Orbois

Identity

Orbois is an old Loire white, better known to growers by its other name, Menu Pineau.

Two names for one grape, one of which means nothing to a reader and the other of which misleads: Menu Pineau is not a Pinot. It is the kind of nomenclature this corpus meets constantly, and it alone justifies writing the entry.

A yield grape, and what that cost it

Pl@ntGrape sums it up in one severe sentence: it was "long considered a high-yielding supplementary variety rather than a quality one".

That is a judgement, and it had consequences. A variety classed as supplementary is planted to fill, pulled up as soon as something fills better, and never studied in its own right. Its low acidity — 1 to 2 on this corpus's scale, the bottom — did not help: in a Loire that lives on the tension of Chenin and Sauvignon, a soft white had no case to make.

In the vineyard

Early bud burst — so exposed to spring frost, a real constraint in Touraine — mid-season ripeness, medium vigour.

In the glass

Low acidity, and that is the only character the source quantifies. This entry's single descriptor, green apple, is a reading of that register, not a quotation.

There is, in the sources consulted, no documented single-variety bottling. So nobody knows what an Orbois on its own tastes like — only what it brings to a blend, which is volume.

Where it is named

In Touraine, an accessory variety, and at Vouvray, where the specification permits it alongside Chenin Blanc.

That last point deserves noting. Vouvray is, in everyone's mind, an appellation of pure Chenin. Yet the text allows Orbois as a minor partner, up to 5% of plantings.

It is a useful reminder: a cahier des charges describes what is permitted, not what is done. A reader who takes an appellation's list of grapes for the composition of its bottles goes wrong regularly, and this corpus publishes both facts without conflating them.