Posts Tagged loire valley

The Sancerre wines by the young Sébastien Riffault (aged 26) are a permanent feature in all of natural wine bars Paris and his world-wide reputation is growing by the minute.

He started working in 2004 with a plot of only 0.70 ha in Verdigny, on the west bank of the Loire River. He now works on 12 ha of the family vineyards planted with Sauvignon Blanc (with a few lines devoted to Pinot Noir).  The plots are mostly facing South, South-West with 35 degrees slopes on a clay-limestone soil and subsurface limestone. The age of the vines ranges from 5 to 50 years old for the oldest. Manual harvesting takes place as late as possible to collect ripe grapes with hints of orange, sometime almost purple colour.  No green harvesting.

In the winery, just outside of Sury-en-Vaux, the pressing is done with a pneumatic press, compared to the modern “washing machines”. He perform racking only in difficult years and no racking when the grapes are perfectly ripe. No sulfitation during the vinification and the aging of the wines is in Burgundy barrels.  No chaptalization, no acidification and alcoholic fermentation of 3 to 4 months, followed by malo which is triggered naturally followed with aging on the lees. No gluing, no filtration or extraction and bottling after 9 to 24 months of rearing. Sulfitation varies from 0 to 10 mg  per litre depending on the vintage and vintages.

Sébastiens wines coming from vineyards are named by his Lithuanian wife, Akmenine meaning “stony”