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About the Wine
With a little struck-match reduction on opening, given a moment to breathe the wine begins to show its tightly-coiled precision. A one-off, experimental cuvée that blends two contrasting vintages – the heat and ripeness of 2022 with the cool, linear 2023 – it is a wine of tentative equilibrium as these opposing qualities are brought together. Beautifully pale in the glass, fruits are crisp green apple and salt-encrusted lemon, with a taut undernote of volatility, but simultaneously there is the presence of richness and texture.
The 2022 was direct-pressed into steel, where it rested for two years, the 2023 had one year in fibreglass. The two vintages were then blended together to age a further three months in steel before bottling. Tense and angular, it is a vertical wine with acidity that cuts like a beam and awakens the senses.
About Thomas Puéchavy
Thomas farms his 3 hectares organically and the vines vary in age from 20 to 80 years old. Sitting directly between the estates of Vouvray royalty, Domaine Gaston Huet and Clos Naudin, Thomas is something of the underdog. Fortunately, they too have been practising organic and biodynamic vineyard work for many years now, so they are good neighbours to have. The soils here differ from the majority of the region in that the limestone dominates over clay, contributing to that tightly-wound coil of acid and crystalline orchard fruit that characterises his wine.
In the cellar the grapes are pressed directly into barrels and given as much time as they need before bottling, with no filtration or additions at any stage. The finished wines span the full spectrum, from sparkling, through fresh and dry to oxidative and demi-sec. We have a couple of wonderful cuvées from the 2020 and 2021 vintages to begin, hopefully with more to follow in the future. They are fascinating expressions of the region that have made a big impression on us - we look forward to sharing them with you too, while they last!