It is a small drawing carved in stone. It represents a barge, a thin flat-bottomed boat that transported goods on the Loire, in particular tuffeau, a chalky and soft limestone used in the construction of buildings in the region. At the Nicolas Grosbois estate, on the heights of Chinon, this barge drawn on one of the walls of the house is a signature. A refined sketch that the years have not erased.
Here is summarized, in a block of milky stone forty centimeters wide, the quintessence of the great Loire Cabernets: water, tufa and the hand of man. The first sculpted the landscape and polished the stone that forms the land. The second houses the vines on its surface and the bottles in its cavities, transmitting to the Cabernet Franc a rare complexity. And it takes the third to reveal a great terroir.
You don’t need to be an expert in geology to understand the importance of tuffeau in the Saumurois and Touraine vineyards. It is enough to admire the dazzling whiteness of the castles of the Loire, built with this light stone which is cut with a saw, or to daydream in front of the many troglodyte houses built on hillsides, against the quarries of extraction.
Versatile and charming
Its most enchanting aspect is hidden in the pale or yellowish caves several kilometers long that run through the basement. Tuffeau, the local white gold, which loses its specificity as soon as it passes Saumur, here offers a starry white sky, glistening with humidity. For mushrooms, it’s perfect. For the preservation of wine too. 95% humidity, 12 degrees summer and winter, the galleries are an ideal cocoon for maturing the Loire Cabernet Franc.
Because this wine, contrary to its reputation as a small, light red, can take time to be tamed. Especially when it has grown on the tufa itself. Cabernet is versatile, and offers many faces to the wine lover. When it is born on sand or light gravel, on the banks of the Loire, it is light, fruity, easy to drink from its early youth. When it grows on clay-limestone soils, such as at the top of the slopes, where the earth turns red, it is rounder, greedy, almost charming.
But when it is born in the middle of the slopes, on a whitish earth where the tufa emerges, it is adorned with a surprising aging capacity, but also with an acidity and solid tannins that border on austerity, even severity. . And it is all the art of the winegrower to avoid this pitfall. In recent years, he has redoubled his efforts to bring his beauty to light.
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