Muscadet Has Become a Forgotten Guest at Dinner Tables Everywhere

Wine can become boring, especially when some people chat endlessly about things like pH, titratable acidity and yeast strains. At the dinner table, talk should be more jovial and the wine merely an accompaniment to the food.

Muscadet, then, is the perfect wine. It asks nothing of the diner and simply wants to play foil for the sauce and lubricate the brain for talk about world affairs or your next-door neighbors.

It has long been argued that Muscadet is the perfect wine for seafood because of its crisp austerity and delicacy. “It’s hard to resist the notion of Muscadet as Neptune’s own vineyard,” wrote Hugh Johnson in his Encyclopedia of Wine. “Brittany provides the fruits de mer ; (Muscadet) provides oceans of the ideal white wine.”

Yet Muscadet, which once was on track to be the white wine of choice in the United States, has suffered since its heyday five years ago, and today tries to rally against a host of public image problems.

Seeking Attention

No one better understands the uphill struggle to recapture the attention of the wine buyer in this country than Robert, Marquis de Goulaine, the world traveler who owns one of the region’s most respected properties, one that makes a sublime elixir.

“Ah, the problem of Muscadet,” he said recently, looking to the heavens as if there were an answer. “In a certain way, Muscadet has suffered from the success of Beaujolais Nouveau, in the wine-by-the-glass programs.” As such wines become staples of the sipping set, other wines are hurt, he said.

More than that is the fact that in an area smaller than the Napa Valley (only 25,000 acres of vineyards are planted in Muscadet), there are more than 3,000 growers all turning out wine--”an army,” said the marquis with a sigh. Meaning that there is no brand identity with which the consumer can feel comfort.

“Muscadet has no strong image here by brand name,” he said. “There is no brand identification with Muscadet. People think it is a commodity.”

But a worse problem concerns the supposedly “best” wine of the region, which comes from the area between the Sevre and Maine rivers. Muscadet de Sevre et Maine is technically supposed to be the cream of the crop, “but it’s like a pyramid standing on its point,” said de Goulaine. “Eighty percent of the growers are in Sevre et Maine.” That waters down the significance of the prime growing region.

And that means, says wine author Alexis Bespaloff in his Encyclopedia of Wine, “that the distinction (of being a Sevre et Maine wine) is perhaps less important than it’s sometimes made out to be.”

Moreover, the wine-making method that produces the best Muscadet--a method called sur lie --traditionally applied only to wine that was bottled directly from the cask off its own yeasty sediment. In the old days and until recently, not much Muscadet sur lie was made, and it was considered the best of the region.

However, recent legislation permits the term sur lie to appear on wine that was merely bottled before June. That means that such wines are not significantly different from non- sur lie wine. And today, 75% of all Muscadet carries the term, yet much of it has a character of regular Muscadet.

Identity Problem

On top of all that, the name Muscadet has an identity problem. Many people unfamiliar with the fact that this is bone-dry wine, perfect for seafood, make an association between it and Muscat, a wine that is often slightly sweet, or worse yet, with Muscatel, which is usually sticky sweet and found largely in brown paper bags inside doorways.

Yet despite drawbacks, for a period of time between the early 1970s and early 1980s, Muscadet sales in the United States rose, based in part on the marquis and his then-distributor, Schieffelin and Co., educating the public to the joys of this light wine.

In the early 1970s, little Muscadet was sold in the United States. By 1980, some 65,000 cases were being imported (20,000 of it from Marquis de Goulaine), and imports of all Muscadet eventually rose to a high of 138,000 cases by 1984. It since has slipped badly, to about 70,000 cases each year.

Meanwhile, imports of French Beaujolais have doubled since 1980.

Marquis de Goulaine, who lost Schieffelin as distributor in 1981, now sells only about 6,000 cases a year in the United States. Represented today by The Christian Brothers Sales Co., the marquis is making trips here to drum up business.

Curiously, in Japan and on the European continent, Muscadet sales are up.

“Sales are booming in Europe and the Japanese are mad about Muscadet,” said the marquis.

The marquis’ latest release, which sells for $7 a bottle, offers an austere, flinty aroma and a rich mid-palate taste. It has a finish that’s totally dry. The marquis also produces a wine called La Cuvee du Millenaire ($9.50), made from older-vine grapes and aged longer. “It is our best cuvee (blend) and it has a surprising amount of body, and it is slow to mature.”

Two and Two

Muscadet is a fresh wine that rarely improves with long-term bottle aging. In fact, the marquis is an advocate of a traditional saying for Muscadet--”two months and two years.” This means it is improper to consume Muscadet before it has been aged for at least two months, and never after it is 2 years old.

Yet with the Cuvee du Millenaire, he recommends “nine months and three years.” Because the wine is fuller bodied and aged longer in the barrel in the traditional sur lie method, it ages nicely for at least two years before it reaches the peak of drinkability.

The 1987 Cuvee du Millenaire, bottled in mid-1988, will be a better wine by mid-1990 than it is now and will hold for at least another year or two. This is a wine with a delicate creaminess and a rich yet totally dry finish with a delicate perfume in the aftertaste.

When I met the marquis for a simple cafe luncheon, he poured both wines, but didn’t touch them before the food came. It was clear he felt they needed food to be enjoyable.

Of course, we both ordered fish.

Later, he revealed that he loves all good wines, and is not interested in tasting 20 or 30 vintages of some great old Bordeaux.

“One of the greatest joys in the my life in the last 10 years is not retasting all the vintages of Chateau Petrus going back a century, but to taste some obscure Swiss wine while sitting in a chalet on top of a mountain, to sip a Vega Sicilia in the setting Spanish sun, or finding a Belgian wine in Brussels.

“And I do this not for the intellectual pleasure of knowing something about a wine that no one else knows, but for the pure joy of seeing what wine makers in other lands see. I admire the pioneer who makes the unusual wine.

“I seek out the rare and vanished wines of the world. I am mad about (Hungarian) Tokay Essensia,” a rare and expensive dessert wine.

Family History

The wine he calls Cuvee du Millenaire is commemorative of a proud moment in the de Goulaine family history during the 12th Century.

After a series of wars between England and France, King Henry II of England and Louis VII of France, unable to negotiate a peace, called on 16-year-old Mathieu de Goulaine to act as go-between. Three times, goes the story, he was successful in getting both sides to agree to peace, the third time being the charm.

In gratitude, both kings offered de Goulaine the right to use their coats-of-arms.

It was then that Mathieu came up with a French phrase which freely translated means, “To this one, to that one, I grant the crown.” Today that phrase is the family motto.

The abbreviation of that phrase, AAA, now appears on the neckband of the Millenaire wine, along with the dual crowns of England and France, the leopard of England and the fleur-de-lis of France.

Wines of the Week: 1988 Iron Horse Fume Blanc ($9) and 1988 Ferrari-Carano Fume Blanc ($9)--Both of these impeccably made wines show perfect balance and varietal harmony. The Iron Horse is more classically structured with a lemongrass spice and new-mown hay quality, with a lean, crisp, rewarding finish that invites sip after sip. The Ferrari-Carano has more depth with melon-like fruit and a creamier mid-palate; it’s slightly richer. Try them side by side with seafood and see which you prefer. (Bet you go back and forth, unable to decide. I couldn’t.)