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<< previous...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.... next >>