Montlouis from Olivier Deletang - pour les fêtes

Olivier Deletang grows Chenin grapes at Montlouis-sur-Loire, 30 kilometers west of Tours; his family has been making these dry to sweet rare wines for 5 generations.

Splintered into small parcelles they exclusively produce the white Chenin grape like its cousin across the Loire, the Vouvray. "Que le patrimoine du terroir peut nous sauver!" cries Olivier, who knows more than geologists or government administrators, what the argilo-calcaire and hard calcaire soil can produce; it's important for the survival of France and French wine.

Olivier today produces 100 K bottles of this very special wine, a slightly "easier" wine then Vouvrays. It is often overpowering in its complexity, rather mysterious in its aroma, and sparkling in its yellow-amber color against the light. When it is assembled from grapes of various plots (and some years that are not to his liking, Olivier will chuck out the entire production, or produce the sparkling type) he feels "une amertume".

It is the stress of production, the daily tasting, the stress of expectation of something that is not only under his control - avoiding sugar and chemicals makes wine production a real art - that his body creates toxins in his system. Toxins are bad, specially toxins produced by stress, he admits, and in order to objectively taste his new wine, he needs to drive at least 30 kilometers away to sit down with some convives and get the full scope of his creation. Never taste wine under stress, he suggest, wine needs to be tasted in peace. And it tastes better in Paris, he admits humbly.