Quite a symbol! While she had just taken over Château de Plaisance at the dawn of the 2019 harvest, Vanessa Cherruau waited until the last bunches of Chenin were harvested to give birth to her first child. This is shows how much of an important event the takeover of this estate was, in the life of this young winemaker.
Château de Plaisance, located in Rochefort-sur-Loire, had everything to tempt her. 25 hectares of vineyards had been cultivated organically since 1995 and biodynamically since 2008. To acquire this beautiful estate, Vanessa joined forces with a financial partner who was keen on agro-ecology. The latter gave her free rein, but the objectives are ambitious, as a large part of the vines needed to be restructured and replanted in order to get the estate up to cruising speed. Eighty percent of the vines are planted with Chenin and are spread over the Butte de Chaume (a Coteaux du Layon premier cru), the Grand Cru Quarts-de-Chaume on the left bank of the Loire, as well as the AOP Savennières on the right bank.
Since then, the winegrower has stopped ploughing and replanted the vines with hedges, fruit trees and forest trees to encourage biodiversity. In the context of global warming, the presence of a grass cover in the vineyard allows to maintain a little humidity in the inter-row and to preserve the soil from erosion.
During the hand-harvest, Vanessa and her team pick the Chenin grapes at the right maturity to produce dry wines with no residual sugar. In these south-facing vineyards on the banks of the Layon, this is a challenge each and every year. Since her first vintage, the winemaker has been isolating the grapes from each parcel to create a range of dry wines that reflect their terroir. For ageing, she combines containers made of stainless steel, oak (225 and 400 litre barrels and vats) as well as stoneware jars depending on the potential of each cuvée. Sulphur (SO₂) is only used in very reasonable quantity at bottling.
In addition to a delicious white anjou from vines less than twenty years old, a few other dry whites stood out:
Ronceray: an Anjou made from 35-year-old Chenin vines grown on schist, spilite and sandstone, aged 2/3 in barrels and tuns and 1/3 in vats. A very beautiful, racy and complex wine, which combines a generous flesh with a salivating minerality.
The Savennières, from a terroir of Aeolian sands and shale, develops a saline mineral tension and a slight smokiness without an ounce of austerity.
La Grande Pièce, from a poudingues terroir is aged in amphorae and barrels. The wine has a large mouthfeel and a generous mid-palate, making it suitable for pairing with lobster or white meat.
The Zerzilles cuvée comes from a very sloping terroir on the Quarts de Chaume. Perfectly dry, the wine is balanced between ripe fruits, spicy notes and a great tension. A dry wine capable of ageing well for several years.
Photos copyright @nomades_studio