Neptune's Vineyard: Plumbing Muscadet's Surprising Depths

Class transcript:

Welcome one and all, it is Sunday, which means Tail-Up Goat Wine School is back at it in full force. Thank you all so much for joining us as ever and making this a part of your regular Sunday routine. We are hitting you live from our Revelers' studio, Jill is continuing to sell wine, and our bemused guests are listening to the beginning of this show as you all prepare remotely. It has been a great joy for me to lead this class 23 Sundays strong! Thrilled to have you with us, not least of all because this is a bit of a dream come true, you know. Some sommeliers, you know, they romanticize the '47 Chevrolet; it belongs to the world.

21 Chateau Hicham's, the 78 LaTosha's, I have always, you know, dreamed about, you know, cultivating a following so devoted that they would listen to me pontificate about the joys of Melon de Bourgogne as it exists in Muscadet, so I am about kind of structuring a list around Muscadet because I love it so much because it is a bit of a butt of jokes in France; it is the ultimate shellfish tower wine; it is famously kind of like anodyne and neutral but it plumbs these amazing depths; it is you know simple on the surface but there is so much to discover with Muscadet, and I thank you all for facilitating me in that dream to you all, and I will See you in the next one, bye bye! So,  we have a whole bunch of wines in the mix, we're selling through our store. Uh, we're going to start with the youngest of the bunch, the 2018, um, you know, the one that conforms kind of uh most closely Hughes uh to that notion of Muscadet, as just as simply to say, Muscadet is the world's largest wine bowl, everyday Bistro wine, which I think is how most people know it. And that is the 2018 from the producer Chereau Carré. A bit confusingly, two wines from these producers that are derived from two different individual estates they purchased in the first of the bunch here in 2018. It's just that kind of fresh, easy drinking younger wine. And then we are going to trace Muscadet as it ages back to the 2014 for the sake of a wine derived from centenarian vines.

And we're going to explore the Muscadet crew system for the sake of three different individual crews, three more wonderful producers. And then we'll consider the other grapes and the other sub-regions in and around Nantes, where the Loire empties into the Atlantic Ocean. So for those of you thinking about what to open, when I would start younger and get older. But this is a class, if ever there was one, where having multiple glasses, being able to switch back and forth, will serve you exceedingly well. This is not a class that is about these stark differences between wines. This is about a more precise tasting, letting the wines grow and evolve over time in the glass. And they can be a little reticent at first, but let them open up, let them grow on you.

These are not necessarily the wines that you're going to want to drink. These are not necessarily wines that shout; they're wines that whisper. But if you listen closely, they will reveal themselves to you in the most profound and dynamic ways. So if that's an option at all, please do switch between multiple glasses. And if you have them in the fridge, get them out, let them warm up. They will reveal themselves all the more as they come up in temp. The fridge itself is particularly cold in most people's homes. And we're going to want to serve the wines at slightly higher temperatures. The relevant and authorities in Muscadet recommend, you know, 50 to 53 degrees Fahrenheit for their wines to show best. So let us follow suit. I think we've got everyone in the mix.

Special well wishes to all the stalwarts that have been with us since the beginning. If you are joining us for the first time or, you know, just getting started with Tail of Good Wine School, don't hesitate to reach out to us. We have almost all the lessons available in syndication. If you want to miss, if you want to catch up on, or make up rather, for lost time, just feel free to reach out to us at wineschool@tailofgoat.com. As always, we're going to begin, kick things off with a bit of verse. And this week, you know, we are considering a wine, a wine region. A region that empties into the sea. And, you know, for me, the ocean, the sea, this great embodiment, really, of eternity. And I think that's the case for really all poets.

So naturally, we are celebrating Rimbaud, who, and I apologize for my French pronunciation in advance. It's not my strongest language, but this is l'eternité. It has been rediscovered what éternité is. It's a word that is used to mean eternity. And it's a word that is used to mean eternity. It is the sea fled with the sun. Sentinel soul, we whisper a confession of the empty night and the fiery day. From human prayers, from common spirits, you free yourself, and thus you fly. Since from you alone, sat in embers, duty breathes, no one says at last. No hope here, no emergence. Knowledge with patience, torment is certain. It has been rediscovered what éternité. It is the sea fled with the sun. A bit of a dark poem.

RimbÃaud had a bit of a dark world view, but there's a defiant kind of turn of praise, a defiant tone in the mix as well there that's worth celebrating. And we are concerned with the big questions here. You know, with the sea of wine opening up before us, Muscadet, the AOC, Severed Men in particular, makes more wine than almost any other single AOC in France. It is a widely overlooked wine, much as the AOC. A widely overlooked wine region that we took on last week. This week, you know, we're traveling well west to consider another.

But, you know, for me, the fun thing about exploring this region is that it's a bit in the French parlance of a passé partout, a skeleton key, something that allows you to explore and unlock all sorts of different disciplines. So, in considering Muscadet, we can look at, you know, things like the geology of the region; things like, you know, which kind of emblematic of wine in the vineyard; things like Lee's contact in the cellar. Those are the dead yeast left over at the end of fermentation. And then, you know, the process of aging, and we consider all of these, you know, big questions in wine through the lens of this one apparently simple creature that is Muscadet. And I think, you know, that's very fun and well worth, you know, dedicating a Sunday to.

So we're going to kick things off by talking over, you know, just the geology of this particular region and, you know, questions of geology in wine. So I'm going to pull up a geological map of France and situate ourselves in the region of Pays Nantais and in France as a whole. So you can see the lore here. So what I like about this geological map is you have different colors that correspond to different geologies, and you have different geological eras. And the red corresponds to the Paleozoic rocks. Those are the oldest rocks. They were almost uniformly metamorphic rocks, rocks formed beneath the earth's crust at high temperature and high pressure. And then you have the sedimentary rocks, the limestones of the Paris basin, which are in yellow and green here.

So you can trace the lore. The lore begins in the Massif Central, which is this older rock in the heart of France, and it winds its way from south to north into the Paris basin, which is much younger rock, which is those limestones that we talked about in the context of Sancerre, in the context of the Chenin Blancs, the Anjus, the Sauvignyres that we addressed earlier. You know, that is limestone rock, younger rock in the Paris basin and in Anjus, Amur, in the central Loire region. But as we trace our way to the sea, as we move west, we move into another Massif. Instead of the Massif Central, we move into another Massif. Instead of the Massif Central, we move into another Massif Central, we have the Massif Morcan.

And we have very old paleozoic rock again here, and all sorts of schist, shale, nice, various types of harder rocks that have survived millions of years worth of weathering. And they constitute the bedrock, the mother rock, which gives birth to the vineyards upon which the vines grow. And they constitute the bedrock, the mother rock, which gives birth to the vineyards upon which the vines grow. That constitutes the wines that we are drinking today. Now, the wine that we're concerned with, Muscadet, it comes from a nickname. So the very name of the wine itself comes from a French expression that is wine with a musk-like taste. So Muscadet is the wine with a musk-like taste. Muscadet has become synonymous with the grape, but it is not the grape itself.

The grape is called Melon de Bourgogne. And Melon, it has actually been rebranded by French authorities by law. They've decided that Melon de Bourgogne, it's like too much of a mouthful. So they've gone with Melon B. So we're saying by law, the vineyards, vineyards of France, who feel fundamentally absurd saying as much, they've gone from Melon de Bourgogne, which doesn't exactly roll off the tongue, to Melon B, which is like the latest member of some like, you know, K-pop band somewhere. It's fundamentally absurd. But by law, it's like the latest member of some like, you know, K-pop band somewhere. It's fundamentally absurd. But by law, we're dealing with Melon B, the grape. As you might guess, given the, you know, assignment of Bourgogne, or Burgundy, in the very name of the grape, this is not a grape that hails from the shadow of Nantes, which is well to the west.

This is a grape that originated in Burgundy. Melon is a sibling of such grapes as Chardonnay and Gamay. Melon is the offspring of Pinot Noir, which many people know, and Guailace Blanc, which a lot of people are unfamiliar with. Pinot, the Pinot family was the grape of the aristocracy in Burgundy. It joined; it enjoyed pride of place on the choicest slopes in that region. Guailace Blanc was a much more Plebian grape. The peasants of the region tended to plant it in the valleys, below the more famous hills. Below the more famous hills.  It was just the fact that you had these very different entities, Guy Blanc, a high-yielding grape, Pinot, a celebrated low-yielding grape, that made these amazing aromatic wines.

