Trip to Sancerre, Pouilly Fume and Chablis
Spagetti-like wine filter
Chablis Malandes:
Fantastic, woman-led winery headed up by the 5th generation winemaker Amadine. Grand Cru vineyards handed down from her grandfather who traded them for cattle pasture in the 50s! She’s just bought a £200,000 spaghetti filter which is more gentle for the wine than clay filtering as it goes more slowly. All grapes are hand harvested and organic (only 10 of the 300 Chablis producers are organic). Official supplier to Paris 2024 Olympics!
Pouilly-Fume Domain Fines Caillottes:
We met the incredibly passionate Jean Pabiot who drove us across some bumpy Kimmerigian soil in his Jeep Wrangler. Super high quality chalky soil reflects the light and forces the vines to dig deep for water and squeeze out the best concentrated grapes. He said they’ve had 50,000 litres of rainfall per square KM in the last month and they usually get 70,000 litres in a year! Just moved from sustainable to fully organic this year to cut down on chemical usage and sulphite content. Delicious minerally wines, and the older vintages were some of the most interesting wines I’ve ever tried. Hunter Valley Semillon-eque with honeyed notes. We can now tell Jancis that Sauvignon can truly age!
Sancerre Daulny
Lovely Cecile and her dad Etienne are a tiny producer on one of the best hills in Sancerre. Great purity. Terrible soils= fantastic wine
If you fancy any vineyard visiting chat from Fraser or Richard, just ask and we will give tourist advice!!
Chablis Grand Cru stainless steel barrels. I’ve never seen these before!
Jean Pabiot from Pouilly Fume – Rock chat to Richard