Wine lovers will cite the variety’s versatility and many shades of deliciousness, whether in sparkling or still form, bone dry, demi-sec or moelleux (sweet), with its sometimes-subtle-sometimes-brazen floral, honey, orchard fruit, beeswax and flint characters and mouth-watering acidity. They’ll likely also hail its affordability, particularly when compared with neighboring wine regions like Burgundy or Champagne.
Wine producers wax poetically about Chenin Blanc’s ability to subtly express terroir and its adaptability to a wide range of growing sites. It not only thrives in its cool climate homeland, the Loire Valley, in the northwest of France, but also in much warmer, drier environments such as South Africa, Australia and California. This flexibility makes it one of the varieties most likely to weather a warmer future.
What these folks may not mention is the fact that Chenin Blanc is just plain cool.
As with fashion, music, art and other forms of self-expression, what you drink can reflect who you are and aim to be. Like everything else, grape varieties go in and out of fashion (to the chagrin of wine growers everywhere). While Chenin hasn’t quite made it fully mainstream yet, at least in the United States, it has officially been adopted by the cool kids club of wine geeks. For over a decade now, many members of new school natural wine circles have been somewhat obsessed with the variety.
“I really don’t think Chenin ever had a ‘hipster’ moment the way Savagnin is having. It just had a renaissance,” says Alice Feiring, author of To Fall in Love, Drink This and one of the U.S.’s best known natural wine champions.
This rebirth, however, was a long time in the making.
The Loire Valley: the heartland of Chenin
Chenin Blanc has been cultivated in the central Loire Valley for over 500 years in famed appellations like Vouvray, Anjou, Saumur and Savennières, growing along the region’s namesake river and its tributaries.
Like France itself, the Loire’s history with one of its chief varieties is complex with lots of twists and turns. While artisanal, quality-focused producers have always existed, they largely fell under international drinkers’ radars for decades.
Throughout the mid-late 20th century, Loire Valley Chenin’s reputation was one of quantity over quality. Many poorly farmed vineyards churned out semi-sweet sparkling, off-dry or sweet wines from the variety.
While all of these styles remain central to the appellations best known for them (and there are many excellent examples today), drier iterations of the wine made in a low-intervention style thrust the grape and the region into the international limelight starting in the 1990s.
A new wave of Loire Valley producers, like Nicolas Joly in Savennières, began singing the praises of biodynamic winemaking and natural techniques like native yeast, extended lees contact and low sulfur. Helped alongside like-minded producers in Beaujolais, like Marcel Lapierre, this small but growing slew of winemakers ignited the natural wine movement. They’ve attracted a loyal fanbase, especially among environmentally- and health-conscious Millennial drinkers.
In the ensuing decades, scores of young, dynamic Loire Valley producers have joined their ranks. Their efforts have brought the terroir-transmitting white grape to even larger legions of adoring fans around the globe.
Consumer demand for less synthetic chemicals in vines and wines has drastically impacted the region as a whole. Organic and biodynamic certifications are on a steep incline for producers of all sizes and winemaking philosophies, from the Muscadet region in the far west, to Sancerre and Puilly Fumé in this sprawling region’s far east.
Between 2011 and 2021, the number of Loire Valley vineyards farmed organically grew by 300%, accounting for 23% of the region’s total land area. This is a huge contrast to France’s overall national average of just 14%.
At the same time, the use of sulfur is down significantly in the region. The “Le style ligérien” (literally “coming from the Loire”), known for its lighter, more terroir-expressive approach, is on the rise.
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