate flesh. An illustration of how good a medium-bodied Sancerre red can be with some fish.

Then with the Tarte de Cambrai made with pears following the recipe in Jane Grigson’s Fruit Book, we finished off the 1990 Vouvray Moelleux Cuvée des Deronnières from Pascal Delaleu Domaine de la Galinière in Vernou.

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.