Marmite Sarthoise an authentic recipe

No No it’s not a receipt for a French type of black treacly salty spread that you either love or hate!

A marmite is a heavy lidded cooking pot, thus a dish cooked therein.   

Sarth is a departement in France where Le Mans and Jasnières are.  

Preparation Time : 15 mn

Cooking time : 35 mn

Ingredients (for 6 people) :
- 200 g white chicken meat cut into pieces
- 160 g of rabbit meat cut into pieces
- 80 g of Ham
- 200 g of Green cabbage
- 120 g of Chopped mushrooms
- 180 g of Carrots
- 200 g of Potatoes
- 100 g of Turnips
- 25 cl of good meat stock
- 10 cl of crème fraîche
- 250 cl of dry Jasnières
- olive oil
- salt, pepper

Preparation :

1)         Cut in advance the chicken, rabbit and ham into small pieces and cut the cabbage,          carrots, turnips and potatoes into thin strips.

2)         Salt the vegetables and steam them for 10 minutes
3)         Dredge the chicken and rabbit in flour and brown in a pan with butter
4)         Then mix in the mushrooms and ham
5)         Deglaze with some of the Jasnières then reduce by ¾, add the stock, then the crème       fraîche let simmer for a minute then season.
6)         Add the rest of the wine to cover all that is in the pan

7)         Then add the vegetables, simmer for 10 minutes so the vegetables can take on the           aromas of the meats.  

JASNIERES a Shy Appellation

One of the many great pleasures we benefit from, living so close to the wines of the Loire valley are the visits we make to her vineyards either with our friends that come to stay or on our own.

These “road trips” take many forms; a quick trip to the co-operative at Villiers-sur-Loir or Limeray, to top up with good value quaffing wine;  to Chinon or Saumur to find and taste wines from producers that we happen to stumble upon that day; then there are the targeted trips to specialist producers in Montlouis, near Tours, or to Savennières near Angers to buy respectively the appellation’s divine Méthode Traditionnelle and demi-sec wines.

It does not matter much which category our visits fall into as we always find interesting wines and characters to make it a special outing.  So as you can guess quite an itinerary of vineyards and routes have evolved to please all tastes.       

I can hear you asking; “What has all this nonsense got to do with the title of this blog: Jasnières?”

I will explain;

Jasnières is not an appellation that will jump out of this page as one well known in France let alone the UK.  It is hidden away in the Val du Loir, just south of Le Mans.

We have a very good friend in Eastbourne, Paul, who comes out to see us regularly, sometimes with his wife (who is also a very good friend), on occasions on his own and sporadically with a good mutual friend, Gareth.  We have been discussing for a few weeks now, a petit séjour chez nous with Gareth at the start of this April.

You can imagine my surprise and delight when I received an email from Paul with a proposed itinerary for a day’s excursion which included degustation visits to villages whose vineyards fall within the Jasnières appellation.

Before I ramble on about the wines I will scrawl a little history of the area.  I suspect that there has been wine made here since roman times. The region was well known for its wine making capabilities in the Middle-Ages. King Henry IV was known to be a fan of it.  The oenophile authors of the day Rabelais and Ronsard both make reference to its wines in their writings. The slopes that grace the vines have changed very little since this immortalisation. Maps commissioned by Louis XIV when he sat on the throne at Versailles shows very little difference to their (the vineyards) current positions.

Jasnières was granted AOC status in 1937 very soon after the AOC system encompassed wine production in certain areas of France.  So it is clear that this unknown gem of an appellation does have a serious pedigree. Why it is not better known I don’t know, maybe it just got lost in wine drinkers minds, poor marketing or maybe it just happened.  I have been going to the region infrequently for the past five years and always find good wine. 

Four years ago I spent a couple of days in the area guiding a “caviste” ^{note 1} from Normandy who wanted to expand his range of Loire wines.  We spent half a day in Jasnières knocking on doors meeting wonderful people who were passionate about their life’s labours.  We heard their family histories, what they intended to do to make the appellation’s wines more popular, therefore pushing up the prices they receive.  This is a very common feature of our visits but always so personal, so interesting and oh! so so passionate!

The wines themselves: Under the Appellation of 1937 only one grape can be used to make wine which bears the name AOC Jasnières which is Chenin Blanc and is locally called Pineau de la Loire.

A few interesting facts; well they are to an anorak like me.  

Annuel Production : 2 300 hl (exclusivement blanc)

Yield: 52 hl/ha

Dominant growing practices: Minimum density of 5,500 vines/ha. Strictly regulated short pruning

Surface area 65ha

Types of soil: chalk, broken down into flinty clay on steep hillsides

Most producers will make dry, demi-sec and sweet wines, the ideal temperature to enjoy them is 12°C but for the sweet wine maybe a couple of degrees cooler.

What to eat with them

This is very subjective.  If you visit the producer ask him, he will certainly know what matches his wine better than anyone else.

But my thoughts are

The dry wine, as an apéritif, with shellfish, sea and river fish (without a cream sauce)

The demi-sec (medium sweet) as an apéritif, with charcuterie, foie gras, chicken, rabbit and fish in a creamy sauce, or why not try the locals’ advice and drink it with goats cheese.

The sweet wine, again, as an apéritif, with light desserts, goats cheese and creamy blue cheeses like Roquefort or with foie gras and, if you wish to be really brave, try it with monkfish in a cream sauce?

In the cellar

How long will it last? That is down to your self-discipline.  Can be drunk young but will improve with age.  The better wines have a life of 10, 15 to 20 years and I suspect in exceptional years even longer for the sweeter wines.

