Tiny Appellation by the number of domaines (all the vignerons can stand on one page), you have here a good proportion of natural-wine producers who have given a new life and fame to the Appellation, which has long been considered as a poorer brother of Vouvray on the other side of the Loire river. At the beginning his Mineral + were often on this register but now he's not into these wines and wants to make them dry. This was picked at 14,5 potential. And next year when he'll begin to mage Melon-de-Bourgogne wine (the variety from Muscadet) it will be in the same spirit and approach. So as soon as he took the vineyards in 2002 he farmed organic but he got the organic certification (Ecocert) in 2006 only. __ Montlouis Minéral + 2016. The vineyards are situated mainly at the foot of the famed Huisseau Plateau where all the best local names are located but Frantz also has holdings in Chapitre and Lussault-sur-Loire. Frantz Saumon Sauvignon フランツ ソーモン ソーヴィニヨン エコセール認定を受けた有機ブドウ使用 凝縮した果実味のボリューム感に ほどよく酸が調和するソーヴィニヨン・ブラン Frantz Saumon Sauvignon フランツ ソーモン ソーヴィニヨン The chai over there is very large adapted by their big surface and they used it for the vinification and the pressing. Frantz Saumon Minéral +(フランツ・ソーモン ミネラル プリュス)はロワール(フランス)のワインです。生産者はUn Saumon dans la Loire (Frantz Saumon) (アン・ソーモン・ダン・ラ・ロワール （フランツ・ソーモン）)で、シュナン・ブランの葡萄を原料に作られています。 Will be bottled unfiltered. He initially began with 3 hectares of vines but with subsequent acquisitions, his domaine now stands at 6 hectares: 5.5ha of Chenin Blanc and Sauvignon Blanc and ½ ha, red grape varieties. Error type: Your comment has been saved. Anyway these old straddle tractors are the best otion, a new tractor would now cost 100 000 and it'd be too big anyway. This message would not show out anymore if you click on the GOT IT or closing button. the down size is that with thys plantation mode the tarpaulin remains as long as it stands the light and UV and the roots reamain close to the surface because its warm ant retains humidity year around. A gaule is a fishing rod in French but I won't explain to you what the exactly "little fishing rod in the morning" means in French, now you may try to figure it out by yourself... let's say this wine can give you I The soils over here are pretty poor and they try to put compost every year, using preferably weeds or other plants which they mulch at the end on the spot. There's another oddly-shaped container in the back, it's made of cement and inside it's ovoid like a laying egg. Unfiltered cuvée, from a 100-year-old parcel. I had chatted with him recently at Bertrand Jousset's wine bar (a good spot to stumble on natural winemakers of the area) and I had decided to ask for a visit. Frantz Saumon before being a well-known winegrower was a forest guard before in Canada and then in France. They're restructuring the vineyard of the domaine choosing carefuly the new plantings by making massal selections on existing old vines and replanting through a nursery, first with a selection of wood canes then having them grafted and lastly with the replantings. Undisgorged natural sparkling The name of the cuvée can be translated like Guys & Gals. So when he began to plow under the row he had lots of casualties among these vines that were not properly rooted. The vines on his block have different ages, some older, some younger, having been planted with massal selections, with the chenin wood coming from other growers like Eric Nicolas and François chidaine. The reason natural wines have this high but balanced, enjoyable acidity is because of the vineyard life behind. tHe négoce wines are less expensive like for example the white we tasted at the beginning sell for 10 €, the rosé 9 € and the natural sparklings 15 €. See also this one at the Domaine de Bisseret and of course the old press of the monks of Citeaux in Clos Vougeot that are even older. Montlouis Clos du Chêne Very refined with nice glycerol legs on the glass. We now taste a red from a vat, this is the Pinot Noir 2015 that has been racked in there 2 days before this visit took place after two years in barrels, it will be known later as La Moscova 2015. In life as in the vineyard, Frantz is the partner of Marie Thibault, with whom he founded the négoce Un Saumon dans la Loire: wines to drink with friends, from their friends harvest, we have come full circle! You can see Vouvray on the other side (pic on right) and by the way the name of the terroir is because this area was farmed by the monks of the Abbaye de Marmoutier in Vouvray. The cuvée should be here to stay now. When Frantz bought these cellars