2020 Sébastien Brunet Vouvray Pétillant Le Naturel

WINEMAKER: Sébastien Brunet
REGION: Loire Valley, FR
VARIETAL: Chenin Blanc
VITICULTURE: Organic

"This is completely delicious - a Petillant Naturel made from Chenin Blanc grown in Vouvray. Fine bubbles provide a nice creamy mousse that offsets the incisive, crisp and mouth-watering flavours of green and red apples. A brilliant aperitif wine, it may be just as good standing up as seated at table, and it may also be one to cleanse the palate after eating, too. Refreshing, gentle, fine crisp and very digestible. A beauty!" - Andrew Guard

Sébastien assumed control of his family domaine in 2006 following the untimely passing of his father, and has quickly become one of the Loire's fastest rising stars. The family vineyards stretch along the valley of the Brenne, a small tributary that runs perpendicular to the Loire and hosts vines on both the premier côteau and the plateau behind. The most northerly plots are in the village of Reugny and follow the course of the Brenne down through Chançay which is where the cellar hewn out of the tufa is located.

Everything is harvested by hand, into 15kg lug-boxes and the winemaking process sees as little intervention as possible. Just as Noël Pinguet once told me, the most important place to be in during the harvest is not out in the vines, but rather standing next to the press. Pinguet was convinced this was where the quality of the vintage was won or lost; determined by the degree of pressure and the length of the extraction. Brunet is no different; he implements a slow, gentle extraction in a pneumatic press, each load allowed up to 4h30 to ensure the capture of the best quality juice. Settling is slow and without the use of enzymes and, after 36 hours, the wines are allowed to begin their fermentation using only indigenous yeasts. As with all classic Vouvray, malolactic fermentation is never sought and very rarely occurs.