Domaine de La Pepiere - Muscadet Sevre et Maine Clisson 2020 (3L)

100% Melon de Bourgogne.

The heart of Marc Ollivier's estate is a 10-hectare plot near home in the Clisson cru; 8 hectares of it go into this bottling, while 2 hectares are used for the entry-level Sur Lie.

Its distinguishing feature is the soil type, called granite de Clisson, which is a particularly poor, hard, compact granite with little clay and a lot of quartz and mica over hard granite mother rock. The Pépière vines range from 50-110 years old and are organically farmed and harvested and worked by hand. As with the rest of the Pepière wines, the fruit is direct-pressed in whole clusters and the juice settled naturally for 12 hours. It is then fermented in stainless steel tanks with natural yeasts; the wine is aged on its lees for 2 years in large underground vats until being bottled without fining or filtering. Marc bottled this wine years before the cru was made official under the label "Granite de Clisson". After the declaration of the cru, he had to drop the "granite" part and as well as the "sur lie" (the latter being true for all cru-designated wines even though they are lees-aged).

Right at the edge of Brittany, Domaine de la Pépière is located in the village of Maisdon-sur-Sèvre. Marc, who grew up in the hamlet of La Pépière, created the estate in 1984. The name La Pépière has its root in the word ?pépie?, which means thirst. When you walk above the hamlet, on the slopes where vines are planted, it is easy to understand why the place got that name.

Winemaker Marc Ollivier hand harvests, uses natural yeasts, waits for the wine to finish and bottles with a very light filtration. The vineyards are in old vines (40 years and older) with a particularly good exposition on a plateau overlooking the river Sèvre. All the vineyards are from original stock: Ollivier is the only grower in the Muscadet who does not have a single clonal selection in his vineyards.

The Domaine believes that the quality of a wine depends entirely on the quality of the grapes it was made with. Rémi joined the estate in 2007, and actively worked on the organic conversion of the vines. Gwénaëlle, who came in 2013, has pushed things further with a shift towards bio-dynamic viticulture. It is the complexity of the terroirs of Sèvre et Maine that guides their choices. They are happy to share this diversity with you.

"Matured 24 months on the lees, the 2020 Clisson from Domaine de la Pépière reveals a complex and mineral bouquet with aromas of licorice, spices, lemon oil and white fruits. Medium-bodied, crystalline and mineral-driven, it’s pure and clean with a delicate texture and an energetic mid-palate, marked on the finish by bright, racy acids that interweave with an impressive bitterness." James Suckling