And there were all sorts of unintentional crosses, kind of like the Capulets and Montagues of the viticultural world. And they gave birth to grapes that had all sorts of what's called hybrid vigor because their parents were genetically distinct enough that they created this offspring that shared the best traits of both parents and tended to be very durable. In the case of Malone, its saving grace was that it was very cold-hearty. So Malone was not widely celebrated in its kind of place of origin. As early as the 17th century, both Gamay and Malone are outlawed in some of the most famous vineyards in Burgundy. I mean, proper. But Malone finds a home in the kind of region around Nantes.

And the Dutch traders who controlled the wine trade in and around that region celebrated Malone because it was a relatively neutral grape that they could distill, and it was very cold-hearty. And that became important during the Little Ice Age. So, there's this massive cooling period characterized by famously cold winters, particularly — in 1709, in the 17th and 18th centuries, called the Little Ice Age. And it was a period of diminished sunspots, among other things. And there are all sorts of scientific conjecture that I find hugely fascinating about the causes of this. But the Dutch realized that they weren't going to reliably ripen red grapes in this kind of relatively northern corner of France. So they embraced Malbec as the grape there. And it has been the grape of choice ever since.

That's not to say — It's the only grape in the region. Another varietal called Beau Blanc is in the mix there, and historically important. We're going to taste Sauvignon Gris. But Malone is the Muscadet grape, and it is the grape that we are going to celebrate and explore for the sake of this lesson. It has been widely described as a famously neutral varietal, but I find that it is a bit of a cipher, a prism, a lens through which we can better appreciate these unique, distinct, you know, varieties. You know, kind of parcels, vineyards, explore the notion of terroir, explore the notion of aging in wine, and understand all these various principles in a more profound way. So we're going to jump into our first wine here from a single producer, which is Chereau Curie.

And we're going to explore a younger wine on a type of soil called Ortho Nice. I want to make a larger point about the breakdown composition of vineyards. Before we dive into this particular wine. Now, people talk a lot about the bedrock of vineyards. It should be said that, you know, the bedrock is important, but vines do not grow on bedrock. Vines grow on soil, which begs the question, what, pray tell, is soil? Well, soil can be derived from bedrock. Bedrock itself is inorganic, but soil is composed of significantly, um, air and water, not unlike ourselves, um, minerals. Um, and those are derived, they're inorganic, derived, um, in this case, largely from that mother rock. So to say that, you know, we're dealing with, you know, granite soils means that we're dealing with weathered granite that goes into the local soil.

And then the most important piece here is that, you know, thin sliver of organic matter. So even vines that look like they are rooted directly in rock, even on the poorest, thinnest, thinnest soils, um, in, you know, the Mosul Valley and these famously, you know, kind of rocky vineyards, uh, they are at their root, uh, interacting with humus. There is enough broken down, uh, mineral and, and, you know, organic matter there, um, that, you know, they are able to exchange nutrients, um, at a, a microscopic level. So, you know, without that weathering process, there can be no vine. So, you know, we're talking about, you know, individual bedrock, but we're really talking about, you know, at the end of the day, though, that, you know, weathered, uh, bedrock that gives a, you know, kind of rise, um, to the soils in these individual, uh, vineyards.

Um, and what I think is, is really, you know, worth kind of illuminating and understanding is that, you know, these processes, these notions of vineyard geology are hopelessly, uh, complex, um, and multifaceted. And, you know, when we say that, you know, a, a vineyard is composed in this case, uh, for our Chereau Carré of Ortho Nice. Um, we're talking about one type of nice, um, nice is, uh, a rock, uh, derived from sedimentary rock originally, uh, derived from shale. So you're dealing shale as the most abundant, one of the most abundant rocks in the earth's crust and shale, uh, forms when, uh, you have layers and layers on top of soil that form in these thin foliated bands. Uh, so it's stratified.

And then over time with increasing metamorphism, with increasing heat and pressure, you get, you know, these various, uh, forms of metamorphose shale into slate, uh, phyllite, schist, and nice. But not all schist, not all nice is created equal. Um, they each have different chemical components, different structures, um, that cause them to weather differently that give rise to different types of soils that give rise to different types of wine. So, uh, this is one of those rabbit holes that, you know, the deeper you dive into it, you know, the more complicated things get, the more difficult it is to make kind of, um, larger inferences, um, about these, uh, individual, uh, sites. And, you know, I think it's important, you know, in as much as, you know, we're going to be talking about, uh, these things today, it's important, you know, to realize that, you know, we're talking about rocks, but there are so many, um, different variables at work that, you know, I think that on the ground level, um, you know, the observation that these individual, uh, vignerons have made over time. These individual, uh, vignerons have made over time. The delphins, the laertian vignerons, the antiquarian vignerons. You know, we had to pre-TourBiz and the Las Vegas encyclopedias, that's really what the somethings mean by skirts de obeliskation who didn't actually have clear, clear lots of fine wine. Um, but when they talked about trying to study it in print, like, this morning, I was told I'd have to put in a lot of product and I would know, like, You know, this cruise system that they've developed for their wines is total bunk.

It just means that there's much more work for us to do, to understand the underpinnings of it all. You know, really exciting for someone who, you know, loves the geological and biological nerdery of this all. But without further ado, let's taste some fucking wine. So, Chateau Corée. This is a young wine. It is aged on the lees. We'll get into the whole lees contact thing in a bit. I want to show you a map of where we are exactly in Muscadet. So, we're in the broader Muscadet region. Again, Muscadet corresponds to a designation of origin. We are in the most kind of important region, which is defined by two tributaries of the Loire. So, you can see the Loire River here, and the tributaries are Sèvres et Mène.

So, it's the Sèvres River and the Mène River. And you can see the Château Corée situated really at the confluence of those two rivers. This particular vineyard on Ortho Nice, composed of slightly younger vines, this is a wine that stays on the lees for six months. So it has some lees contact. That lees contact is a little bit different from others, but that lees contact will give you richness in wines. And we'll talk about that a little more in the context of the cruise, but it imparts richness on the wines. But for the sake of these two, I think we're considering different soils and then the effects of age on the wines cheaply. So for this first wine, this is the Muscadet of popular imagination for me. It is fresh.

It is fruity. It is what we say in nerdy wine speak. It has this mineral drink. Quality to it, which means everything and nothing all at once. We're not talking about actual individual minerals. You know, we're not talking about, you know, vine nutrient uptake. We're talking more about, you know, the taste of hard water, you know, that, you know, chalky, you know, scents on the palate. I read, you know, I read this or rather listened to this great podcast where the woman talked about, you know, the kind of electromagnetic, you know, kind of force of a wine on the palate, you know. And again, you know, that's minerality, you know, that sensation of weight on the palate that's, you know, indefinable, I think is minerality.

We're not talking about, you know, potassium or nitrogen or, you know, any other individual, you know, chemical constituent. We’re talking about, you know, this, you know, kind of indefinable, you know, feeling. But I think that, you know, feeling is something that Muscadet encapsulates more than almost any other wine that I can, I can think of. It’s not a wine that shouts at you, though. You know, this is a sensual pleasure as much as it is a wine that you evaluate on the nose, you know. It's not to say that, you know, there is no aromatic dimension, but I think Muscadet is a wine that you feel on the palate as much as it is a wine that you kind of, you know, smell and evaluate on the nose.

So I've covered a lot of ground for the sake of history, geology. Do you have any questions while I, you know, take a sip of this first particular offer? No questions yet, but just to clarify, you can't actually taste, like, specific rocks. So when we're talking about, like, river rocks or when something has more, like, clay in it, what exactly are we all talking about since it doesn't necessarily mean anything? There are a lot of, that's a great question, Zoe. I think there are a lot of, you know, more scientifically inclined geologists, people that teach, I'm making, who would say that it's a load of crap, who would say that, you know, we are totally misconstruing the notion of, you know, minerals in wine.

You know, minerals in, for plants, they're kind of like amino acids in humans. So amino acids, there are nine of them. We can't produce them ourselves biologically, so we need to find other sources for them. Plants require 14 essential mineral nutrients that they can't produce or themselves. Otherwise, they just kind of photosynthesize, you know, the bulk of their activity, you know, biologically, metabolically consists of, you know, you know, taking in the sun and, you know, converting it into, you know, various types of sugar. They need, you know, 14 different minerals, elements to complete that particular metabolic cycle, but they are present in wine, in, you know, infinitesimal threshold or, you know, kind of quantities that are well below our biological threshold to detect and taste the wine.

