Pouilly-Fumé: In the Shadow of Sancerre
Journey up the Loire River into the heart of France, and there sits arguably the finest Sauvignon Blanc country in the world, anchored by twin appellations: Sancerre and Pouilly-Fumé.
The former of those regions is frequently rattled off the tongues of everyday wine consumers, those who can name a few favorite styles but may not have a firm notion of what they are really ordering or where it comes from. But despite its close physical proximity and the stylistic similarity of its wines, the latter has not attained such wide popular status.
Sancerre has become a bit of a household name over the past two decades, becoming a go-to by-the-glass pour for restaurants and a favorite of consumers who prefer their wines light and bright. Over the same period of time, Pouilly-Fumé has languished, remaining a classic of the wine world but never garnering the mass following of its neighbor across the river. Upon close examination, this disparate popularity has little to do with the wines themselves and far more to do with production numbers, style misconceptions, and pure happenstance. Given that Sancerre's mass appeal has driven the prices of these wines way up, now is the time to revisit nearby Pouilly-Fumé.
Some say that it would be a fool's errand to attempt to distinguish Sancerre from Pouilly-Fumé in a blind tasting. The wines often taste alike in the glass, aromatic and acid-driven due to their shared Sauvignon Blanc variety. That's not to say that all Sancerre and Pouilly-Fumé wines taste the same; complexity and quality varies from producer to producer in each region, as do atypical practices like vinification in oak or natural winemaking. The overall similarities aren't surprising; the two appellations, separated by a quick car ride across the Loire River, share the same cool, continental climate and limestone-clay hills slashed with bands of silex, a clay-flint mixture. Though winemakers in Pouilly-Fumé make a point of highlighting a distinctive smoky, gunflint note in their wines, in reality, this can be found in some wines from either appellation.
Both Sancerre and Pouilly-Fumé have been growing vines for centuries and were officially established as AOCs in the 1930s. While wines from both areas became fashionable in the 1970s and 1980s, they were already starting to follow different paths of perception.
"In the 1980s in France, Pouilly-Fumé was more 'chic' than Sancerre, which was generally considered to be a 'bistro wine' with a cheaper price," says Pascal Jolivet, proprietor of Domaine Pascal Jolivet, which produces wines in both Sancerre and Pouilly-Fumé. But, as the bistro culture started to grow first in domestic cities, then abroad, Sancerre became a standard of the hand-scrawled chalkboard wine list, the options listed simply by appellation. Easy-drinking and value-driven, Sancerre stepped into the clean, crisp white wine slot formerly dominated by Muscadet.
Although French cuisine became popular in the US in the 1980s and 1990s, Sancerre hadn't achieved mass recognition yet. According to Jolivet, the US market was the seventh most important export market for Sancerre in 1998. Twenty years later, it is number one, accounting for a full 40 percent of Sancerre exports.
"I think that you can look back 15 years on the modern popularity of Sancerre," says Patrick Cappiello, wine director of Walnut Street Cafe in Philadelphia and owner of Monte Rio Cellars in California. "I got into the business as the interest started to peak in the US." He recalls that most Sancerre wines would sell for around $10 wholesale, drawing the interest of wine buyers who needed value-oriented by-the-glass pours that maintained high quality. There was also a lot of Sancerre being produced; according to "The World Atlas of Wine," the region's vineyard acreage more than tripled in the last quarter of the 20th Century, much of it dominated by high-yielding clones.
Pouilly-Fumé wines, on the other hand, couldn't offer that kind of value to buyers. "The entry price to Pouilly-Fumé is a bit higher because Pouilly-Fumé land commands a higher price," says Vanessa Price, area manager for Maisons Marques & Domaines USA.
But things have changed since Sancerre first started popping up on actual wine lists, rather than chalkboards. As demand increased, so too did prices.
"We've seen pricing skyrocket," Cappiello says. "Now restaurants have to go to other appellations like Menetou-Salon or Touraine to get the value that Sancerre used to offer." Jolivet notes that prices for Sancerre and Pouilly-Fumé are similar today. There are high-end producers whose bottles command hundreds of dollars each in both regions, and it is tough these days to get a Sancerre or Pouilly-Fumé wine for under $20 retail.
