Domaine de l'Epinay "Folie de l'Espinose" Blanc Brut, Loire Valley, France NV

FROM SCHATZI WINES:

THE WINE: A blend of Chardonnay, Folle Blanche, Pinot Noir. The vines for the sparkling wines grow on very different soils at l’Epinay than do the Muscadets. L’Epinay’s Muscadet soils are largely granite and gravel, whereas the grapes for this wine are grown in loamy clay soils, ideal for pronounced fruit expression. The "Folie de L`Espinose" Blanc Brut is composed of chardonnay, folle blanche and pinot noir vines averaging 25 years old. The wine is produced under the Traditional Method, with the first fermentation in stainless steel and the second in bottle followed by a minimum of 10 months sur latte before disgorgement.

THE PRODUCER: Muscadet. The bracing, salt-stung essence of the North Atlantic in a glass. A classic and still affordable pleasure. But also, in recent decades, a wine of diluted identity. Alexis Lichine, in his masterly Wines of France, saw fit to accord Muscadet a scant paragraph. Fortunately, a new wave of producers in the Pays Nantais is reviving a true understanding of both their variety, melon de bourgogne, and the precise set of soils in which it thrives. Cyrille and Sylvain Paquereau of Domaine de l’Epinay are of this movement. They represent the fifth generation of their family to work a 16th-century estate in the heart of Clisson, now an established Muscadet cru. Conversion to organics and concentration on the precise match of grape to terroir distinguish their tenure. Though we may think of Muscadet as a wine of acid-driven freshness, this is not inherent in melon, but rather a quality only brought out by high pH soils—notably, gabbro and the gravelly granite of this southernmost part of the Sevre et Maine appellation. The range at Domaine de l’Epinay focuses on melon’s terroir transparency, aided by spontaneous fermentations, minimal added sulphites, and up to 36 months lees aging in underground cement tanks. Cyrille and Sylvain’s wines urge us to look at Muscadet in the light of terroir and tradition, underscoring the wine’s capacity both for refreshing directness and more powerful, age-worthy expressions.