Un Saumon Dans la Loire ‘La Roue Qui Tourne’ Pétillant Blanc 2022
Location: France, Loire
Winemaker: Marie Thibault & Frantz Saumon
Grapes: Chenin Blanc
Soil: clay, silex
Winemaking: pétillant naturel; No SO2, long lees aging
From the Importer Selection Massale: Marie: Not from a winemaking family, but with degrees in biology and oenology, Marie Thibault began making wine in the early 2000s. She worked for a time at François Chidaine in Montlouis, where she fell in love with Chenin Blanc. In 2011, she founded her own 3.5 hectare domaine in Azay-le-Rideau, a lesser known environ of the Touraine appellation. While in some sense this is a new beginning for Marie, she has over a decade of experience making wine and benefits from strong relationships with many growers in the region such as Noëlla Morantin and Frantz Saumon. It sounds cliché, but her passion and energy are infectious; she’s also humble, learning one year to the next how to progress and improve.
Marie has one contiguous parcel on a gentle, windy slope that is drier than the other vineyards of Azay-le-Rideau, which lie on a plateau. Her vineyard is marked by white clay and limestone. She immediately began to farm organically in 2011 and 2014 will be her first certified vintage.
Frantz: Frantz Saumon established his domaine in Montlouis-sur-Loire in 2002, after a few stints as a forester here (in France) and there (in Canada), and a stage with Christian Chaussard of Domaine le Briseau, an influential voice in the “vin naturel” world who passed away not long ago.
He has always practiced organic/biodynamic agriculture and raises his wines in a variety of fiberglass and stainless steel tanks as well as wood vessels of different sizes. All wines are fermented naturally here, to the extent that there’s not even method Champenoise going on in this cellar -- all of his sparkling wines are pétillant naturel.
Frantz’s winemaking style seems to be about purity, always looking for clean wines and thriving for dryness. He also has a great talent at making pétillant naturels, some of the best ones of the region.