So when we talk about minerality in wine, we're talking about a metaphor, you know, much like when we, you know, talk about a wine, you know, having bubble gum, you know, as a taste or having, you know, overripe pineapple. We're not talking about overripe pineapple. We're not talking about bubble gum, which is why the notion of talking about minerality in wine doesn't bother me. And, you know, I was reading a lot about this this week and nerd alert. And, you know, I read this great quote about someone who was talking about the notion of minerality in wine and someone was complaining that it means different things to different people. And she was saying, well, languages like that, words mean different things to different people, you know, and, you know, we don't stop using them because of that.

You know, we try to, you know, further suss them out and define them for ourselves. You know, the question at the end of the day is, are they useful? You know, do they, you know, have any meaning for us as users and for the people that we are speaking to as, you know, you know, ultimately the receivers of that wisdom? Minerality is, you know, can be kind of like an empty metaphor, but I think it's one of those things that, you know, when you taste it, you kind of know it. And I think, you know, it's something that's particularly evident with the older Muscadets. You know, so for me, you know, there's more of the younger wine here. It's all about, you know, juicy orchard fruit and this like, you know, bright, you know, green apple, pear, you know, kind of twang.

And, you know, it's a wine that, you know, you don't talk about endlessly. You know, there's this quote about Muscadet, you know, you don't think about drinking it, you just drink it. You know, I think that does the wine a bit of disservice because I think you can think and talk profoundly about Muscadet, but, you know, you shouldn't have to. And, you know, wine shouldn't be something that you always have. You know, there are Tecates of the wine world that are, you know, as enjoyable as, you know, the, you know, Belgian sours of the wine world, you know, and they are equally important. You know, sometimes we need to turn off when we drink. You know, that's a very important, you know, life skill, I think.

I brought home, you know, a wine to my wife the other day on a Friday and, you know, she swirled it, she tasted it, and, you know, she thinks for a bit and she says, you know, it's not that I don't like this wine, it's just a little too intellectual for a Friday night. You know, sometimes you want to turn off when you drink something, you know. I kind of have trouble doing that. I always want to, you know, push forward and engage, but, you know, I think that, you know, Muscadet does that really well. It does that turning off really well. It does that Tecate of the wine world thing really well, and I think, you know, this younger wine is evident of that.

I think as we move into this other wine, I think you get a sense of that, you know, you know, minerality thing. For me, again, it's like drinking, you know, if you've ever had that experience of, you know, trying tap water one day versus, you know, a rich mineral water. This is amazing mineral water from Catalonia called Bichy Catalan. It's famously, like, heavy water, so it's chock-full of various, like, salts and, you know, all sorts of; it's like the heaviest water you could ever find. It tastes like seawater in kind of a fun way, and the people that like it, like Nerdy Psalms, you know, kind of have this huge attachment to it that way, but, you know, try, you know, tap water versus mineral water one day, and I think you can't help but, you know, get a sense of, you know, the weight that, you know, that kind of harder water has,  versus, you know, the tap water, which suddenly seems, you know, kind of thin and shrill by comparison, and for me, when I talk about minerality, that's what I do. That's what I am talking about, you know, it's that hard water sensation. So, we're moving on to 2014, so this comes from Centenarian Vines, comes from Centenarian Vines, and it's wonderfully, you know, approachable, accessible, you know, we're selling it for $20, $25 ourselves, you know, from 100-year-old vines. Really awesome. The soils here derive from a slightly softer mother rock, so less of that slate, which means that the rocks are a little more friable, which is to say they break apart a little more, and I find that in a vineyard context, harder rocks tend to break up into coarser particles, and, you know, that is to say that their coarser soils, they tend to be more well-draining, they take on water a little, a little, they retain water a little less, you know, that's not to say they, you know, retain all the water, because in a region like this that's relatively wet, you know, you're going to need well-draining soils to make sure that you're not going to have a lot of good vines, but, you know, I find that, you know, those coarser granitic soils, those coarser soils from Nice, you know, they're much better draining than soils that come from shale, for instance, or various types of limestone, but in this case, we have, you know, schistus, You know, kind of shale soils, south-facing sites, so kind of riper grapes,

as it were, but you've added the element of aphids to the soil, and you've added the element of aphids to the soil, and you've added the to the wine, which, you know, brings in this really cool question, you know, what happens to wine like Muscadet as it ages? So, you know, you have all these, you know, douchey sommelier types like myself, and they told you for generations upon generations that, you know, the only age-worthy wines in the mix are, you know, your muscular tannic reds. That couldn't be further from the truth. You know, some of my favorite old wines are old white wines. Old Riesling, old Chenin Blanc, you know, those are the, you know, the marathon runners of the wine world. You know, there are great old red wines.

I don't want to diminish that, you know, but the things that make age, you know, can allow wines to age well, you know, they're not entirely wrapped up in what gives wine color. You know, acidity in wine is one of the most important ingredients for the sake of ageability, and I think that's a really good question. I think people hugely underestimate that. And then, you know, there's this broader question of, you know, in a white wine like this, you know, if we know what happens in red wine as it ages, you know, the tannins kind of soften, you know, the wine, you know, goes from this bright red color to, you know, kind of like a deeper sepia tone, you know, what happens to a white wine? Well, you know, let's evaluate it.

You know, for me, you start to shed fruit, you know, those floral fruit tones, that fresh, you know, green apple and pear, that light kind of white, sour thing that was happening, you know, in your wine at first, you know, those fall out first, you know, those are the first things to go, you know, but what remains? And, you know, for me, there's this lovely vegetal funk that comes to the fore. You know, maybe it was always there, but it was obscured by those fruitier tones. Maybe, you know, it developed in its own right, you know, over time, as chemical constituents devolve from one form into another. There is a kind of scientific process happening that dampens the wine. And I think that's a really good question.

And I think that's a really good question. And I think that's a really good question. So, total acid, you know, wine will measurably decrease in small degrees, but it will. And then the breadth of a wine, you know, a wine will broaden and lengthen on the palate as a wine ages in ways that are, you know, equally worth celebrating. And some of that is the fact that tannins, even in white wines, start to resolve. And so there's less, you know, of that initial astringency. But, you know, you know, texturally, I think that transference is going to be one of the most seductive things that happen to wine, you know, as it, as it ages. And, you know, that's not to say that, you know, it ages indefinitely, you know, like all of us, wines die.

But, you know, I don't think it's the case that you can say that, you know, because Muscadet is an enjoyable wine in its youth, because it, you know, can be fresh and flirty and just like, you know, easy drinking in its youth, that it isn't, you know, equally durable in its own way. And I think that progression is fun to track. And for me, that's why I wanted to put these wines together. They're from the same producer, they're made essentially the same way. So there's no oak in the mix. There are a lot of underground glass-lined cement vessels in Muscadet to make the wines. And that's typically because, you know, it's a form of temperature control. It's a really easy way to make wine.

And typically, they leave the wine on the lees for a little while, which is something we're going to address further for the sake of our individual crews. But, you know, this is a wine that sees six months on the lees, this is a wine that sees 10 months on the lees. So I don't think differentiator. I think a bigger differentiator for these two wines is 2018 versus 2014. You know, those four years make all the difference. And you go from something that is fresh and tart and orchard fruit driven to something that's kind of like funky and cheesy. And again, you know, has that, you know, hard water, you know, salty minerality play to it and taste of the sea, you know, in a wonderfully evocative way.

And, you know, it could be that that's totally suggestible. You know, it could be that if, you know, this was a wine that was from Mongolia, I would still say, you know, I'd be talking about how it speaks to me of the Gobi Desert, you know, could be hugely suggestive. And I'm probably full of shit. But, you know, I do find that, you know, that maritime connection, you know, really emerges. And because it's there, it's impossible not to talk about and it's impossible for me not to want this with, you know, one of those goopy striped shirts, you know, and I think that's what it's supposed to be. So, you know, I think that's the way that Zell, any comments about the second wine, the 2014?

Anyone surprised by what they find as this particular wine ages? Anyone, you know, disappointed? Pleasantly surprised? No specific tasting notes yet. I think everyone's still a little shy, but I'd love to see them in the chat. There's a question about how long you can age Muscadet for. Yeah, I would say not indefinitely. Indefinitely. And, you know, that, you know, piece of ageability that's about acid is always going to be there, you know, but it's a relatively low alcohol line. And so, you know, I think even the Loüp, which I think is in a really enjoyable place now, it's 2014, you know, maybe we'll get five more years out of it. But after that, you know, it might fall off. You know, people love to talk in terms of a drinking window.

