Loire Valley

The wines of France’s Loire Valley have become mainstays at Legal Sea Foods over the last several years, largely because of their unerring complementarity to fish and seafood. Two recent vintages, 2009 and 2010, have been so outstanding that we have expanded our Loire selections on our wine lists.  Both years have produced wines with the full package: brilliant ripe flavors, minerality, bracing acidity and beautiful balance. For those of you who are already Loire fans, this is an historic moment, and for those interested in discovering something new, you couldn’t have selected a better time. At Legal Sea Foods, we have actually expanded the Loire selections at our core Massachusetts restaurants to ten different wines, including four by the glass!

There is a Loire wine for almost everyone, as few other classic production zones are so diverse in terms of the range of styles that they offer: sparkling, bone dry white, white wine with varying degrees of sweetness up to and including luscious dessert nectars, rosé, and red wine. Of the latter, the personality tends to be uniquely suited for fish: light to medium bodied with fragrant, herbal essences, crisp tart flavors and bright red berry fruit, but moderate low key tannins. In fact, the region’s best wines, whatever their hue, tend to be exemplars of subtlety and grace, without excess alcohol and hardly ever a trace of oak. And perhaps the best news is that even the most classic examples are reasonably priced.

To celebrate the great current vintages on offer we have invited star importer Jon-David Headrick to our Harborside location (see menu) to present a dinner featuring some of our favorite Loire selections on February 21st. Known affectionately in wine professional circles as “the acid freak” due to his love of crisp white wines, Headrick is an energetic young entrepreneur who has assembled a collection of some of the most important Loire domaines, those who have shown a commitment to terroir and mineral expression in their wines. We find them especially suited to our style of cooking.

The dinner’s reception will feature fourth generation artisan grower Jean-Francois Mérieau’s lovely “L’Arpent des Vaudons” Sauvignon de Touraine, 2010. This wine could be viewed as a “baby Sancerre.” It’s a bit lighter in fruit extract, but has some of the same earthy, citrus tones and vibrant tart herbal flavor essences. Clean, bright and lemony, it’s a quintessential shellfish wine.   

For the first course we are featuring a wine that has become a house favorite, the Domaine du Viking “Tendre” Vouvray, Loire Valley, 2009. Produced on chalk and silex soils at the estate of Lionel Gauthier, this beautifully expressive Chenin Blanc is richly honeyed in flavor, with pear, lemon and nectarine notes. We’ve followed it every year since 2004 and, while always delicious, the 2009 strikes me as the most complete and rich on the palate. For those who love balanced sweetness, you will experience this as a marvelously concentrated complement to a tangy Seared Rare Hiramasa with Fennel Purée, Preserved Lemon and Heirloom Radish.

Sancerre, perhaps the region’s most famous appellation, is featured for the next course, with a single vineyard expression (“Les Romains” 2009) from the great biodynamic producer Domaine Vacheron accompanying Sautéed Abalone with Parsnip Purée, House-Cured Grapes and Guanciale. The well drained chalky stone soils of Sancerre are laced with marine fossils, all of which reinforce the natural intensity of Sauvignon Blanc flavor. Les Romains is a south facing slope that produces among the ripest grapes of the appellation; it’s a lovely wine, silky in texture but full of pink grapefruit, mineral and bright passionfruit flavor essences.

The Loire’s finest red wines, based on the Cabernet Franc grape, originate in the hilly vineyards of Touraine, a sub-region with Tuffeau limestone subsoils (quarried over the centuries to build the region’s famous Châteaux) and a mild climate sheltered from oceanic influences by forests.  The best are from three villages, Chinon, Bourgueil and St-Nicolas-de-Bourgueil. Our selection to accompany Pan-Seared Halibut with Tomato-Braised Romano Beans is the Frédéric Mabileau “Les Rouillères” St-Nicolas-de-Bourgueil, which in a super-ripe vintage like 2009, shows rich raspberry and herb flavors, a soft creamy texture and a lingering tart finish that is totally unforgettable. Cabernet Franc may remain very obscure, but wines like this give Pinot Noir a run for its money as the top red wine seafood accompaniment.

For dessert we return to Vouvray and Domaine Viking, this time presenting a cellar selection from 2002 of the “Cuvée Aurélie” Moelleux to accompany our luscious Crème Brulée. This is a fully botrytized, lusciously sweet ambrosia that comes directly from the Domaine’s cellars. Gauthier ages his wines in   chestnut rather than oak to match the delicate personality of his wines. The 2002 is seamless and creamy, with pineapple, burnt honey and maple notes that linger on into an extended finish. It will be a great way to conclude the meal and your mini-journey to the Loire with Jon-David. Whether you’re able to attend or not, you will find a great array of Loire wines in all of our restaurants. I encourage you to experiment with them in combination with our fresh seafood; they enhance one another in an uncanny and most delicious manner.

Sandy Block