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About the Wine
A fantastic vintage that balances both the brambly forest fruits and pronounced minerality of previous vintages so well. The fruit is bright, crunchy and clearly transmits the silex-rich soils over which the vines are planted; petrichor aromas of wet stones sit beneath. The wine possesses a bloody, iron-y quality but this vintage also feels ripe and open, lending peppery red fruits to the mix. As always, the wine is the most vivid shade of ruby in the glass; inky and sanguine. It is at its best when served with a light chill, some soft, creamy local cheese and a hunk of farmhouse terrine. The 2022 delivers so much for the price.
Les Côts Hauts is made using fruit from 20 year-old Malbec vines planted over limestone gravel. The grapes are de-stemmed and macerated for a week before being pressed into steel tanks for a year of rest and then bottled with no additions.
About Mikaël Bouges
Mikaël Bouges works over 8 hectares of land split into various parcels dotted around Faverolles-sur- Cher in Touraine. He learned to tend vines and make wine with his father who had already established the domaine as certified organic as far back as the early 90s, so a thoughtful approach in the vineyard and in the cellar has been with him from the start. The vines sit in the vicinity of the river Cher and as a result have soils of gravelly limestone, speckled with various alluvial deposits of quartz and silex left behind from the historical flow of the water over the centuries. His trademark style is to translate this mineral aspect into the wine - they clearly speak of this typically middle-Loire terroir. In the cellar the wines ferment spontaneously and are not filtered or fined, some with just a small amount of sulphur used only at bottling, some with none at all. We feel they can be very classical in their expression; clean, bright and with incredible purity. We love to pour them for those who are in some way dubious about this very logical way of working - Mikaël’s wines tend to put paid to the sceptics. Displaying an uncanny knack for the ancestral method, Mikaël produces a couple of immaculate pét-nats made with zero additions that number some of the more easygoing and immediate of his output. He also recently began to experiment with a no-sulphur Sauvignon Blanc cuvée, to much success. His other wines are made under the Touraine AOC and display a certain typicity. Those from the younger vines are made completely in tank and are ideal for the table; the older vines see an extended élevage in old barrels and invite deeper contemplation.