2019  Montlouis

Les Choisilles is a cuvée, usually blended from old vines in the vineyards of Les Epinais, La Taille aux Loups and Clos au Renard. It’s named after a type of black flint called choisille. Les Choisilles is a concentrated, focused dry wine that often needs several years to develop. ---- "Chidaine's 2019 Montlouis sur Loire Les Choisilles is deep, pure, fresh and refined on the nose but still very young, with lemon leaf, chalk and sur lie aromas. On the palate, this is a rich and concentrated Chenin, but it reveals remarkable freshness and energy. It is a bit unfair to compare it to the 2018, which has a year more of development, but I have to, and I am still amused by the 2019, which lifts Les Choisilles to unknown heights. The salinity and mineral grip are really beautiful here in the finish, and I believe the wine can age for two decades. Highly attractive pineapple flavors on the aftertaste." - 96pts WA

2018  

Extremely Limited Production. Certified Organic & Biodynamic, from a Chenin Blanc parcel named "Pascaline" planted in 2014 on Orthogneiss soils. Aged 10-12 months on the lees in amphora. Nofining, no filtration, no sulfur...just pure chenin! ---- A complex and powerful Chenin with real energy and focus. Matris means "mother" in latin -- a lovely nod to the pedigree of the Chenin grape in Orthogneiss terroirs. Don't sleep on this wine as it won't stick around for long! ---- "The 2018 Chenin Blanc Matris emerges from relatively young Chenin Blanc vines, planted in 2014. It was fermented in underground concrete tanks and aged 10 to 12 months in amphora. The nose is a tropical bounty. In the mouth, there’s pineapple and more pineapple: fresh, then baked, then grilled, then dipped in soy sauce. All balanced by cool minerality and a bit saline at the finish. Unique and fascinating." - Vinous

2020  Chinon Blanc

100% Chenin Blanc. Raffault planted Chenin under ten years ago on the special clay-limestone terroir of the Les Picasses hills and bottled it as "Chenin de Picasses" for this first time in the 2020 vintage (note: in France the wine bears a different label and name, "L'Or d'Olga"). The farming is organic and the harvest is manual. The whole clusters are gently pressed and the must settled overnight. Fermentation takes place spontaneously with indigenous yeasts in 500-liter, second-and-third-use demi-muids and finishes dry; the wine does not go through malolactic fermentation and is aged on its fine lees for a year in the same barrels. It clarifies naturally during aging and is bottled without filtration.

2021  Chenin Blanc & Palomino

"Eben Sadie describes this isolated, sand dune-covered site as "the vineyard of Mad Max" and I know what he means. Pale and salty, the resulting wine is a brilliant, cool climate, wind-buffeted cuvée of Chenin Blanc and Palomino that has limestone freshness and intensity, kelp, oyster shell and sourdough flavours and volcanic intensity." - 97pts, Tim Atkin MW