The capital of tuffeau
Around Saumur, across some thirty communes on the border of Maine-et-Loire, Vienne and Deux-Sèvres, the appellation produces white, red and sparkling wines. The town and its hillsides are honeycombed with galleries dug into the tuffeau, where the wines are aged and mushrooms are even cultivated.
The terroir: tuffeau chalk
The Saumur subsoil is marked by white tuffeau chalk — a soft Turonian chalk — complemented by siliceous, sandy and clay soils. This cool limestone base gives the wines tension and minerality: it is what lends elegance to the chenin whites and freshness to the cabernet franc reds, and makes the Saumur area ideal for fine bubbles.
The style of the wines
The whites, made from chenin, offer stewed orchard fruit and flowers, with lovely liveliness; the reds, made from cabernet franc, charm with red fruit, violet and iris, and good ageing potential (around five years). Served chilled for the whites and at cellar temperature for the reds, these are digestible and elegant wines, true to their terroir.