I think most, you know, people, you know, think of it more of as like a plateau, you know, so wine will get to a place, it'll, you know, hang out there for a few years, and then, you know, it'll go all, you know, rocky for it, it dies, it dies. But, you know, I will say that I don't believe in those aging windows. And I think a lot of times those aging windows understate the ageability of wine. You know, that said, you have to, you know, be willing to embrace decay, you know, so you have to be, you know, somebody that likes those more fetid, you know, kind of decayed, pickled, fermented, you know, tastes and smells, you know, it's not going to be a fresh wine anymore.

But, you know, is it still enjoyable? You know, that's very much in the eye of the beholder. And it's hugely, you know, suggestive, or, you know, subjective, rather, and probably suggestive too, but subjective. And, you know, I think something like this is very enjoyable for a decade plus. And, you know, I find it fun for the sake of an activity to play with that outer limit, and to say, you know, at what point have we gone too far in all this? And what, you know, do we track that very depth, you know, I think that's exhilarating. But you do end up in this place where you're drinking a bottle that either tastes like vinegar or sherry. And most people aren't, you know, drinking wine for that reason.

But I think, you know, tracking that curve is really fun. And, you know, if you have the means, if you have a wine that you really love for its own sake, buying a case of it and like opening a bottle, you know, every year is a super fun way to learn about wine, because it's hugely dynamic, it's hugely individualized. Storage is hugely important. There's this great story from Bartholomew Broadbent. He says one of the greatest wines he ever tried was a Canary Islands wine from the 17th century that was like below 10% ABV. And, you know, crystal clear; that is not, not a wine that should age, but it was preserved underground, covered in clay, you know, for centuries. And because of that, it was, you know, there's no oxygen transfer, you know, there was, you know, no light.

And it was, you know, held at a very cool static temperature. There's a great expression among old wine lovers, there are no great old wines, you know, great old wines, they're only great old bottles. So there's a lot of variability there, which is why, you know, paying for old wine. It is a bit of a rich man's game, because, you know, you, there's, there's a lot of variability, and you have to be willing to tolerate, you know, you know, the failures as well as the successes. But, you know, I think when you, when you stumble upon them, it is, it is, you know, incredibly exhilarating. And I was going to close with this, but I, I really love this quote. We're going to explore some more old wines, but this is from Kelly White, total badass.

She writes for Guildsum, but she; she did this whole article, which I'll share with you all about, you know, how wines age. And she's talking about her own love of wines that are kind of past their primes. And she says, 'I reach for aged wine as a kind of aesthetic or spiritual centering.' When good, there's nothing more beautiful, heady, perfumed, and utterly transformed. It bears only the faintest resemblance to the fruit of its origin. And it's okay that I can't explain what made that particular bottle age so well, because here's what I do know. Great old wine hits me like love. It starts as a warming feeling in my stomach and creeps up to my head. And when I drink it, it lightens my mood and focuses my attention.

And as with love, there's never a single discernible element that tips the scales. It is the result of an unknowable combination of factors merged into one vague and exquisite whole. I love that, you know, the unknowable combination of factors, you know, that, that is wine, you know, in a nutshell, you know, it doesn't stop us as wine nerds from, from trying to enumerate those factors. I mean, that's the fun of it all. I think at the end of the day, you know, what those of us who really love wine, love about it, is living in that, you know, particular mystery. And, you know, old wine allows you to explore that and celebrate it in a way that nothing else does. And I think, you know, particularly, you know, wines that age in unexpected and profound ways allow us to do that.

So let's talk cruise here, um, very exciting. So, um, crew, what is a crew? So, um, as they, uh, you know, consider in Muscadet, um, a crew is, um, a geographical, um, you know, kind of a parameter, um, for a set of, um, vineyards that share particular characteristics that share personality. It's a personality type for a wine. It has been codified over the centuries, but only recently, um, kind of numerated for the sake of French wine law. The crews are a new development. There are 10 of them. No one's talking about them. The only, you know, um, uh, resources available online are in French. Uh, thank you, Google Translate, I should say. Um, uh, and, uh, they are, uh, hugely subsidized by, uh, Vendance, which is local trade association.

So no one outside of the local trade association is talking about these. Usually that means that your product is in trouble. I hope for the sake of Muscadet, it doesn't because, uh, the crews are real. You know, these are wines with distinct personalities that are worth talking about, that are worth celebrating, um, you know, uh, in, uh, and alongside, you know, the great ageable wines, uh, of the world. So, uh, let's share a map here. Um, we are once more in Sèvre et Maine. So, uh, the crews are universally located in Sèvre et Maine, which is a sub-region of Muscadet that we are concerned with today that contains the most hallowed and storied vineyards. There are 10 crews, much like the other 10 crews, uh, in, uh, in the, uh, region of Beaujolais, uh, which, um, is home to and celebrates another single varietal, Gamay, that much like, that much like Malbec, rather, was, uh, outlawed in Burgundy, um, and that, you know, found a home outside of its, you know, original workplace.

Um, what I like about this map is you can see the, uh, administrative borders of each village, uh, here, um, uh, that don't necessarily collide with the, um, uh, kind of viticultural, uh, borders of the individual crews. So, uh, for instance, uh, we have, uh, this, uh, single crew valet, um, and then you can see, so there's valet in purple, um, uh, that is the wine crew, uh, and then you have valet, uh, the gray line here that is the administrative district, and they kind of roughly correspond, but they don't totally correspond, because, you know, you have these folks in, uh, regris prié, um, please, uh, French speakers, you know, this is where you should be putting cotton in your ears, but, you know, valet overlaps, uh, tillier and, uh, regris prié, as well as, uh, you know, um, constituting, uh, you know, the bulk of, uh, the, uh, individual crew, you know, within valet itself, but, you know, uh, these, uh, borders, um, were sussed out by individual producers on the ground, um, you know, over generations, but they're only recently emerging, uh, for the sake of, um, you know, kind of, the wines as commercial products, uh, there's something that were understood locally, so, you know, it was the case that in Muscadet, you know, until recently, you know, the wines were made on a large scale, but you always had an individual family setting wine aside, um, you know, they would, um, you know, keep wine in a tank for a wedding, you know, um, and, and, you know, the wines that kept the longest, you know, they were, you know, agricultural insurance, things that kept, you know, held value in a way that things, that were perishable, uh, did not, um, and, uh, you know, that is, you know, over time, how people realize that these individual wines from individual, You know, kind of, uh, sanctified sites, um, were, you know, uh, more rarefied, uh, were, you know, more distinct, uh, than others, and, you know, over generations as, you know, multiple producers, you know, kind of arrived at the same conclusion, um, the, uh, crew system evolved as such, um, and we're going to talk today, um, about a first crew, uh, valet, so I'm going to pull up the map once more, and I'll talk over the three individual crews, and then we'll taste through the wines, uh, so, uh, we're going to start, uh, and work our way from, uh, east to west, so we're going to start with valet.

And then we're going to move to, uh, Goulain, which is this massive, uh, green, uh, monolith, and then into, uh, Chateau Thibault, um, which is, uh, the last of the bunch, so, uh, valet, uh, being furthest east has the most continental climate, we're furthest removed from the sea, so a little bit less of that um, so, um, uh, it's, it's kind of a cooler climate, the grapes are slightly lighter, uh, later to ripen, uh, we're dealing with kind of, um, uh, you know, slightly, uh, moderately deeper soils, but, um, uh, derived presumably from a basalt, so very well draining, uh, as well, so occasionally, um, uh, you know, uh, water, uh, deficient, um, But, you know, um, giving the grapes a very long, uh, ripening, uh, window, um, if you, uh, look at, uh, the, um, trade association's website, they would, they would have you believe that Valet is known for its opulence, um, and I think there's something, uh, to that for the sake of, uh, the, the Valet wine, I think it is, um, you know, uh, a wine of power, um, but, you know, to say opulent, you know, makes it sound like it's, it's overripe, and I certainly think that's not the case; this is a focused wine, you know, it's, it's, you know, opulent, but it's, it's, you know, restrained, um, focused, um, opulence, It's not opulence for its own sake, it's opulence, uh, to, to an end, um, and then you have this added dimension of leaves aging, so, leaves are, uh, the dead yeast cells left over after fermentation, these are leaves at the bottom of a tank, um, this looks unappetizing, um, I apologize if, you know, anyone, uh, watching, um, you know, is thinking about drinking one of these fabulous crew muscadets, and, um, you know, horrified that, uh, this, uh, you know, yellow, slurry, um, was very important to the aging of their wine, but, uh, it was, um, these are dead yeast cells, and, uh, Particularly as the cell membranes degrade after the yeast die, um, they bring into the mix all of these, uh, what are called mannoproteins, um, that have various effects on the wine, uh, but, you know, um, importantly, um, make it more stable, um, but, um, they interact weakly with the sugar receptors on our tongue, and create this, you know, perception, subtle perception of, uh, perception of sweetness, but also of, of length and breadth, um, and I think that's something you definitely get a sense of with these wines, and, uh, these are, uh, vineyard sites that express acidity in Milan really well, and, um, Each crew from one to the next has individual guidelines that mandate, um, a very long leaf contact to, um, balance out that high acidity, so for each of these individual crews, you have specific guidelines that, um, regulate, um, the extent to which, um, they are aged on the lees, um, so for the sake of ballet, you have a wine that mandates 18 months, 18 plus months on the lees, and, um, you know, if you're tasting at home, you should be tasting for les richesses, uh, which just sounds better than opulence, I'm sure, I think opulence is a cognate as well, but les richesses just, just sounds right, um, and, and for me, this is a wine that definitely communicates that, it has a fullness of fruit, um, that you wouldn't necessarily associate, you know, with, you know, with, you know, with, you know, with, you know, with, you know, with, you know, with, you know, with regular Wickeday and Miscaday, and then, you know, on top of that, it's a 2016, so it has to make you do it, uh, as well. Uh, Zoe, uh, any questions about, uh, the crew system or this particular, uh, crew going forward? Uh, no, but I think you'll be interested to know that the Sir Lee photo took out a lot of really fun comments, looking like paint, looking like pus, um, based on what Marmite is, nacho cheese.

