Domaine de la Pépière Muscadet les Gras Moutons 2020
The ideal Aperitif wine. While the classic match is freshly shucked oysters, a fresh seafood platter with cocktail sauce will not go awry with Muscadet.
The majority of estates in the Muscadet Appellation will vinify their entire holdings together to produce a single wine. Since the eighties, Marc Ollivier could see that his parcels each had individual traits, hence he began vinifying and bottling his terroirs individually. He has since retired after the twenty nineteen vintage, but his legend lives on through proprietors Rémi Branger and Gwénaëlle Croix, who Marc took under his wing before his departure. They converted the estate originally to organics and now to biodynamics. Vineyards are laboured by hand and the wines are fermented in cement tanks and aged in stainless steel. The wines sit on yeast deposits, knows as lees, for up to three years to build texture. This is far above the minimum seventeen months ageing required by the appellation. Only the best of the Melon de Bourgogne fruit from their holdings makes it to the individual cuvées, and with climate anomalies becoming more frequent, this is becoming increasingly difficult. Hence in two thousand and one, they lost ninety-five percent of their crop and were forced to buy fruit from outside the estate to make up for their losses.
Les Gras Moutons sits facing southward on the hillside along the Maine, giving it a hefty dose of sunshine during ripening. It’s floral and tangy, with a hefty stroke of acid running through the middle. The current releases from Pépière are looking stunning. If you’re a lover of ultra-dry whites then give this a go.