2022, Domaine de L’Epinay, Loire Valley, France Producer: Cyrille; Sylvain Paquereau

Grape: Sauvignon, Melon de Bourgogne

Soil: gravel and slit, on granitic bedrock

Clean and zesty. Easy drinking sauvignon blanc.

The estate has been in the Paqueneau family for four generations. Viticulture became the sole activity of the domaine when Albert and his wife Odile took the reign in 1973. Since 2000/ 2006 Cyrille and Sylvain, winemakers of the next generation, now run the family business. The domaine covers nearly 38 ha where they grow no less than fourteen grape varieties, with half of it planted with Melon de Bourgogne. Albert and Odile were always taking the lutte raisonnée farming approach, which means the reasoned struggle. Growers who practice this kind of viticulture claim to use chemicals less often and less aggressively than conventional growers. In 2000 they then gained certification for this and joined the Terra Vitis organisation, a network of several hundred vinegrower-winemakers working in every single French winegrowing region. They share the same love of the terroir and respect their natural environment. In 2011 they began conversion to organics and won an award for their organic Muscadet, which spurred them on to convert the entire estate to organic agriculture. The technique used is bottling on lees, which is a traditional technique of Nantes wines. It consists in letting the wines rest on their lees for four or five months after their fermentation until their bottling. Mechanical harvesting, fermentation in vats at low temperature.