PIERRE MENARD Lumière Blanche 2022 Anjou 6 litres - 8 Single Vineyards

Grape varieties: Dry and sweet Chenin, Cabernet Franc

Custom-made wooden box of 8 bottles ("Lumière Blanche") including the 6 dry Chenin wines + Mailles Hubert red and Chaos blanc liquoreux.

"Blanche Vénus, émerge et c'est la nuit" Paul Verlaine

Its composition:

Clos des Mailles 2022 Anjou 75cl White

La Varenne de Chanzé 2022 Anjou 75cl White

Le Quart des Noëls 2022 Anjou 75cl White

Quart de Gastines 2022 Anjou 75cl White

This is a new addition since the 2021 vintage, centered on a very old plot of Chenin, about 70 years old, with un-trellised goblet vines, and a small section of young 10-year-old vines. Parallel to La Varenne de Chanzé, this plot is located on the southern slope of the hillside, a hundred meters further east, and thus also bordering the Clos des Mailles, which faces north. Here the terroir is pure grey-green schist with a very small amount of phtanites. The genetic diversity of the old Chenin vines is very interesting, with a large proportion of millerandé bunches, resulting in aerated bunches and allowing for a particular ripeness.
Manual harvesting, gentle pneumatic pressing, fermentation and aging in 3 barrels of 5 to 7 wines.

Pluton 2022 Anjou 75cl White

Pluton is an intra-parcel selection from Clos des Mailles. For this cuvée, the vines are on the crest of the hillside, where there is a very strong dominance of phtanites over the schist. Phtanites are very hard blue rocks usually surrounded by veins of white quartz and are considered a companion rock to schist. Indeed, "phtanite" comes from the Greek Phtanô, "I precede", meaning "I precede the schists", just as, in a way, Pluto precedes us outside the cocoon formed by the solar system. This cuvée imposed itself in 2016; vinification in small batches revealed two barrels that followed a very distinct path from the rest of Clos des Mailles, two barrels that proved to come from this part of the parcel very rich in phtanites.
Manual harvesting, gentle pneumatic pressing, fermentation and aging in 3 barrels of 5 to 9 wines.

Pierre loves poetry and stars: “O time! Suspend your flight, and you, propitious hours! Suspend your course: let us savor the swift delights of our most beautiful days." Alphonse De Lamartine

Plus 3 Ephemeral cuvées...

Les Mailles Jeanne 2022 Anjou 75cl White

Named after the former owner of this 0.2 ha plot, these are old Chenin vines, about 80 years old, usually included in the blend of Clos des Mailles, but they are located at a border position called Les Mailles, where the slope rises to give a south exposure facing the rest of Clos des Mailles. The position is a little lower than Clos des Mailles, and cold air masses often slide down here in spring, making frost more frequent. This is therefore the plot that is pruned last each year, which allows for a later bud break. The location and the old vines tend to give a lot of acidity to the Chenin here.
Manual harvesting, gentle pneumatic pressing, fermentation and aging in one barrel and one stoneware jar.

Pierre loves poetry and stars: “Already night in its park gathered a great flock of wandering stars." Joachim Du Bellay

Chaos Coteaux du Layon Faye 2020 37.5cl Sweet White

Second vintage produced after 2017. It is also a Coteaux du Layon Faye, Chenin affected by botrytis on four plots (Varenne de Chanzé, Clos des Mailles, Quart des Noëls and Gastines). Unlike Cosmos, it comes from an early harvest of noble rot that appeared on some bunches after pre-harvest storms. Arriving on grapes at the beginning of ripeness, the botrytis fixed the high acidity of the moment and then concentrated quickly thanks to the still warm weather in early September. It is the baroque counterpart to Cosmos, with both more sugar and more acidity, which also allows for balance.

Pierre loves poetry and stars: “Beyond the sun. Beyond the ethers. Beyond the confines of the starry spheres." Charles Baudelaire

Slow pressing, manual press, fermentation in one barrel and one glass demijohn.
Residual sugar: 243 gr/L; Alcohol 11.3%

Les Mailles Hubert 2022 Anjou 75cl Red

Cabernet Franc on 0.15 ha of old vines, 70 years old, a plot below Clos des Mailles at mid-slope with north exposure, clay with quartz on deep schist, included in the Orion Alpha blend. A little more than one barrel of free-run juice from this plot was set aside for the first time to observe the specificities of this plot in a beautiful Cabernet vintage.

Pierre loves poetry: “And yet something has changed in life, we will never again have our soul of this evening...” Anna De Noailles

🍷 Serving temperature 16-17°

Pierre Ménard is from Anjou and settled there, in Faye d'Anjou, where each year he expands his small vineyard. However, he traveled extensively before, particularly in the Douro in Portugal, in Hungary where he was marked by his experience and the terroirs, in Canada, New Zealand, Pauillac (Château Latour)... And it is always by asking a thousand questions and advancing very humbly that he passionately works his small plots in the evenings and on weekends, while still taking care of his parents' vines (cooperators) during the week... His plots have soils of great complexity and different grape varieties such as Chenin, Cabernet Franc, Sauvignon. In the vineyard, cover crops, minimal intervention, plowing. And in his renovated farmhouse, he practices low-intervention winemaking and long aging as he likes it... Pierre Ménard is one of Anjou's rising winemakers thanks to his beautiful, precise cuvées!

# Chenin, Cabernet Franc, Uncertified Organic, New