Domaine de la Pepiere, Muscadet de Sevre-et-Maine Clisson, 2019

Since 1985 Marc Olivier, proprietor of Pépière, has been producing organically farmed, single-vineyard and single-cru bottlings since before anyone knew what those were let alone what Muscadet was. Melon de Bourgogne, the grape of Muscadet, till this day is rarely grown organically and is generally made into crisp and fresh wines that have simple citrus flavors whose main purpose is to help tourists and locals down platefulls of raw oysters. In Marc's view, Muscadet can be a lot more.

In order to achieve this Marc has farmed organically since the beginning. The different plots he chooses are selected for their varying degrees of decomposing granite and gneiss. Vines are old for Muscadet Varying from 20-100 years old and all. All work in the vineyard is done by hand and the yields are kept low to ensure the highest quality fruit. All of these things are rare in Muscadet.

Marc's cellar is very cold. The grapes are pressed whole-cluster and that cold cellar allows for a long slow fermentation with natice yeast and very minimal sulfur. Aging is done Sur Lie (on the dead yeast) on large underground tanks. This step is crucial as it increases the texture and complexity of the Melon. The wines are bottled, unfined and unfiltered.

Marc's contributions to the reputation of Muscadet are legion. Even though much of what comes out of the region is still produced in an industrial fashion, along with Monique Luneau-Papin, Jo Landron, Guy Bossard and the Luneau-Papins he has inspired more than a few producers to make the switch to a more human centric way of growing and making wine throughout the region and beyond. He has partnered with former protoges Rémi Branger (member of another Muscadet family) and Gwénaëlle Croix over the last decade to help ensure that the high Pépière standard is maintained well into the future.

What importer Bowler Wine has to say about this wine...

100% Melon de Bourgogne. The heart of Marc Ollivier's estate is a 10-hectare plot near home in the Clisson cru; 8 hectares of it go into this bottling, while 2 hectares are used for the entry-level Sur Lie. Its distinguishing feature is the soil type, called granite de Clisson, which is a particularly poor, hard, compact granite with little clay and a lot of quartz and mica over hard granite mother rock. The Pépière vines range from 50-110 years old and are organically farmed and harvested and worked by hand. As with the rest of the Pepière wines, the fruit is direct-pressed in whole clusters and the juice settled naturally for 12 hours. It is then fermented in stainless steel tanks with natural yeasts; the wine is aged on its lees for 2 years in large underground vats until being bottled without fining or filtering. Marc bottled this wine years before the cru was made official under the label "Granite de Clisson". After the declaration of the cru, he had to drop the "granite" part and as well as the "sur lie" (the latter being true for all cru-designated wines even though they are lees-aged).