We’re tracing France’s longest river to its western mouth this week and celebrating a seemingly simple, undemanding wine that – like a duck on a pond – reveals all sorts of wonderful intrigue if you look beneath the surface. The vineyards are incredibly varied, the styles remarkably diverse, and mere mortals can experience how well it ages.
Muscadet is the rare French wine that carries a nickname for its designation of origin: vin qui a un goût musqué – that is, wine with a musque-like taste. Remember: Musk is a good thing! For those of you keeping score, the grape is Melon de Bourgogne and the region is Pays Nantais. Let’s give the illustrious Monsieur Asimov a final word on the subject:
“Great Muscadet can be a complex treat. Along with subtle flavors of fruit and herbs, Muscadet, like so many of the best white wines, offers an almost tactile expression of the earth in which the grapes were grown. Best of all, great Muscadet can age exceptionally well over decades, evolving in complex and distinctive ways. It’s a rare wine that is beautiful at each stage. Even on the more expensive end, it’s a steal.”
Bill Jensen, sommelier for Michelin-starred Washington DC restaurant Tail Up Goat, and her sister Reveler’s Hour, is a breakout star of the Covid-19 Pandemic with his virtual wine school. In an effort to stay in touch with his regulars and soon-to-be regulars, he launched #StayHome Wine School on March 29th, and continued every Sunday at 4 pm EST for 40 straight weeks. In the very beginning, it was BYOB. Later, Bill would recommend bottles to be purchased at various wine shops. By week 9, TUG and RH reopened and local wine school students could shop there, first for bottles and later also for flights.
To be added to the newsletter and gain access to the class each week, email your request to: wineschool@tailupgoat.com
This week’s poem was L’éternité by Arthur Rimbaud
In Bill’s weekly recap email, he said this:
Muscadet may not be the sexiest brand in the world, but it embodies so much of what I love about studying wine. Just scratch the surface of this seemingly simple quaffer, and there’s so much to learn about a proud drinking culture, vineyard geology, the process of winemaking, and the very mysteries of how wine ages and what we value about it. I hope I inspired you to seek it out more often, whether you want something “for drinking not thinking” or you are looking for a more revelatory, ruminative experience.
I covered a lot of ground preparing for this lesson between Muscadet’s newly established Crus Communaux system, the geology of Pays Nantais, the science of extended lees aging, and the chemical processes that unfold in wine as it ages. I want to single out Kelli White’s feature on “Aging Wine”. She penned the quote I shared during the lesson:
“Great old wine hits me like love. It starts as a warm feeling in my stomach and creeps up to my head, lightening my mood and focusing my attention. And as with love, there’s never a single discernable element that tipped the scales; it is the result of an unknowable combination of factors, merged into one vague and exquisite whole.”
“Great old wine keeps me going. It reminds me to embrace life’s mysteries. And not to fear the decay.”
Kelli is such a remarkable writer:
She literally wrote the book on the history of wine in Napa and has an amazing gift for making arcane points of science or service accessible to a broader audience. I know that I borrow heavily from Kelli’s work and would love to see her grow her following.
– Quench has the most authoritative online guide to Muscadet’s newly established Crus, including vineyard snapshots and recommended wines for each:
– Jon Bonné is another one of my favorite writers. He extols the virtues of Muscadet in Punch: “France’s Most Underrated White Wine Steps Out.”
– Look no further for the 411 on dead yeast: Watch the lees at work inside a wine barrel:
or learn more about them from a Master of Wine:
– Explore the unique geology of the lower reaches of the Loire Valley with Wine Review Online:
– Most interesting and provocative of all, Decanter sets the record straight on the science of soil and wine taste.
– Last but certainly not least, loyal attendee Matthew Leddicotte recommends this guide to drinking your way through le Tour for all the cycling fans in our midst.