Oh, nacho cheese is a good one, yeah, that's very true, um, and, uh, you know, it should be said. But, you know, that job of scraping the leaves from the bottom of the tank, that is not something the winemaker is doing. That is something that, you know, one of the cellar hands is doing. That is a, you know, ignominious job. When I volunteer for Harvesting the Finger Lakes, one of the few things they trust me to do is cleaning the leaves filter. So, if you can imagine that slurry compressed into these, like, cakes, and, like, basically a dozen of those cakes between these, like, filtering pads. One of the jobs that I've gotten good at is cleaning that contraption because they don't trust me to do anything else.

So, you know, either assistants, volunteers, or, you know, not the person in charge tends to do that work. But hugely important. So, I think it's a great job to start in the leaves in terms of the flavor of these wines. And it's something that, in Muscadet, they celebrate like almost no other region that I know of. And then let's move on to the Chateau Tébal. So, Tébal here, this comes from Domaine de la Papier, one of the leading lights in the region. We haven't talked at all about, you know, vineyard practices, but these are uniformly organic wines. You know, in recent history, you're dealing. You know, in this region, very much with, you know, large-scale agriculture, heavy chemical intervention. The new generation of more quality-conscious winemakers is working in the other direction.

So, there is a strong organic biodynamic movement there, but it's a very wet climate, and it can be really hard to work that way. So, you know, this is heroic, you know, kind of sustainable viticulture in its own right. Tébal. We have. Le finesse here. In English, they say refinement for this one. It's funny. We have, you know, direct cognates that they moved against. So, you know, refinement is the distinguishing feature of Tébal. For me, you know, this mineral cut is a definable feature on this one. Very unique type of soil here. For those of you playing at home, it's granodiorite. Granodiorite. We're dealing with a calcareous. A type of granite. Calcareous equals calcium. So, calcium is a hugely important mineral in rocks for the sake of vines because it tends to produce soils that are more basic, which has many benefits, but tends to produce more high acid kinds of wine.

This is harder rock. And, you know, I read this local, you know, Vigneron's blog, and they said, you know, the harder the rock, the leaner, the more acid-driven the limes in Muscadet, and the more important that Lise contact was for the, you know, kind of final product. So, Chateau Tébal has some of the highest requirements for the sake of aging its wines on a lease. They mandate three years on the lease. So, that, you know, split pea soup is in the mix for three full years for the sake of this wine. And that's because it is. ... is so racy and linear and acid-driven that it needs the, you know, weight of those lees to remain in balance.

And, you know, that linearity, though, is something that, you know, gives it a level of refinement that, you know, among the crews is almost unmatched. And I think there's this, like, citrusy inflection with this wine, you know, that is, you know, demonstrably different than, you know, some of that, like, you know, stone fruit, stone fruit kind of fullness that you got from the ballet. And I think to taste from one crew to the next, you know, we're not dealing with apples and oranges here. You know, this is more the case that we're dealing with, you know, different cultivars of apples. But, you know, Pink Lady is very different than a Macintosh. It's very different. You know, than a Granny Smith, for the sake. And I think, you know, sussing out those finer differences, you know, is very meaningful.

And it will make you a better taster in a way that, you know, tasting Pinot Noir, you know, against Merlot and saying that, you know, there's obviously a difference between these two, you know, that's a little, you know, surface level. That's facile. But, you know, to be able to distinguish ballet from Chateau Thibault, from Goulain, I mean, that is, like, next level nerdery. That's next level, you know, rabbit hole diving. And, you know, regardless of, you know, whether, you know, you have a full sense of what you're tasting, or you can pinpoint it, or even describe it, you know, I think merely experiencing it, and, you know, merely trying to understand why, you know, one tastes one way and the other tastes another, you know, will enrich your experience of not only Muscadet, but, you know, other wines, both.

But for me, there's this, like, you know, racy, you know, kind of, like, lemon zest signature on this wine, or almost like a preserved lemon thing that happens that I think is super fun. But this is almost a severe wine. I almost want to give it more time and come back to it. And a lot of times these acid-driven wines, you know, they need time to unravel. You know, these, you know, high-acid creatures, you know, they're, you know, really, you know, tightly wound, and, you know, opening the bottle, giving them time to breathe. You know, if you're tasting this wine at home, and you just opened it, you know, maybe drink half, and then come back to the rest tomorrow, and see how it's evolved.

Because, you know, I think you'll be pleasantly surprised. It's very much kind of a day-two wine. It's a wine that, you know, rewards patients both in the bottle and in glass. And then that, you know, juxtaposes it with Goulain, which is, you know, for me, we talked about, you know, that opulence. For the sake of the Valais. But for me, Goulain is, you know, the most opulent of the Cruze that we're tasting, because it is the earliest ripening. These are heavier soils than any of the other Cruze that we've so far encountered. The requirements for aging on the lees, it's like 20 to 30 months. For Valais, it's 18 plus, but, you know, 20 plus for Goulain. But this is a essentially a marsh. It's a lower-lying marsh.

You're dealing with, a lot of Mike is just soiled, but, you know, I think, you know, finer sands that give weightier wines. And, you know, that weight gives this unctuousness of fruit. Almost this overripeness of fruit that, you know, if you only tasted Goulain and didn't know the Reska Muscadet, I think you would have a very different impression of what Muscadet is. I think that you would think that Muscadet is a much, you know, richer, you know, more kind of showy, kind of tropical wine than most people have come to be, you know, accustomed to in the region in a really fascinating way. And you get a sense, too, that, you know, you're closer to, much closer to the Loire proper. This is a region that will occasionally flood.

So, you know, you get a lot of access to water, you know, which means that, you know, these are not vines that are, you know, struggling to ripen. You know, there's a precociousness to this wine. Goulain of the Cruz is always the first to be harvested and, you know, I think you get a sense of that, you know, richness in the end product in, you know, a really, you know, easily definable kind of way. And then, lastly, this is the oldest wine of the Cruz that we've consumed so far. It's 2013 and because of that, I think, you know, we're leaning more into those, you know, kind of funkier, cheesier flavors, you know. This is a wine that is, you know, a little bit more of a, you know, this is less a wine of its younger self that tastes like its infancy and, you know, more something that, you know, has devolved into a poached cheese kind of, you know, kind of stinkier place, you know, that comes with age.

And that's not to say it's more or less enjoyable than the wine in its youth. It's just, you know, enjoyable in a different kind of way. Zoe, any reflections from folks either, you know, wanting to fuller explore the split pea soup of Lees or curious about the Muscadet Cruz system? Yeah, absolutely. Some notes that the Felbud is like much more funky on the nose, but it has a very approachable palate, whereas the Goulet's is just, like you were just saying, like very creamy and just a little bit more waxy, I think. There's a fatness to it, yeah. You know, it's an oily, unctuous kind of wine. I want this wine with cheese. You know, it tastes a little bit like fondue in a really fun way.

