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.
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, 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 Boissy d’Amboise to an assignation in order that he might 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 head-dresses being counterparts of coiffures in vogue so far back as three and four centuries ago.
Quitting the banks of the river, we ascend a steep tortuous road shut in on either side by high stone walls—for hereabouts all the best vineyards are scrupulously inclosed—and finally reach the summit of the heights, whence a view is gained over what the Saumurois proudly style the grand valley of the Loire. Everywhere around the vintage is going on. The vines are planted rather more than a yard apart, and those yielding black grapes are trained, as a rule, up tall stakes, although some few are trained espalier fashion. Women dexterously detach the bunches with pruning-knives and throw them into the seilles—small squat buckets with wooden handles—the contents of which are emptied from time to time into baskets—the counterpart of the chiffonnier’s hotte, and coated with pitch inside so as to close all the crevices of the wickerwork—which the portes-bastes carry slung to their backs. When white wine is being made from black
grapes for sparkling saumur the grapes are conveyed in these baskets forthwith to the underground pressoirs in the neighbouring villages before their skins get at all broken in order that the wine may be as pale as possible in colour.
The black grape yielding the best wine in the Saumur district is the breton, said to be the same as the carbinet-sauvignon, the leading variety in the grand vineyards of the Médoc. Other species of black grapes cultivated around Saumur are the varennes, yielding a soft and insipid wine of no kind of value, and the liverdun, or large gamay, the prevalent grape in the Mâconnais, and the same which in the days of Philippe-le-Hardi the parlements of Metz and Dijon interdicted the planting and cultivation of. The prevalent white grapes are the large and small pineau blanc, the bunches of the former being of an intermediate size, broad and pyramidal in shape, and with the berries close together. These have fine skins, are oblong in shape, and of a transparent yellowish-green hue tinged with red, are very sweet and juicy, and as a rule ripen late. As for the small pineau, the bunches are less compact, the berries are round and of a golden tint, are finer as well as sweeter in flavour, and ripen somewhat earlier than the fruit of the larger variety.
We noticed as we drove through the villages of Champigny and Varrains—the former celebrated for its fine red wines, and more especially its crû of the Clos des Cordeliers—that hardly any of the houses had windows looking on to the narrow street, but that all were provided with low openings for shooting the grapes into the cellar where, when making red wine, they are trodden, but when making white wine, whether from black or white grapes, they are invariably pressed. Each of the houses had its ponderous porte-cochère and low narrow portal leading into the large inclosed yard at its side, and over the high blank walls vines were frequently trained and pleasantly varied their dull grey monotony.
The grapes on being shot into the openings just mentioned fall through a kind of tunnel into a reservoir adjacent to the heavy press, which is invariably of wood and of the old-fashioned