In great years, the sweet wines are very similar in style to their counterparts which are produced on the banks of the Loire.

In the glass

The sensory characteristics are again very subjective, unless one has a trained palette it is very difficult to describe a wine in the terms used by the professionals and knowledgeable amateurs.  I list what you should expect to find in a glass of Jasnières as described by “Vins de Loire”.  

Colour: Crystal golden yellow appearance.

On the nose: Floral and fruity aromas with a mineral touch,

On the palette: The aromas will evolve very subtly towards dried fruit and honey.

Note 1

The literal translation of caviste is cellar man but it also translates as wine merchant and a shop that sells wine is also referred to as a caviste. 
vins de loire in english
jasnieres.fr

Wine Course in Tours

Last year I enrolled on a wine tasting course at Tours on the River Loire.  It was targeted at people who love wine and wanted to learn more about how to taste it, what to eat with which wine and a crash course in wine making and its economics!    We were nine who sat down to each session with our teacher, Mr Christiane Pechoutre (a sommelier professor from the local catering college and wine judge as we found out later). 

He carefully took us through each stage of the process, NO, I stop myself in fear of retributions from the hundreds of wine growers and makers I know,

I’ll start again THE ART of winemaking, it became clear that this subject is not a subject at all but is LOVE, with a PASSION greater than that of Romeo and Juliet and all of the great Bronte sisters romantic figures joined together and raging like the nuclei of the sun.    

For five weeks my colleagues and I turned up religiously at the “Académie des Vins de Loire” and were well educated by our tutor,  And spitting such fine wine was a real hardship……….but necessary.  At the end of our fifth session we were subjected to a gruelling exam and then had the tension, just like the students waiting for their “A” Level results, of waiting a whole week for the results.

We did not have to go back to school for our moment of truth which would lead to tears of joy or cries of anguish but to a Chateau in Montlouis to see the final stages of the “vendage” and taste the newly made wine.  This wine would not grace the table of many, I am certain!  It is still yellow (or pink) and  not very clear, in fact it is cloudy, and bubbling as it is in the full throws of  fermentation, only five days since the grapes where picked and at about 5% alcohol. But very interesting as a drink.   In parts of France some villages have a fete to celebrate the young wines arrival (normally two to three weeks after the harvest

We continued our tour of the château, visited the house, heard the family history, talked amongst ourselves and the owners and passed a very pleasant evening.  The visit was to be crowned with a meal cooked by the young “BIO” organic wine maker’s wife to complement the estate made wines the he had selected.

Before the starter, the moment of truth, the results, the room fell silent; you could smell and taste the tension.  Our replacement tutor (who knew none of us) explained that our guide along the long line of vines for the previous five weeks was judging this night.  The tension mounted even more as he started to read the results.  MARTIN Andrew 19.5/20, I had achieved a 95% pass mark, in an exam in another language, in fact my first exam since I took the 11 plus, (Oh! That gives away my age!)  my colleagues congratulated me; and said not bad for an engleesh, they were genuinely pleased for me as I was for them, we had  all passed.      

The meal started and conversations were taking place across the table, the wines were interesting, the foie gras was wonderful.  I was chatting away to the winemaker, a nice guy in his early thirties who had taken over the business from his dad.   He told me that this was his second vendage on his own and  he explained that in Montlouis he is getting a lot of help from the other organic producers and from the fraternity of winemakers.  He was being very dynamic and I wish him well.   And now for the funny experience.

I live in France and I have spent 28 years coming here on holiday before that, so I do speak OK French; but not perfect.  I have been mistaken as Belgian, Swiss, Dutch and even German; if people are unsure they politely ask me which “departement” I am from.

During the main course (crayfish crumble), as the group started to talk amongst themselves, I quipped that crumble is an English word and that I had never seen crayfish crumble in England; rhubarb crumble yes; and then mischievously asked for the “crème anglaise” THE CUSTARD, our host laughed and then reeled out a list of bad meals he had been presented with in England and Scotland.  All the other diners were giggling quite loudly; his wife was kicking him under the table and had turned the colour of the crayfish she had cooked.   Of course I was laughing as well. Finally the centime dropped that I was “un anglais”, he blushed and coloured the same shade as his red wine.  I continued to laugh and sympathised with him.

We parted as friends and of course I will go back one day.

château de pintray

Well done Cotes d'Auvergne

The wine makers of Auvergne have dreamt for many long years about being awarded AOC (Appellation d'Origine Contrôlée) status.  After 21 years of hard work and listening to the advice of INAO (Institut des Appellations d'Origine in Paris) of how to improve their wines, their persistence paid off on the 19^th November 2010 when they were bestowed AOC status.  (AOC du vignoble des Côtes d’Auvergne).

From 2011 the old appellation of the region AO VDQS Côtes d'Auvergne will disappear with a few changes that I will try and explain clearly.

One of the saddest changes, in the eyes of the author is the new AOC does not permit any wine with 100% Pinot Noir to carry its moniker but it can call itself ‘Vin de Pays du Puy de Dôme’, which I think you would agree is bit of a mouthful.  However, where the use of AOC Côtes d'Auvergne is permitted on the label the wine must be a blend of Pinot Noir and Gamay (-50%).  

Another great upheaval amongst the local (communal) denominations (Boudes, Chateaugay, Chanturgue, Corent, Madargue) is that they lose the right to produce two of their three historic colours under the local AOC,

In Effect

Boudes , Chateaugay , Chanturgue , Madargue will be able to produce red wine that carries the AOC communal name and Corent exclusively AOC rosé

The colours (red, white and rosé) will sport the Côtes d'Auvergne generic AOC.