And, you know, again, this goes back to that, you know, kind of, you know, point I made earlier about, you know, Muscadet being a wine that you feel. And, you know, in as much as we are, you know, searching for, you know, distinguishing and tasting notes on these wines, you know, that visceral, sensual, you know, play of Muscadet on the palate, I think, is one of the most rewarding things about it. And, you know, it's one of those things that's hard to describe. Probably, you know, given this quote before, but one of my favorite quotes about, you know, the work that I do in describing wine is this Zappa quote about music criticism. Frank Zappa said that writing about music is like dancing about architecture.

And, you know, at the end of the day, what he's getting at is, you know, to describe a B flat, to describe a perfect chord, you know, describe the difference between a, you know, a flat and a sharp. I mean, how do you do that in words? You know, you just have to hear it and be able to identify it, you know? How do you describe the difference between something that's, you know, oily, you know, and unctuous on the palate and something that's, you know, more linear and precise? I mean, you do the best you can. But at the end of the day, they're imperfect. You know, analogies and, you know, the one language doesn't necessarily, you know, line up perfectly with the other. And I think that's okay.

And I find that, you know, even more so with wines that, you know, are more rewarding tactilely than they are, you know, aromatically. I feel like that whole, you know, sensual experience of tasting is even more difficult to describe than, you know, something like, you know, lychee or persimmon or Meyer lemon or, you know, whatever other descriptor, you know, we're reaching for. It's one of those, you know, you know, you'll know it when you taste it, you know, kind of things, which is, you know, maybe true, but is like the least rewarding, you know, piece of advice or criticism that you can, you know, give anyone or anything. But I do think, you know, if you are lucky enough to be tasting through these three wines at home, you know, you get a sense of the arc of aging on these wines and, you know, because Goulain is a wine that, you know, kind of, you know, is forward, it's a little extra, you know, it's out there, you know, it maybe doesn't endure,

you know, as much, you know, it's a little more pop music than it is Bach, you know, nobody's going to be talking about, you know, I don't know, some pop hit, what is the, what are the kids listening to these days, Zoe? Oh, you shouldn't ask me this. What's like that Billy Ray Cyrus song, I don't know, the rap collabo, I feel like, you know, centuries hence, nobody's going to be talking about that, but people will still be talking about Bach's fugues, you know, and so, you know, some wines are like the Billy Ray Cyrus hip hop collabo, Goulain is a little more of that, whereas I think, like, Valet, Thébaud, they're a little more on that Bach fugue, you know, built to last kind of level.

Well, Cardi B should really get on the- I'm stealing someone's joke. No, we're not diving into the the WAP, no, there are too many, that can get ugly. I do have some great questions, though. Yeah, yeah. To start off, what is it in the Lees? Is it filled with different vitamins or nutrients that really affect the wine? Great, so, there's no better way to say this: 'Lees equal death.' So yeast living things; they do their business in a wine. They convert, you know, they most famously convert, you know, sugar into alcohol and carbon dioxide, but, you know, they're doing other activities as well. But after the, you know, those organisms die, you know, they're held in suspension, and it takes a while for their, you know, bodies to degrade, much like, you know, it takes our own bodies to, a while to degrade, you know, once, you know, we are, you know, back in the earth.

And what happens over time is that, you know, the various organelles, and then particularly the cells, cell walls themselves, start to break down, and through that, you know, cellular death. Through that enzymatic conversion of, you know, those various, you know, organelles and cell walls and then, you know, these biological constituents, you get the creation of all of these, you know, flavors that wouldn't exist otherwise, and, mannoproteins are kind of like the most important, or one of the most important among them, but they, you know, create color stability in the wine, they create clarity in a wine, you know, vintage champagne would be the most famous kind of example, they create, you know, the sensation of, like, a toasty, creaminess, uh in a wine uh champagne um is kind of like fizzy muscadet uh by law um uh champagne vintage champagne required to be aged on the lees for three years uh famously uh so you know vintage champagne is kind of like the original crew muscadet uh that way but um you know people will talk about those autolytic qualities and that autolysis um uh that is the chemical process of that you know cellular death of those microorganisms yeast um after they're finished with their work uh in the wine and you know that slurry that you see you know that's all the you know um you know kind of like you know that tiny you know those are all the like kind of uh cellular um remains um that work their way um into uh the bottom Of the line, um, you know at the end of the process now people will be able to make the distinction between gross lees and fine lees.

So, um, typically when you initially press a wine, there's other sediment that's left in the mix and, very often, winemakers will separate the wine from the gross lees. But you still have, um, uh, throughout fermentation, like, you know, kind of like smaller, um, you know, dead yeast cell components that are the fine lees, um, that are more kind of beneficial um for the sake of the wine aging process. 'Big Death, Little Death', I heard that exactly, exactly. Um, can you explain where we can find the crews? On the bottle, and how they differentiate from like a cuvée name as well, um yeah those are really great questions and it brings up this this kind of broader notion of um, you know I'm a French vigneron, you know how do I market myself and these are things that you know French winemakers think about a lot so um we are very obsessed with grape varietals um on this side of the Atlantic um and you know in in the old country they typically think in terms of designation of origin, so to say Muscadet equals Melon um and you know that doesn't bother them that you know one is essentially a nickname and one is a great name um but you know stateside We would call all of these 'melon' or, you know, on the individual label, or so, it should be said that the first one we tried, the complete loop, um is actually, you know, one of the crew's, uh, itself, but they don't identify it as such, but this one's a little bit more complex. You have complete loop, which is an individual chateau that the producer owns and the producer actually is not listed on the front of the label, which is maddening, it's listed on the back, um, and then you have the vintage and the importer so this is like, a terrible example, this is like, the most unnecessarily confusing French wine label that you can conjure, actually.

Like what the folks at um uh Bet Curios have done, so um, they essentially want the crew itself to be the most important part of the wine label and they're not necessarily the most important part of the wine label and they're not necessarily the most important information. So they want to create enough brand recognition around the 10 crews that, you know, they say Goulain, and you know the educated wine consumer, you know, um, knows that Goulain means Muscadet, um, you know in as much as Latash means Burgundy. Um, they haven't gotten there yet but they're still trying so they want to make Goulain the individual crew the most. prominent thing on the bottle um but uh they still list muscadet separate men which is right here which is the most prominent thing on the bottle which is you know in the hierarchy kind of lower down on that pyramid but equally important you have the producers here um these are uh it's like a collaboration between the friends uh these are the winemakers um this one's confusing because then you have their individual label um which is the bet curios the curious beasts um which is listed here um and then you have the region uh great wine of la war uh then you have the vintage um and then if you flip it over um you have all sorts Of other information, so um, it is wonderfully challenging to uh decipher um, I think you know, uh, the the producers of the region have decided that they really want to emphasize the crew system, so for each of them, they're emphasizing um, you know, the crew as the most prominent thing on their labels, um, and uh, the local governing body is pushing that i think it should be said for all of these French wines that often the back label is more instructive than the front, I can't, you often learn more from the back label than the front because the front is like aesthetic and marketing but on the back they're just required to list a lot. Of things that they don't always on the front, so you know. For example, uh, this wine doesn't have the vintage listed on the front; um, it doesn't have the fact that it's muscadet listed on the front.

By law, they're required to put all that on the back, and then additionally, they're required to list the importer, which I always find hugely instructive because um, you know, you can get a sense of, you know, a house style from an importer what you like, what you don't like, etc. But um, so if you're ever at a loss, you know, trying to figure out what you're dealing with for the sake of a French wine in particular, you know, flip it around; you're always Going to get more information from the back label, um, in the front, but, um, you know they're trying to drive the most, you know, significant piece of information for them and for these wines that really is the crew, so you know they're listing that at the top of their pyramid, uh, for for the three of these wines, and then this one again it's ballet; they're only listing this in crew, um, Oreo fortunately lists the vintage on the front, but, uh, he lists his name and the crew and that's that's it so if you just saw this on a show, you would have to know that Ballet is Muscadet crew now that's that's asking a lot of, um, individual. Consumer, and you know I think, in a retail setting, you know that might do them a disservice, but you know these are not hand cells uh in the first place, you know, and you know hopefully the people you know on my side are going to be able to do that, but you know I think that's going to be a little bit more of a challenge for the people who are on my side that are buying this wine are committed to selling it and committed to contextualizing it for the sake of, you know, the average the average consumer, so that's the work that you know we we have to do, and for me, you know, these are wines that you know they're um they're not you know self-contained entities it's not like you know yellowtail where you just put it up there and you don't do any work and people buy it and you know they call it a day you know these are wines that you know they need a champion um and and they deserve one and i think that is a rung on the you know kind of um kind of that that progression from you know producer to you know consumer that often gets lost especially when wines are sold in a retail setting you know people don't bother to you know try to um situate them or curate them or whatever and um i think that's really valuable and and uh you know i think one of the most you know Wonderful ways you can learn about wine is to find a wine that's really valuable and I think that's one of the ways that you can learn about wine is to find a wine shop that you like and develop a relationship with someone who you trust and just ask them to pick wine for you and you know, pick their brain about what they like and um, get a sense of what you like and keep going back.