Despite Sancerre's rising prices, the numbers alone illustrate that the wines have maintained their popularity, particularly internationally. In 2017, Sancerre produced over 171,000 hectoliters of wine – a recent low, actually, due to the small 2017 vintage throughout much of Europe – and sold 62 percent of that wine in export markets, driven by US consumption. Comparatively, Pouilly-Fumé produced just under 67,000 hectoliters of wine in 2017, selling just 47 percent of it in export markets. The UK and Belgium each imported more than double the amount of Pouilly-Fumé than the US.
The growing production of Sancerre, which continues to rise but far less sharply than in the 1980s and 1990s, has caused members of the wine trade to doubt the overall quality of the category. Some feel that the region, riding on this popularity wave, has tipped over into formulaic production, straying from the terroir-driven styles for which Sancerre was known. This is particularly true in recently planted vineyards, which are more likely to be located on lesser soils.
"Not all Sancerre is created equal," Price notes. "Sancerre is like Chianti – the appellation size has increased dramatically over the years. But there is no Sancerre 'Classique.'" In the 1960s, Sancerre vineyards totaled around 700 hectares. Currently, the region includes just under 3000 hectares of vines – more than double Pouilly-Fumé's 1352 hectares. While this certainly helps Sancerre maintain its familiarity in international markets, it also undercuts high-end examples of Sancerre with less characterful, overly simplistic versions.
Some postulate that the popularity of Sancerre comes from its grape variety – after all, Sauvignon Blanc is the world's third-most planted white wine grape. But if this were true, wouldn't Pouilly-Fumé benefit from that association as well? Somewhere along the way, Sancerre created its own identity, separate from its signature grape variety. Cappiello doesn't even think that the average Sancerre drinker realizes that the wine is made from Sauvignon Blanc.
"I think that the majority of people drinking Sancerre are not wine aficionados," he says. "They are just looking to grab a porch pounder." Even if that is true, Cappiello acknowledges that it's an achievement to be able to translate the wine's refreshing, minerally profile even without grape recognition.
Trivial as it sounds, it may all come down to the name. Sancerre, named after its central, hilltop town, happens to be fairly simple to pronounce in many languages. Pouilly-Fumé, an amalgamation of Pouilly-sur-Loire, the appellation's central town, and Blanc Fumé, the local name for Sauvignon Blanc, is a comparative mouthful. If mere pronunciation weren't enough, one other hiccup comes by way of nearby Burgundy.
"The number one problem that Pouilly-Fumé has run into is the unfortunate similarity to Pouilly-Fuissé," Cappiello says. "It's super confusing for consumers." Because the regions are so similar in name, many assume that the wines will be similar in style as well. But racy, mineral-laden Pouilly-Fumé bears little similarity to rich, dense Pouilly-Fuissé. Cappiello notes that the advent of Fumé Blanc, the famously oak-aged Napa Valley Sauvignon Blanc from Robert Mondavi, also weighed down the perception of Pouilly-Fumé.
Jolivet agrees that the name "Pouilly-Fumé" has created confusion among consumers, so for 2019, he proposed a new solution. Jolivet plans to do away with all mentions of Pouilly-Fumé AOP on his wine labels, instead labeling wines from that appellation as "Blanc Fumé." The traditional name for Sauvignon Blanc wines in this region, Blanc Fumé was used on wines bottled by Jolivet's grandfather in the 1959 vintage. Despite the potential association with Napa's Fumé Blanc, Jolivet is optimistic about his plan. "Blanc Fumé is a French name and will be much easier to pronounce and to identify," he says. "I guess the American consumers who love our Sancerre will be curious to discover our new Blanc Fumé."
In the end, much about the disparate popularity of Sancerre over Pouilly-Fumé is unexplainable. "I think it was a strike of lightning that most appellations in the Loire would love to see happen to them," Cappiello says.
But given the evolution of these two appellations, it's time to reconsider the landscape of these key central Loire regions. Pouilly-Fumé may not fall into the inner circle of trendiness, but that doesn't mean that it's lacking in quality. In fact, now that Sancerre's popularity has driven prices higher, it could be argued that Pouilly-Fumé provides better quality wines at equivalent price points to its Left Bank neighbor.
The wines of Pouilly-Fumé have not been overlooked because of the juice that lies underneath the cork; they have merely suffered from an unfortunate name, low presence in export markets, and the monstrous shadow of a blockbuster neighbor. It's worth taking a second look at the wines of Pouilly-Fumé. There's plenty to rediscover here.
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