Sylvie Augereau ‘Pulpes’ Anjou Blanc 2018

Location: France, Loire, Anjou

Winemaker: Sylvie Augereau

Grapes: Chenin Blanc

Soil: Siliceous clay, limestone

Winemaking: Grapes are hand harvested and fermented in used oak barrel. The wine then rests on its lees for 24 months. 2mg of sulfites are added at bottling.

From us at M&L: ‘Pulpes’ comes from a rare parcel of Chenin Blanc vines that are between 100 and 112 years old! Yields are a minuscule 14HL/ha. Like drinking dusty red apple skins, roasted walnut, fennel seed, dried melon and dried flowers, as if this wine was pulled from the earth. Ruggedly mineral.

From the Importer Bobo Selections: No Machines allowed. This secret garden covers 1.4h and is under the tutelage of this dynamic caretaker and leader of all things ‘Dive.’ Sylvie Augereau’s passion for good food and wine stems from the early childhood experiences in here grandparent’s restaurant. On visits, she would go down into the cellar with her mother to look after the bottles of wine. This was the basis for Sylvie’s early education in what she would come to value as an adult in life. After earning a university degree in literature and doing a stint for a communication agency, she was drawn back into the world of gastronomy but now with writing chops to turn her passions into a lifelong ambition.

Augereau traveled France, working with growers and winemakers, learning from them and writing about them, their virtues, their practices. She’s released numerous publications cataloguing the natural wine movement from its origins to today including “mon carnet de vigne,” “soif d’Aujourd’hui,” and “collaborations,” among many articles and interviews. Then she founded La Dive in 2000 as the capstone of promoting these small producers and giving a showcase for their wines. This festival of natural wine brings together 250 producers, all friends now, to celebrate and share in a cave and fields overlooking the Loire.

She had always had an eye on a vineyard nearby the Le Dive site with old, twisted vines. And in 2014, her dream came true and the vineyard went up for sale. She purchased 1.4 hectares with co-planted vines of Chenin, Cabernet, Grolleau and Pineau d’Aunis. No machines are used on the land. All work is performed by hand, foot, or horse and guided by biodynamic practices that harness the invisible dimension that one can only sense or feel.

Sylvie Augereau trusts that the vines pick up on the energy and love of the humans who tend to them. She talks to her vines and plays music in the vineyard. The vineyard itself is quite old. Yields tend to be between 15 and 30HL/ha. In the cellar, she works next to her husband, winemaker Nicolas Reau, and friends like Thierry German. Always a champion for authenticity, Augereau does not manipulate or modify the natural course of the wine so as to express the purest reflection of her achievements in the vineyard.