..getting Persnickety about Chenin Blanc

Varietal thinking is treacherous … but it seems to be conceptually necessary for us. How else can we keep the worrisome chaos of the wine world at bay? Once we start tasting, those familiar friends begin to swap clothes and identities, those landmarks turn up in the wrong places and those gateways open on strange, unexpected vistas. 

‘We taste, we drink, we relish’… and then we ignore what we’ve just experienced. We go running back to our myths of varietal primacy and segregation just so that we can keep our heads well organised.

All of this kept tickling me a little earlier this year during the big Chenin Blanc week, held earlier this year in Angers and Tours (France). There was data aplenty.

Fair enough: Chenin Blanc has a genetic definition, so its presence in the world’s winelands can be measured. South Africa has just over half of the world’s plantings (16,200ha in 2023) and France a little more than one third (10,700ha in 2023); the US, Argentina and Australia share the rest.

It’s South Africa’s most planted variety; in France, by contrast, it’s the 14th most planted, the fifth most planted white and the third most important variety in the Loire.

But here’s what matters. Any variety is a suite of possibilities, and those possibilities only take form and come into being when vines are planted in a particular site. It’s the site that will steer your wine experience, in coordination with the craftswoman/man who shepherds vines through seasons and oversees the radical metamorphosis from grape juice to wine. Those efforts are vital. No efforts; no interest. As the talk and the tastings we shared made abundantly clear, the set of possibilities grouped under ‘Chenin’ can dazzle and befuddle all.

Almost the first word spoken about Chenin Blanc, by Anjou grower Patrick Baudouin, was ‘versatility’. ‘Plasticity’ soon followed (from the academics in attendance). South African vine-guardian Rosa Kruger (who cherishes the idea that old vines begin, after 35 years or so, to lose their clonal status and ‘change and reflect the landscape’) calls it ‘the chameleon variety’. Everyone stressed the community of possibilities that Chenin Blanc offers. For South African grower Chris Alheit, it’s ‘the very honest grape: it’s going to tell the truth about where it comes from’.

It has been planted in the Loire for the longest, so it’s no surprise that differences are most marked there. In Anjou it’s deep, sumptuous; in Savennières driving, masterful; in Saumur intense, bright and chiselled; in Chinon (and, soon, Bourgueil) firm, dry, upright; in Vouvray tender and intricate; in Jasnières slender, fragile, quenching.

Then … there’s time. Take it at different points of the season and it will give you a drench of differences, from bitter-hard and raw though springleaf, pear and apple via verbena, hawthorn and meadowsweet to a flush of yellow fruits and finally luscious autumnal extravagance. There’s a slower cellar clock, too. Ten, 20, 50 years pass and the wine deepens in hue and flavoury tone yet retains its sure-footed balance. No Chenin, just Chenins!

South Africa is still working it’s way towards all this. The scale and bone-structure of Chenin’s Cape expressions are very different from those of the Loire: larger and more chewy, broader in the beam, mingling honey, pollen, stone and softly tropical fruit notes.

What’s so encouraging, though, is that growers there are listening, waiting, asking questions, beginning sincere conversations with their sites, as you can now see from the gratifying range of balances in the wines, and their ever-quieter and ever-subtler weave of analogies.

No more statements or postures; farewell varietal confinement. Eben Sadie is leading the new/old world there by a mile, and with some bottle age on his whites you are in for some real Chenin treats that put them right up there on the addictive side of the list. Very small quantites produced. Sadie’s Mev. Kirsten comes from Cape Town’s oldest Chenin Blanc vineyard, originally planted in 1905, with every other row uprooted in 1946. The fruit just keeps giving! Bravo! and then of course there is his ‘Palladius’ white blend. Each grape is hand sorted and packed into small strawberry cases for safe travel to the winery. A twelve month ‘sur lie’ fermentation followed by another six months of ageing on the finer lees only. It’s naturally all in the detail here.

Of course few wines, if any at all, grown in Argentina, Oz or USA have the same ease and spread of articulation, the same sense of unfussy belonging, as these wines do. We still have a handful of the great Chenins in stock today, the list below.

‘Unvarietal varieties, translators of origin, mothers of difference: of all this we need more, much more! ‘

– Available from us, Under Bond, ex London City Bond VT –

Sadie Family Die Ouwingerdreeks, ‘Mev.Kirsten’, Chenin Blanc, Stellenbosch
2022 @ £135bt (6 bottles)
2023 @ £135bt (12 bottles)

Sadie Family, ‘Palladius’ Chenin Blanc, Swartland
(+10 other white grape varieites)
2013 @ £160bt (5 bottles)
2015 @ £135bt (3 bottles)
2016 @ £135bt (7 bottles)
2017 @ £125bt (4 bottles)
2018 @ £295dbl/mg (2 double magnums)

Domaine Helicon,  Vin de France, Loire
2022 Anicroche @ £125bt (2 bottles)
2022 Frenesie   @ £125bt (3 bottles)
2020 Anicroche @ £175bt (2 bottles)

Domaine Lajibe, Jurancon
2020 ‘Serres-Seques’ Sec @ £150bt (2 bottles)
(+ Mansengs & Petit Courbu)

Stephane Bernaudeau, Cornu, Anjou
2020 ‘Les Nourrissons’ @ £405bt (6 bottles)
2020 ‘Les Ongles’ @ £330bt (12 bottles)

Terra Vita Vinum, ‘Grandes Rogeries’, Anjou
2021 @ £55bt (6 bottles)
– All wines are offered subject to remaining unsold, as usual –

N.B.

White Chenin (blanc) was also known in France as Pineau de la Loire. This could, in my opinion only, be one of the reasons that most of South African Brandy today is made from Chenin Blanc, that they actually call Steen. The Pineau connection.

I once read in Wine Folly (is it still around?) that this grape is pronounced ”Shen-in-blonk” and can sometimes have flavors of bruised apple, that they told me is a sign of oxidation. I had never thought of ‘bruised apple’ before as I am not sure if I have ever eaten one, alas! the mind boggles. I do love my touch of oxidated white lying in-state.

Dominant Flavours: Lemon, Yellow Apple, Pear, Honey, Chamomile & Grapefruit. In France the latter fruit is called ‘Pamplemousse’ (one of my all time favourate words), and you will only find this flavour profile in warm climate Chenin Blanc producing countries. Argyland, the States and Oz. Far too exotique for the French palate and mine!