You know, that dialogue, you know, uh, is more instructive than almost anything else that you can can do as a consumer. Um, could you talk a little bit, um, about how wine is affected by water versus the lees versus, you know, the the the the the the the the the? The the the the the versus oak versus stainless steel, each muscadet is going to be different, but between like these four factors it's very nuanced of what could be more effective, yeah those are big those are big questions that people spend you know lifetimes um understanding and um kind of further manipulating um water is only really important insofar as um you know vineyard work is concerned um you know there are people that add water in the cellar um most of those people are making wine in ridiculously hot regions like Napa and Washington state where you know they're picking raisins and then adding a little water.

to the bunch because they make more wine that way and who gives a and because if they tried to make dry wine out of you know 30 bricks mucks must then you know they'd be making dessert wine um but um access to water um is one of the most important functions of soil and it's something that vignerons can manipulate um typically um great vines are in this really like kind of um goldy loxi sweet spot where they want just enough um to you know um enable nutrient transfer and you know complete photosynthesis but they don't want so much that their canopies get overwrought and they don't want to devote energy to grapes so um you know Again, you know we talked about this notion of stress for grapevines and I really hate that you know people talk about wanting to stress the vines and I, I don't like that.

Um, I really love this notion of focus, you know, this notion that you know you're trying to you know kind of narrow a universe of possibilities for something like the grapevine so that it doesn't do what it wants to do in nature which is just kind of constantly grow, you know, devote more energy to a legacy project which is the grapes that we enjoy. That is, you know, more concerned with uh, you know, um, you know, coming uh onset of winter and another generation. and propagating itself, and so, um, you know, you're, you know, you want a healthy vine, but you want to restrict access, um, to water, enough that you know there is a sense that you know it's worth devoting energy to this legacy project as opposed to just being like a kid, you know, who just had high C, and it's just like you know all over the place, um, so that's what I say on the waterfront.

The most important variable that we haven't addressed, you know, for the sake of wine and the cellars oxygen, so, um, winemakers spend the entire winemaking process restricting or allowing access to oxygen, some vessels such as oak are more porous they. Allowing more oxygen, other vessels such as stainless steel are totally reductive; they now allow no transfer. You know, and it's not the case that you know allowing no oxygen means that you know a wine is more durable later. Um, it's much like um uh inoculation, you know, for the sake of uh vaccines. If you give a little bit over time, typically you know, you're going to get a little bit of oxygen, and if you're not doing that then there's a lot of risk, you know, there's a lot of risk.

And so, basically, the wine is more durable than if it saw none at all, um, and that's the most kind of important variable that vignerons um are tasked with. Kind of um really uh taking control over throughout the winemaking process, yeah that's all I have to say about that. Let's let's tackle these Suso um uh uh I'm gonna talk a figry we've been neglecting this one so um I'm gonna I'm This is a wine that you love. This comes from a different sub-region of the larger area, That's the Lac de Grand U. So we are around a lake. It is lower. It's warmer. The soils are more water-attentive. The wines are bigger. It's Sabi B, but it's this weird Pinot Gris-adjacent thing close to Sauvy B.

This is a wine that Zoe served when she was running the roost at Resica that she really loved. What do you love about this wine, Zoe? I just really liked how big it was. You have such beautiful aromatics, all of that white peach. And then it's super, super, super herbaceous. I get so much of that bell pepper. And then that really nice waxy, foxy texture to it is really nice and mouth-coating. And particularly because I was slinging so many re-slings, for those who would allow, with some spicier dishes, versus not everything is spicy. It's just spiced. And being able to work off of that herbaceousness with something like the figry was super instructive, particularly if I had any guests who definitely didn't want to have a re-sling, no matter how dry it was.

And I will say, having been the sommelier at a Thai restaurant myself, that I think working with these cuisines, like Indian, like Thai food, like Ethiopian, like Filipino food, working in these cuisines where there's a lot of these loud flavors, but there's no tradition of wine, it's like you're doing anything and everything. So sometimes there's this notion in the old world that what grows together goes together. So with muscadet, you start with, what do people and nuns want to drink with this? And you can't help escape the notion of all this amazing seafood that they bring in there as a pairing to start with. But when you start with a cuisine that has no tradition of wine pairing, I think it's really fun to play in that sandbox.

And I think you gravitate toward these wines that are really expressive and have this amazing textural dimension. And I think Sauvignon Gris has this oily unctuousness and also this hugely perfumey, aromatic quality that's fun. And I brought these two wines into the mix because I wanted to really double down on this idea that Pinot Noir. And I think the most interesting part about this is that it's not a one-trick pony. And I think that it's synonymous with Muscadet in as much as it's synonymous with Melon isn't a one-trick pony. You know, it doesn't only do one thing. It does Sauvignon Gris. In the case of this individual state, it does Vaux Blanc. Increasingly, it does really weird wines. It does Melon on the Skins.

It does Melona's Pet Nat because, you know, everybody and their mom wants to make Pet Nat now. And it also does red wine. And this is one of my favorite red wines in the world, one of my favorite producers in the world. This is from Fait-Bondéant. We're gonna have to go to a different map. We're actually off the map here, which is hugely exciting. We are actually kind of further south. And it's considered part of the larger Pai Nantais, Loire Valley region. But you can see we're in Mérille here. So these really beige regions here, it feels like they totally got the shaft. Everybody else got dynamic primary colors. And then we got, you know, this is like the color of my parents' like living room once upon a time.

It's like Sandy Beach or Sahara or something like that. Or they're like Navajo white. But in this case, there are like disassociated individual regions. You have Mérille, which is at the Confluences River. But it's an oceanic wine region. And this is an oceanic red wine. It's a blend of Pinot, Gamay, Cabernet, Cabernet Sauvignon, Cabernet Franc, and this local grape called Negrette. It's gorgeous. No oak to speak of. It's basically a white wine masquerading as red. And what I love about it is that, you know, you're taking, you know, red grapes, you know, couldn't be any more different than the wines we've tried so far. But for me, there's this confluence. There's this, you know, kind of through line for all of these wines. If you've tasted a Muscadet and then you're moving on to this at home.

If you tasted the Figree and you're moving on. There, you know, there's this continuity of place that emerges for these wines. And, you know, maybe it's suggested. Maybe it's just because of the fact that we know they're from the same place, you know. But I like to think that it transcends that. I like to think that because we're at the margins, because we're at the northernmost, you know, kind of limit of viticulture, because there's this maritime influence, you know, you get this bright brininess, you know, that is really, you know, seductive and entrancing, you know, for the sake of this wine and gives it this wonderful, you know, juicy quality that, you know, makes it hugely drinkable in a really kind of lovable way. What do you think? We got some.

We're going long on time here, even though I'm flying solo today. And thank you all for hanging out this long with us on an otherwise beautiful Sunday afternoon. We answered some questions about salinity. We talk about brine and salinity in wine. Is there actually any sea influence in the wine? Or is that not a contact of like, not just Muscadet being in a maritime climate? Yeah, so we're getting into, again, a lot of different things. We're getting into, you know, the Frank Zappa, you know, kind of metaphorical realm here. So when you talk about maritime influence climatically, we're largely talking about a cooling influence. So the water itself has a cooling influence, regardless of whether it's a river or lake or the ocean, has a cooling influence on the local, like, kind of meso climate.

But when it's an ocean, it has a more profound cooling influence. And, you know, you have cool ocean currents that, you know, have a really substantial and measurable cooling influence on these vineyards. In the wine itself, is the wine salty? No. No, it's not. You know, I think, you know, very often what we talk about is salinity in wine. We're really talking about, you know, a set of, you know, flavors that have to do with under ripeness or kind of less exuberant ripeness. Maybe not under ripeness, but higher acid in a wine. So, you know, maybe not, you know, the overripe berry fruit that you get, you know, in warmer regions, in the southern Mediterranean, for instance. And maybe more toward, you know, cranberry and underripe raspberry and brambley forest fruits.

