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127 Vin de France 2008 Clos des Rouliers
Richard LeroyGrape:100% Chenin (12.5% alc.)
There is a finesse and restraint to this wine (from only 0.70 hectares of low-yielding vines) with a mineral flavour imparted by the schist. Fermented completely dry with the malolactics completed and no batonnage, it shows chenin in its most elegant style. For drinking now to 2017+. From 2008 Richard decided to label Clos des Rouliers and Noëls de Montbenault, both usually bottled under the Anjou appellation, as Vin de France; a new classification allowing the winemakers to state the grape and the vintage on the label without mentioning the appellation. The reason for that is that Richard was not happy with the rules of the AOC Anjou. According to him, this AOC is far too vast (spread on a total of 80 villages) and is covering far too many different sorts of terroirs with no real unity (you’ll find on the Anjou AC more or less all the type of soils you can possibly think of i.e. clay, limestone, schist, etc) and the cahier des charges is not restrictive enough. For example, if a producer in Saumur is not happy with his wines, he can declassify them under the Anjou AC! So, for Richard, there is no notion of quality coming with this Anjou AC. As a result, even if his wines were receiving the agrément easily year after year, he decided not to present them anymore to emphasize the lack of reliability from the INAO. In the meantime he is working alongside other growers in the region trying to create a new hierarchy of appellations for Anjou that more accurately reflect the area’s widely differing terroirs.
Technical Information Winemaker: Richard Leroy, Domaine started in 1996 Location: Rablay-sur-Layon Size of
domaine:2.7 hectares (of which 0.7 hectares produce this wine). 3500 bts produced of this wine Grape: Chenin, 17 yrs old, 5800 vines per hectare Terroir: Lower hillside than Noels – due south facing 20° slope. Soil is sandy decomposed schist. The schist mother rock is very close to the surface in the top half of the vineyard. Viticulture: Leaves grass to grow every other row. The soils are ploughed. No chemical weeders or insecticides are used. Only treatments are Bordeaux mix, sulphur and bio-dynamic preparations. He debuds, clips off any mini shoots and only if necessary carries out vendanges en verts. Harvest is manual and carried out by meticulous tries searching out ripe but not over-ripe bunches (between 5 and 11 sorties are carried out every year). Any botrytised or passerilled grapes are cut out. Yields average less than 30 hectos per hectare. Vinification: The grapes are pressed by a pneumatic press – very slow pressing followed by a period of 12 hours when the wine is left on the gross lees. Natural yeasts only are used. No chaptalisaton. The wine is transferred into 225ltr barrels for ageing (2,3 and 4 yr old barrels). Slow alcoholic fermentation over 4-5 months followed by malo-lactics. No batonnage. Filtration by kieselghur – never fined. No S02 during elevage. The wine is bottled 1 year after harvest in September. Press: