“I realized that I would never use carbonic maceration on my top cuvées, so why am I doing this on the Ad Libitum?” Thus spake Damien to me in the... read more →
Cheerful! Here’s a mix of tannat and côt (malbec). It’s a red sunset of cheery, cherry, coppery, swiss chardy (I know, odd, huh?), luscious and has an appealing iron-like nerve.... read more →
Glou-glou deliciousness! Didn’t I always say that grolleau and côt = pineau d’aunis? I think so. Here it’s easy and thirst quenching. When it’s hot and you are just tired... read more →
Côt (also known as malbec) loves old vines, cool climate and limestone. And it loves the Touraine, and Damien Delenchenau loves it all. Damien’s vines are 100+ years, old, gnarled,... read more →
From organic vines between 15-45 years from limestone soils. Damien raises this wine in tank, no wood involvement. The result is a wine with purity, structure, velvet, bones, dusty fruit... read more →
When I tasted Xavier Weisskopf’s line up at the Bio show, I thought, where have these been? Apparently on the west coast! There they get to drink the gorgeous côt.... read more →
Clos Roche Blanche is gone but the genetic material for the wine lives on in loving granitic instead of limestone soils. Fermentation is preceded by a four-day cold maceration. Only... read more →
If you don’t know the wines from Coralie and Damien Delecheneau in the AOCs of Touraine Amboise & Montlouis, get to know them now, before everyone else discovers them. They... read more →
Claude Courtois lives and works in the ‘we get no respect’ east of Orléans commune of Soings-en-Sologne in the Loir-et-Cher. His roots are deep in the back-to-nature movement—not in the... read more →
The material for the vines came from côt favorite, Clos Roche Blanche. The offspring has done the parent vines proud. 2012 was another low-yield, high-stress year but Marc Ollivier pulled... read more →