You know, so I like to think in terms of, you know, as analogies go, you know, what, you know, wine is not, you know, fruity as such, you know. That's a thing that is kind of too overarching. You know, it's too facile. You know, it's like what kind of fruit and, and again, you know, those briny flavors, those are like, you know, your cranberries, you know, your green strawberries, you know, your raspberries are Tardis buck if you actually taste them. You know, huckleberries, God forbid, which are really weird fruit, but strangely delicious nonetheless, you know. You know, all of those, you know, kind of like higher acid berries as opposed to the ones that, you know, have either started to rot, but are so fine.

On, or that, you know, you started to cook down, or, you know, getting into that, like, fruit leather, I'll trade you, you know, my, you know, fruit roll-up for a pear cup, you know, kind of sets of flavors that, you know, you very often get in much warmer regions. Why only recently did the crew system develop? That's a killer question. Big props to whoever asked that question, Doug. Because Muscadet was a commercial product. Muscadet came out of a depressed region of the Loire Valley, although now it's kind of like, not just kind of like Seattle, it's like got this amazing tech sector, and it's doing, like, really well as French formal industrial towns go, but once upon a time, it was a commercial product. It was, you know, kind of more depressed.

You know, the farmers there still complain about the fact that they can't get good prices for their wines, their grapes, so the only way that they could make money, so you, like, as a winemaker, either, you know, the sweet spots are either you make a shit ton of wine, and you find a way to minimize costs, or you make a much smaller amount of wine, and you, you know, charge a lot more for it, but you're, if you're stuck in the middle, you're fucked. Like, that's the, that's the truth of it in the modern era, and Müscadet went the, let's make a shit ton of wine at low cost route, and they were very good at it in the 70s, when France was a source of a lot of cheap wine, but flash forward, and now, there are all sorts of other wine regions that have undercut France as the global source of cheap wine, so, like, Marlboro Sauvy B.

They make a shit ton of cheap wine. They make a shit ton of wine. It's way more flavorful than your average Müscadet, and it's equally inexpensive. Turantes does the same fucking thing, so they're, like, northern Italian Pinot Grigio, so other wine regions have basically outdone Muscadet at Muscadet, so what Muscadet did well once upon a time, other people are doing better and undercutting it, so for Muscadet to survive, people have realized that they need to double down on the things that make it special. They need to find a way to evolve from a, you know, a, you know, a, you know, a, you know, a, you know, a, you know, a, you know, region that is making an oceanic amount of wine to one that makes, like, really fun,  $10 bottles, but also subsidizes that production with these, like, more rarefied single-vineyard things that people are willing to pay more for, you know, so you have to find a way to earn a living with, you know, less than 10 hectares or hectares, 2.4, you know, 2.4 acres, which is a decent amount of wine land, but you know, if you're trying to operate on a small scale, you need to find a way to charge a premium for your wine, and until recently, they haven't been able to do that in Muscadet, and establishing the crew system for them is a way to do that, so basically, the crew system evolved because it was needed, you know, they needed to find a way to make more specifically delicious wines that spoke to a sense of place, so that they could celebrate what was special about Muscadet, and that's not to say that it didn't exist before.

That's not to say that it's invented. It was always there. Even the producers who were making the Yellow Tails of the Muscadet world, they were set aside, they were setting aside a few barrels for themselves from their chosen parcels, so, you know, you hear a lot of these stories of, you know, a winemaker that normally sold off all his grapes to a collaborative or a negociant, but, you know, there's this one parcel of old vines that he couldn't bring himself to sell because it's too good, and winemakers, they're sentimental that way, and they will hold on to things, and what is happening now is that you see, you know, those rarefied wines, those single parcels that people, you know, didn't want to sell off because they were too special, you know, They're being celebrated in a way they hadn't before, and, you know, the international world of wine drinkers is coming on board with that, and, you know, it's still happening.

What's cool for me is it's happening at, you know, $25 and $30 a bottle, and, you know, it's still happening at $25 and $30 a bottle, as opposed to $55, $60, $160, you know, which is what you would get for Premier and Grand Cru in Burgundy. Nobody can afford that anymore, and people can afford it, but I can't afford it, or I can afford it, but only, I can only afford it if I pay wholesale. 2020 is a hard year for hospitality, all right? Yeah, yeah. How about, how do you feel about using ice cubes in wine when, you know, when you're drinking? It gets a little bit too warm for you. Funny you should mention this, so my wife and I were drinking 2014 Pouilly-Foussay last night, and she broke out ice for us, and said only God can judge me.

I don't think there's a wrong way to enjoy wine, as long as it floats your boat. You know, there, you know, this notion we have of the sanctity of wine is very non-existent. It's new. The ancients adulterated their wines in a million different ways. The Greeks in particular, you know, thought it was gauche not to add a metaphorical ice cube to your wine. I think, however, you enjoy your wine, I think you should, you know, enjoy your wine that way. I don't believe life is too fucking short, you know, there's, there's no right or wrong way. I think, you know, if you're, you know, if you're, you know, if you're, you know, if you're, you know, it's not to say that, if you're preparing for an exam as someone in the trade, yes, watering down your wine will diminish your ability to, you know, you know, be able to intelligently describe the difference between, you know, Montrachet and, you know, one of, you know, like any of the other like, like, Courtone, you know, you'll, you'll, you'll struggle with that if you're adding an ice cube to each of them. But, you know, if at home and it's just about, you know, pure enjoyment, then, you know, fuck it. You know, do what you look. Yeah, there are more important things to worry about. I'll offer a Cuties version of it, which is freezing green and red grapes, and then you can just dunk your grapes in your wine. Yeah, or like there's this thing, like they have like whiskey stones that you can do that with.

Yeah, you know, I like a lot of my wines at Cellar Temp, whether they're white or red, which bothers a lot of people. So like when I'm out with my family, I want the server to leave the white bottle on the table, and inevitably my sister and my wife, you know, look at me and say like, you know, Billy, this wine's gotten too warm, like what the fuck. But you know, I'm enjoying it. So again, like, you know, don't listen to me. Like, do what you like. Their taste is hugely subjective. Like, I don't want to diminish the extent to which there's a science, a physiology of taste that is verifiable and, you know, codified and worth devoting a life to. But equally, it's hugely psychological, and that is equally, you know, scientifically verified.

And, you know, susceptible to the day of the week, the temperature outside, your individual mood. You know, there's so many forces at work that, you know, wine should be about whatever you want to make of it. And if that's, you know, sheer and electable enjoyment, and you like adding an ice cube to it, then just do it. I think my last question is, can we get Melanie back to help us for our French pronunciation or? Not during Harvest. So I think everybody just wants Melanie back. I just want, I honestly, I was tempted to try to learn Alsatian just for the sake of leaving all of this behind and putting Zoe in charge of everything and, you know, enjoying a harvest lunch and, you know, calling it a day.

But yes, my French is terrible. At some point, we'll get someone in the mix who can actually pronounce things properly. This is, I guess, a good way of teasing our next class. So our next lesson is going to be with Mark Hosher. He is Lebanese, but he speaks beautiful French. And he is the one of the owners of Château Moussar and in Lebanon. We're also going to be raising money for one of the charities doing relief work on the ground there in the wake of the chemical explosion that just occurred. But we'll ask Mark for help pronouncing things properly. But it's not quite as hard as this lesson. For whatever reason, in Muscadet, there are a lot of really difficult French words.

It should be said that I did ask, so Allie Thorburn, who's this wine director at JL Goat, actually speaks French. And I did ask for pronunciation notes, even though you might guess otherwise by the way I tripped over them all. But yeah, it's a tough language. And I was a Latin American history major, and Spanish is phonetic. And French just isn't. So it's just a lot. There's a lot going on there. It feels like they indiscriminately drop syllables and consonants in a way that I don't fully understand. But I feel like Meredith's gotten more play in this class than she'd be comfortable with. With, but she says the fact that I don't speak French is one of the few things that keeps me relatable as a sommelier.

So I want to, I want to not, I want to not lean into it. And, and, you know, just like kind of let it be one of those things that, you know, I haven't, you know, tried to, you know, fully embrace, but so let's, let's call it there. We didn't, we didn't give our, I totally forgot to give our customary toast. Thank you to everyone who has followed us this, this, this far down the rabbit hole. Again, it should be said that, you know, Muscadet as a course of study is as deeply nerdy as anything that you could study in the wine world. And I'm hugely excited that 57 people are still listening to me talk about it after an hour and a half. I never imagined that I would, I would be there. And I thank you all for giving up the better part of your Sunday afternoon to, to join us and be a part of this. You know, cheers as always. And we are alone together, appreciating wine, appreciating San Pellegrino's delicious non-alcoholic beverages. Have a wonderful week and we'll see you next Sunday.