AFTER the Champagne, Anjou is the French province which ranks next in importance for its production of sparkling wines. Vintaged on the banks of the Loire, these are largely consigned to the English and other markets, labelled Crême de Bouzy, Sillery and Ay Mousseux, Cartes Noires and Blanches, and the like; while their corks are branded with the names of phantom firms, supposed to be located at Reims and Epernay. As a rule, these wines come from around Saumur; but they are not necessarily the worse on that account, for the district produces capital sparkling wines, the finer qualities of which improve greatly by being kept for a few years. One curious thing shown to us at Saumur was the album of a manufacturer of sparkling wines containing examples of the many hundred labels ticketed with which his produce had for years past been sold. Not one of these labels assigned to the wines the name of their real maker or their true birthplace, but introduced them under the auspices of mythical dukes and counts, as being manufactured at châteaux which are so many ‘castles in Spain,’ and as coming from Ay, Bouzy, Châlons, Epernay, Reims, and Verzenay, but never by any chance from Saumur.
Being produced from robuster growths than the sparkling wines of the Department of the Marne, sparkling Saumur will always lack that excessive lightness which is the crowning grace of fine Champagne; still, it has only to be kept for a few years, instead of being drunk shortly after its arrival from the wine-merchant, for its quality to become greatly improved and its intrinsic value to be considerably enhanced. We have drunk sparkling Saumur that had been in bottle for nearly twenty years, and found the wine not only remarkably delicate, but, singular to say, with plenty of effervescence.
STATUE OF RICHARD CŒUR DE LION
AT FONTEVRAULT.
To an Englishman Anjou is one of the most interesting of the ancient provinces of France. It was the cradle of the Plantagenet kings, and only ten miles from Saumur still repose the bones of Henry, the first Plantagenet, and Richard of the Lion Heart, beneath their elaborate coloured and gilt effigies, in the so-called Cimetière des Rois of the historic Abbey of Fontevrault. The famous vineyards of the Coteau de Saumur, eastward of the town and bordering the Loire, extend as far as here, and include the communes of Dampierre, Souzay, Varrains, Chacé, Parnay, Turquant, and Montsoreau, the last-named within three miles of Fontevrault, and chiefly remarkable through its seigneur of ill-fame, Jean de Chambes, who instigated his wife to lure Bussy d’Amboise to an assignation in order that he might the more surely poignard him. Saumur is picturesquely placed at the foot of this bold range of heights, near where the little river Thouet runs into the broad and rapid Loire. A massive-looking old château, perched on the summit of an isolated crag, stands out grandly against the clear sky and dominates the town, the older houses of which crouch at the foot of the lofty hill and climb its steepest sides. The restored antique Hôtel de Ville, in the Pointed style, with its elegant windows, graceful belfry, and florid wrought-iron balconies, stands back from the quay bordering the Loire. In the rear is the Rue des Payens, whither the last of the Huguenots of this ‘metropolis of Protestantism,’ as it was formerly styled, retired, converting their houses into so many fortresses to guard against being surprised by their Catholic adversaries. Adjacent is the steep tortuous Grande Rue, of which Balzac—himself a Tourangeau—has given such a graphic picture in his Eugénie Grandet, the scene of which is laid at Saumur. To-day, however, only a few of its ancient carved-timber houses, quaint overhanging corner turrets, and fantastically studded massive oak doors, have escaped demolition.
The vineyards of the Coteau de Saumur, yielding the finest wines, are reached by the road skirting the river, the opposite low banks of which are fringed with willows and endless rows of poplars, which at the time of our visit were already golden with the fading tints of autumn. Numerous fantastic windmills crown the heights, the summit of which is covered with vines, varied by dense patches of woodland. Here, as elsewhere along the banks of the Loire, the many abandoned quarries along the face of the hill have been turned by the peasants into cosy dwellings by simply walling-up the entrances, while leaving, of course, the necessary apertures for doors and windows. Dampierre, the first village reached, has many of these cave-dwellings, and numbers of its houses are picturesquely perched up the sides of the slope. The holiday costumes of the peasant women encountered in the neighbourhood of Saumur are exceedingly quaint, their elaborate and varied headdresses being counterparts of coiffures in vogue so far back as three and four centuries ago.
PEASANT WOMEN OF THE ENVIRONS OF SAUMUR.