Loire 2023 Releases

This new cuvée was introduced in 2019. It is made from young vines across three parcels, all of which Damien has planted himself. They have all been pruned in the goblet fashion, which encourages small bunches to ripen: Damien is seeking an intensity of flavour. This wine has a lovely white fruit and floral character. Easy and appealing.

This Savennières has a brilliant attack. It is pithy and weighty, with plenty of energy. It grown on sandy soils over schist bedrock and the resulting wine is vinous and saline. A little oak gives structure to the palate and the finish shows ripe, concentrated fruit.

This parcel is one of Damien’s most prized sites, with rhyolite soil (he is very precise when it comes to describing the geology here), which is a “hot” soil, giving greater maturity than the schist soils across most of the appellation where tension is the signature. Having said all that, this wine does show remarkable tension, twinned with a deep and pithy persistence. It has a beautiful bitter length. The 2020 is less overtly tropical compared with previous vintages, trading more on the saline, nutty attitude of Chenin.