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Anjou is a sprawling region that begins near Chinon and rambles west along the southern bank of the Loire for over fifty miles. Angers, the area’s major city, is a worthy place for an afternoon visit. The main attraction is a remarkable artwork dating from the 1300’s called the Apocalypse Tapestry. It has been recently installed in a stunning exhibition hall at the Chateau d’Angers - a formidable medieval structure that dominates the city’s center. Your Michelin Guide will give you the details, but let us state: for anyone even vaguely interested in the arts, the Apocalypse Tapestry is mandatory.

The wines of Anjou are the most diverse and satisfying of the Loire. Anjou is a godsend for afficionados of sweet white wine, there are numerous small producers making delicious, balanced and potentially long-lived Grains Nobles Chenin Blancs. I visited farmers with holdings of four or five oak barrels of richly sweet Coteaux du Layon mulling away in the backshed. Some of these vignerons, like Jo Pithon and Patrick Baudouin, and Philippe Delesvaux quickly sell out their wines.

The ‘95 and ‘96 vintages at well-known domaines such as Domaine des Baumard produced brilliant sweet and demi-sec wines - in copious amounts. Baumard’s most important vineyard, in the microclimate called Quarts-de-Chaume, produces an exotic sweet Chenin that has to be tasted to be believed. In relation to its counterparts in Alsace and Sauternes, Quarts-de-Chaume is both underrated and underpriced.

By way of contrast, we found a manifestation of the eccentric and grand side of the wine industry at Chateau des Fesles; this vast property was owned by the highly regarded Boivin family and was sold in 1991 to the legendary (in France, anyway) Gaston Lenôtre. Lenôtre, a renowned pastry chef and restaurant entrepreneur, attempted to create a wine merchandising empire. He amassed a wonderful portfolio of vineyards - but four years and a gazillion francs later, he ditched them. The sugary remnants of Lenôtre’s pastry museum were still scattered throughout the winery’s main building and tasting rooms when we first visited there in 1996. Now, it has been magnificently restored by the Bordeaux-based Germain group, who have effectively rejuvenated Chateau des Fesles’ venerable status.

This estate has holdings in the appellation of Bonnezeaux, another tiny and undervalued source of delicious, earthy, sweet Layon; along with Quarts-de-Chaume, it is of cru status; to qualify as Bonnezeaux, wines are required to reach 230 grams of natural sugar. In other parts of the Layon, recent law allows for any vigneron in the Layon to use the designation Selections de Grains Nobles (S.G.N.) provided they declare their intent before the harvest and the wines are judged to be of natural sugar equalling or exceeding 298 grams of sugar per liter. The application of this label is becoming popular, but some producers still print vin liquoreux (critics of this style of densely sweet wine discuss the “Selections de Grains Nobles” designation disparagingly. As one producer of the nervier Bonnezeaux put it: “With alcohol and sugars levels so high, they should just call liquor, liquor”).

Vendange tardive devotees will discover a rich cache in the Anjou, but fans of dry whites should visit Savennières, a small appellation to the north of the Loire river - just across from the Coteaux du Layon.

Anyway, there is much to discover in Anjou and here at Cellarer.com I try to describe a few of the highlights. Please read my article on Loire sweet wines and subscribe to the site feed to be noticed of the upcoming article on Savennières.
For details on the classification and the geography The Wine Doctor is a good resource.

Location: France, Rhône Valley, Northern Rhône, Cornas

The Rhône Valley is beautiful. Currently the Cornas part is threatened to be uglified. In France, the entity for building authorisations is the municipality. So the debate should grow locally during the campaign for the next municipal elections in March 2008.

Anyway here is a primer on a prominent local grower: Jean-Luc Colombo.

From his beautiful farm high up behind the village of Cornas, Jean-Luc Colombo manages to be a domaine owner, a negociant and a wine consultant for many of the most important producers in the region.

His vines, forming Vignobles Jean-Luc Colombo, occupy 55 acres in the appellations of Cornas and Côtes du Rhône. The benchmark from these vineyards is the Cornas Les Ruchets, a powerful syrah with 45 percent new-wood aging. A recent addition to the range is La Louvée which is a special vineyard selection.

As a negociant, Colombo keeps the wine he buys in the producer’s cellar rather than bringing it to his own.

Jean-Luc and his wife, Anne, founded Le Centre Oenologique des Côtes du Rhône in 1984. As a consultant, his influence, particularly in the use of new wood for aging, has been considerable in the Rhône valley. His winemaking style is international.

Winery:
Pied La Vigne
Cornas
Phone: +33 (0) 4 75 40 36 09

Location: France, Rhône Valley, Northern Rhône, Côte-Rôtie

Guigal is a big name in Côte-Rôtie, where vines have been cultivated for 24 centuries. With his cuvées such as Brune et Blonde, La Turque, La Mouline and La Landonne, Marcel Guigal has led the revival in the appellation that has put it among the top red-wine regions of France.

Guigal winemaking incorporates the pure fruit from low yields in the vineyard with new oak in the cellars. Recent additions to the whites include strict temperature control during fermentation.

Having taken control of Vidal-Fleury, the other major négociant in Côte-Rôtie, Guigal now manages more than a third of the production of the appellation. The firm also produces a white Condrieu and larger quantities of Côtes du Rhône.

Winery:

Château d’Ampuis

69420 Ampuis

Phone: +33 4 74 56 10 22

The harvest comes when the fruit is ripe. This occurs at the end of summer for grapes. So the harvest is not currently under way in places where spring is arriving. Such places include South Africa and Australia.

Vitis vinifera is currently harvested in the Northern hemisphere. You have other options for obtaining wine grapes. I’ll talk about them in the upcoming guide to making your own wine starting in a week.

Harvesting is very hard work and is labor intensive.

The Northern hemisphere shows grape harvest about two or three weeks earlier than usual. In Western Europe this is not because the summer was sunny and dry like in 2003. It was not. “In 2007, the whole season was early, right from the budding, because of the mild winter and spring” said Luca Vietti, winemaker at the Vietti winery, in the Piedmont (as reported by the Wine Spectator).

Harvest in the first half of August only concerns some white grapes. The regions where vintners began harvesting in the first half of August are:

• In the USA: the Napa Valley in California;
• In France: Alsace and Roussillon;
• In Italy: Lazio, Veneto and Trentino.

Other websites show recent reports on the current harvest: in California, in Texas, in North Carolina, in New York, in France (there and there), in Italy, in Germany. The present post is the first in a series on the grape harvest. The series will end with a snap view of the 2007 vintage. Your feed reader will be automatically updated of the posting if you subscribe.

Don’t believe mentions of a good vintage yet: it’s too early to address this fuzzy concept: wait until the wine is made! Still we already know that it will be very difficult for even expert winemakers to make good wine in the following parts: Texas, Bordeaux, Puglia and Sicily.

Later articles on the vintage are here:

• Oregon, Burgundy and Bordeaux vignerons explain harvesting and winemaking;
• The 2007 vintage would be bad in Europe.