Perfectly balancing a low-key richness with a lucid clarity, this finely-tuned wine is bound with a sinew-y coil of acidity that cuts with phenomenal length. Find out more.
About the Wine
With a little struck-match reduction on opening, given a moment to breathe the wine shows a tightly-coiled precision. Beautifully pale in the glass, fruits are all crisp, juicy green apple and crystalline lemon peel with a dash of prickly white pepper and salty minerals to underpin. Also from the younger vines of the domaine, it is a wine built on the prolific acidity that less ripe Chenin gives in abundance. Tense and angular, it cuts like beam, leaving a faint twang of ginger spice in the finish.
Reflecting the cooler ripening season of 2023, the grapes were selected over a couple of weeks and pressed in batches, slowly filling a fibreglass cuve to start fermentation. Eschewing the barrels that Thomas uses in his older vine wines, the grapes were then racked into steel tanks for 9 months and bottled with no additions in July 2024. Fresh, pure and invigorating, it's a wine that 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!
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