For the first time in too long, we have received wines from David Foubert of La Folle Berthe. Some of the finest examples of the tuffeau-rich soils of Saumur-Puy-Notre-Dame.
Read moreNew from Thomas Boutin!
We love a delivery from Thomas Boutin. We've just received two vintages of three cuvees that he refines each year with careful consideration, and a small quantity of his 2011 botrytised Chenin, Topaze. We spoke with Thomas recently about the 2019 iterations of some of our favourite Anjou wines, and how the last 12 months have been…
Read moreWhat's He Building In There?
Les Chants Jumeaux - Mathieu L’Hotelier
France, Loire, Nantes
Making wine in an isolated shed with a loose-straw floor (or a borrowed beach on occasion) Mathieu L’Hotelier has a singular approach that yields wild, delicious results. One of our favourite characters in the Loire, he certainly keeps us on our toes.
After a little rest we are releasing two new cuvees from his 2019 vintage, a field blend and a Chenin Blanc.
Originally from Brittany, Mathieu worked with Marc Pesnot in Saint-Julien-de-Concelles for 4 years before heading east up the river to the village of Montrelais to strike out on his own in 2012. Montrelais used to have 300 hectares of vines planted, and now the village has 2.5. Matt farms most of them, treated with local plants: nettle, comfrey, horsetail and willow.
He chose the region as he wanted his wines to channel the energy of the sea, a sense of being back home. It was his salty, sea-kissed Chenin we first fell in love with in the early days of Under The Bonnet.
Matt is embedded in Nantes’ experimental music community, and his twin passions overlap pretty regularly. On our first visit to see Mathieu in 2015 his tiny winery was illuminated with strings of flashing lights, fibreglass tanks wrapped in foil, and an endless loop of stuttering electronics ‘singing to the wines’ from a rigged amplifier in the corner.
A return visit saw us given a tour of musician/sculptor Pierre Gordeeff’s ‘Built From Scratch Apparatus’ that had been constructed in one of the sheds at Mathieu’s old squat. An intricately tangled mass of cables and mechanised found-objects, capable of absolute cacophony, or more musical rhythms.
Mathieu makes wine like this musique-concrete he loves: he takes what he’s given, works in the moment, improvises based on a combination of intuition and knowledge, and when pressed for information on his processes is a little bewildered as to why anyone would want to know how he got there. ‘The wine speaks for itself’
Recent vintages though have not been kind to Mathieu, with some vintages wiped out by frost, hail, or problems in the cellar. We’re thrilled then that 2019 saw an upturn in luck for Matt, and he’s been able to produce good quantities from a beautiful vintage, confident this year to bottle without any sulphur, as he would always prefer.
Rouge 2019 is a blend of 7 varieties, Gamay is de-stemmed and macerated for 3 weeks, while the rest of the blend (Grolleau, Cab Franc, his hybrid varietals) undergo between 3 days to 3 weeks of whole bunch maceration depending on the varietal- Matt couldn’t pin down which. He presses the reds, and tops up the juice with a fresh harvest of Chenin, and allows it to continue fermentation in fibreglass for 6 months. Bottled in June 2020.
The 2019 Chenin has one of Mathieu’s signature soft, manual fourteen hour presses. It’s a technique he learnt with his friend JC Garnier, extracting the juice gently and adding a hint of that honeyed, toasty oxidative quality to the wine. Aged simply in fibreglass, before bottling in June 2020.
For wholesale price lists please email hello@winesutb.com
Pierre Gordeeff’s ‘Built From Scratch Apparatus’
Anjou Glad You Called?
Domaine Les Goelands - Philippe Delmee
France, Loire, Anjou
We’re lucky to work with a brace of amazing growers across that special pocket of the Loire: Anjou. Home-turf for the majority of the Cabernet Franc we import, we’re still surprised at the variations from grower to grower.
Threatening to trip clumsily into ‘dogs who look like their owners’ territory here, but Cab Franc is a grape that really can reflect the personality of its handler. No surprise then that Philippe Delmee’s expressions have a sense of play, with an underlying serious edge.
In addition to the Grolleau and Chenin planted in Faye d’Anjou, Phil’s Cabernet Franc is spread over five hectares of closely knit plots around Faveryae-Machelles; all planted on poor sand and schist soils.
We’ve just received his three different expressions of Cab Franc from this one small region, each bringing another side to the table.
Oppidum Rouge 2018
“The plot for this new single vineyard cuvee is about 5 hectares, it's on the site of an old oppidum- a Roman camp from when they occupied Gaul. It's a mix of de-stemmed cabernet franc and whole bunch cab franc, fermented using semi-carbonic maceration.”
A softer, ripe blackcurrant-packed cuvee. The label is a nod to how they would’ve enjoyed wine at the oppidum. No amphora here!
Ca Faye Douze 2019
“Like always, this is whole-bunch, carbonic Cabernet Franc. There's a little gas this year because I bottled it with around 1 gram of sugar, so there is a brief fermentation in the bottle after. No sulphites added.”
Beautiful this year: fresh, crunchy, and with that friendly little spritz to kick things off. This is perfect bistro wine: bring me a plastic tablecloth, paté and baguette please. Empties very quickly.
Les Vieux de la Vielle 2017
“Part de-stemmed cabernet franc, using semi-carbonic maceration. A mix of whole and broken berries, a very gentle maceration overall. The tank I used for fermentation is a new open-top wooden one, it's in there for 8 days, very short. But it's very good!”
A stylistic shift for Philippe this year, fermented and aged in wood, which he usually reserves for his whites. A deeper, more complex expression than Ca Faye Douze & Oppidum.
We have limited quantities of these at the moment, but if all goes to plan on the roads of Anjou, more will be arriving in the next couple of weeks. Phil doesn’t own a forklift, and having just sent one pallet to us, he’s busy shuttling the next one car load by car load, up the road to his friends at Le Grange Aux Belles to be shipped out soon.
For wholesale price lists please email hello@winesutb.com
Crac is Back!
CHÂTEAU BAROUILLET
France, Bergerac & Monbazillac in Pomport
Vincent is an eighth-generation winemaker; joining his father in 2010, when he started the organic "project" at Barouillet - bottling their own wines rather than selling the grapes for bulk-blending. Organic conversion started with 6 hectares and since 2013 the entire estate has been organic.
The long awaited Bergecrac Blanc & Rouge 2019 have finally landed!
We've had a chat with Vincent:
"We have bottled both of the Bergecrac Blanc & Rouge about 2 months ago. Bergecrac Blanc is a blend, as usual, made up of locally grown grape varieties: Sauvignon Blanc, Sauvignon Gris, Chenin, Semillon. All of them add something different: Sauvignon Blanc is aromatic, Sauvignon Gris adds the texture, Chenin adds the freshness that makes you want the second glass and Semillon is just great juice! What I was trying to achieve with this wine is having something quite round and opulent, and I think that with this vintage we've now found the right balance."
"Bergecrac Rouge is also a blend and is made of Cabernet Sauvignon, Cabernet Franc, Merlot, Malbec and Merille. There is something new we've added to this vintage: Merille - which is a really local and sort of lost grape variety from Bergerac. It is light and aromatic and there is about 5% of it within this blend.
To make this wine we've had a really small extraction and a short maceration, of about 5-6 days max. It was aged in a tank. In general, the Bergecrac range is made for easy drinking!"
NOW IN STOCK
WHITE
NEW 2019 Bergecrac Blanc - Sauvignon Blanc, Sauvignon Gris, Semillon, Chenin
RED
NEW 2019 Bergecrac Rouge - Cab Sauv, Cab Franc, Merlot, Malbec, Merille
WHOLESALE ONLY
FOR PRICE LIST ENQUIRIES, EMAIL hello@winesutb.com