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The best known area of this region Muscadet, producing 80% of the wine, is Muscadet de Sevre-et-Maine. This is named for two rivers in the area. The two other regions are Muscadet des Coteaux de la Loire, and the basic Muscadet.

Muscadet wine is unusual in that the grape (again, Melon de Bourgogne) is so flavorless that many producers let the wine sit on the lees all winter, hoping to absorb some extra flavor. This also gives the wine a bit of carbonization and life. Muscadet wine is very light, a bit tangy, and a small bit sparkly. It goes well with seafood and often has a light, green apple flavor. It should be served at 52F. Note that Muscadet wine is quite separate from Muscat wine. Muscat wine is made from the Muscat grape. Muscadet wine is made from the Melon de Bourgogne grape.

Part of what can make this confusing is - what happens when someone takes a melon de bourgogne grape to another location - for example Washington State - and makes a wine out of it? They cannot call it "Muscadet" - because it's not a wine from the Muscadet region of France! They call it "melon de bourgogne" - because that is what the grape is.

It's similar to the situation between Chablis and Chardonnay. There is no such thing as a "Chablis grape". Chablis is a region of France, where they grow Chardonnay grapes. If you order a Chablis, you are getting a Chardonnay wine from the Chablis region. So if you take that chardonnay grape to South Africa, the wine you make there shouldn't be called a Chablis. It should be called a Chardonnay, or you could name it after the South Africa region where it is now growing.

Muscadet, the white wine of France's western Loire Valley, is a throwback to wine's old days. In the modern world, where wine is fetishized, ranked and paraded like a show pony, it's hard for Muscadet to keep up the pace.

But if Muscadet isn't an easy wine to love, it's a wine worth loving. Made from the melon [meh-LAWN] de Bourgogne grape, Muscadet is tart and vivacious, an inexpensive wine that makes up in versatility what it lacks in depth. The melon variety (which has nothing to do with the fruit of the same name) first appeared in the western Loire near the city of Nantes in 1635, as Dutch traders plied the local rivers and expanded vineyard plantings. Banned in its native Burgundy, melon took hold in the Loire when a nasty freeze in 1709 killed off most red-grape vines.

The grape itself doesn't offer much flavor (the Dutch wanted to distill spirits from it) which is why most Muscadets are made "sur lie": rather than being drained off, the wine sits on its lees — a mix of grape skins, dead yeast cells and such — from fermentation during fall harvest until at least the following March. Lees contact enriches the texture and freshness, and can ...