they had been closed and idle for 4 or 5 years, same for the house outside. A recent illustration of this rivalry was when a couple years ago the Vouvray wine bureaucracy, probably jealous of the success of two prominent Montlouis winemakers (Jacky Blot and François Chidaine) who were also producing excellent Vouvray, forced them to downgrade their Vouvray wines under the table-wine label of Vin de France...This deplorable pettiness was certainly counterproductive and highlighted even more the two ostracized winemakers and their AOC, especially in the foreign markets where what's in the bottle and the terroir work count more than the AOC labelling. A Pet-Nat natural sparkling made with 100 % Chenin in AOC Montlouis (doesn't make it every year), a one-year-élevage chenin cuvée named Minéral + [plus] then terroirs cuvées like Le Chapitre. In their CUMA (group of growers sharing machinery) they also bought together some biodynamic tools, he says they're still have to learn because they don't spend enough time on the issue but twice a year they make a 500 prep plus a few herb tea preps, using the shared dynamizer. They bottled this cuvée themselves by gravity, using the forklift to raise the vat or the cask and fill the bottles, keeping the bottles standing afterwards a few days before laying them down. of its vinification. The terroir Asked if he ifilters, he does it case by case if there is some remaining sugar. tHese vines were planted earlier in the year and in spite of the drought and the draining soil they made it through summer, they've certainly be planted properly also, deep enough. This is the last time he uses the facility for the négoce wines, next year it'll be in his large cellars in Valaire, by the way at a short distance from L'Herbe Rouge, the restaurant (closed down now) that had great local food and natural wines. The previous farmer probably made 50 hectoliters/hectare or more and Frantz made 30 ho/ha only, but he was a nice guy and he understood what Frantz wanted to do. I arrived at Frantz Saumon's house and facility on a sunny autumn day, taking the road that drives up to Husseau from the road along the levée This sketchy montage of two pictures of the courtyard and cliff wall show you the access to the cellars, a pretty typical situation in the back of the houses in this region, everyone was certainly making wine one way or another a century ago for family consumption. __ Frantz then opens a magnum of red, this is La Moskova vin de France 2014, a Pinot Noir "from Montlouis". The Loire river with its surging waters has brought lots of fertile silt or loam on the lower slopes, especially before the dike was built in the 19th century, this was really a country of milk and honey, with the vineyards up the slope on the plateau and a bounty of vegetables on the muddy land along the Loire... There are also lines of rows of different varieties which he planted earlier this year (pic below), Chenin and other Loire varieties. Elevage in 600-liter barrels. to plow 1,5 hectare, particularly the Clos du Chêne which is a twisted parcel with lots of marcottage which makes it difficult to plow with a machine. Nice honey aromas. This is the 90's... what a long way we have come! Montlouis ! His yields may improve when the replantations reach full production age but here he never made beyond 30 hectoliters/hectare, with the low years at 7 or 10 ho/ha. Burgundy style of wine. Frantz says that he's very keen to work with the Appellation Montlouis and is an active member in the collective project of this AOC and its growers, several of them being profiled on this website. Vinified in vats, bottled with residual sugar and sisgorged late spring so that people can have it in summer. While we were discussing issues like natural wine popping up here and there in the mainstream retail wine shops, I learned from Frantz that he knows very well the story of this particular table wine I discovered recently (see picture and story on top of this page) : they even travelled to the south of France together to buy the grapes ! Having begun the plantings 3 years later in 2012 they begin to see the results of this long term effort, the first such replantings being 5 years old they now enter full production mode with a qualitative chenin, with clusters bearing grapes that are not too compact and prioritize the taste before juice volume and with still overall satisfying yields. Often they're themselves (like he is) outsiders from the grower/farming sector and have no family in the trade. Orders of 120 euros or more are free of charge.