Touraine Noble Joué
They say good things come to those who wait.
In the case of Touraine Noble Joué, this would certainly seem to be the case, although the handful of vignerons turning out this rarely seen rosé were twiddling their wine-stained thumbs for a very long time. The wait for an appellation was just shy of five hundred years.
The origins of Touraine Noble Joué can be traced back to the 15th century, and even this might underestimate just how long this corner of the Loire Valley, today enveloped by the sprawling urban landscape of Tours, has been planted to vines. Having said that, while the vineyard is undoubtedly ancient, it has not been five centuries of plain sailing. While the Touraine Noble Joué appellation has an undeniably noble history, producing wines from the most noble varieties, wines which were favoured by the most noble blue bloods and royalty, most notably Louis XI (pictured below, in a 19th-century portrait), a combination of factors conspired to push viticulture in this region into decline, and by the mid-20th century the Noble Joué flame had been all but extinguished.
It was the vignerons themselves who turned things around, spurred on by Jacques Puisais (1927 – 2020), a renowned oenologist and director of the Laboratoire Départemental et Régional d’Analyses in Tours, supported by the local Chambre d’Agriculture and the INAO. This work began during the 1970s, and progress was of course slow; the vineyards had to be re-established, and wines produced, after which the process of describing and ratifying their new appellation could begin. And, as we have seen with the development of the Crus Communaux in Muscadet, or the geographical denominations of Touraine Chenonceaux and Touraine Oisly, the INAO does not always operate at a lightning-fast pace.
And so it took a few more decades before the modern-day Touraine Noble Joué eventually saw the light of day. After five hundred years, though, what do a few decades matter?
In this instalment of my guide to the wines of the Loire Valley I dive into Touraine Noble Joué, to explore its history in more detail, as well as outlining the style of wine you can expect to find here, and pointing you in the direction of some noteworthy domaines.
Please log in to continue reading: