Domaine de la Cotelleraie, 2019 St-Nicolas-de-Bourgueil “Les Perruches”
The Vallée family's roots in St-Nicolas-de-Bourgueil go back several centuries, and their domaine had beginnings like many of those we find in the Loire Valley. When Domaine de Cotelleraie was established in the 1950s by Claude Vallée, it was a polyculture farm, with just a handful of hectares of vines alongside asparagus, tree fruits and other crops.
Claude's son, Gérald, took over from his father in 1997, and today the domaine has about 27 hectares of vines and is exclusively focused on viticulture, and they count among their holdings some of the top lieux-dits in the region.
All of the estate's 27 hectares of vineyards are planted with Cabernet Franc, and from this they are making a range of 7 cuvées, including three cuvées parcellaires Les Mauguerets, Les Perruches and Le Vau Jaumier, each from a slightly different terroir. The vineyards have been farmed without and synthetic treatments or fertilizers since 1999, and Gérald began to convert their vineyards to organic viticulture in 2009, and they received full organic certification as of the 2012 vintage.
The appellation of St-Nicolas-de-Bourgueil encompasses one village, that of St-Nicolas-de-Bourgueil, which begins at the western border of the Bourgueil commune and stretches west about 6km, and there are a few key things to note about the viticultural area and soils in this appellation.
Firstly, how Saint-Nicolas-de-Bourgueil is positioned along the Loire as it starts to dogleg toward Saumur means the appellation as a whole has almost a slightly south-southwest west exposure, as well as it's proximity to the beginning of the Vienne tributary means that Saint-Nicolas-de-Bourgueil is a little bit warmer than the Bourgueil AOP - in fact harvest here will start sometimes up to 10 days ahead of Bourgueil.
Also, because of how the Loire changes course ever so slightly, and the ancient alluvial terrace that begins in the commune of Restigné and continues west across the Bourgueil AOP actually gets a bit wider in St-Nicolas-de-Bourgueil. So this area of ancient alluvium actually accounts for 65% of the vineyard area in the appellation. And as this terrace widens, the area of vineyards that are on the recent alluvium as well as the côte, where we find the tuffeau-chalk dominated soils, these two areas narrow quite a bit.
So today's wine is coming from vines planted on this small pocket of recent alluvium close to the Loire. It's at an elevation of about 30m above sea level, and it actually sits ever so slightly above the surrounding land, which has soils too fertile for viticulture. This little "island" of recent alluvium is about 2.5km from east to west and only 800m wide, and lies just south of the Changeon River and north of the border of the commune of Chouzé-sur-Loire, about 3km north of the Loire River.
In terms of soils, what dominates this area the hydromorphic sands and clayey-sands that sit on a deep subsoil of flinty gravels rich in iron oxide. These soils provide an ideal mix of water retention and drainage, and don't experience the same degree of hydric stress as some gravel-dominated terroirs further north on the ancient alluvial terrace.
So this wine is from 4 hectares of vines in the lieu-dit of Les Perruches. The vines were planted in 1975. And the soils are clayey-sands with flint gravels, and on a subsoil of flinty gravels. And the term "perruches" actually refers to soils that have some sort of flint component to them, and we find them in a number of areas in the Loire Valley.
From a winemaking perspective, the fruit for this wine was all hand-harvested and destemmed. Fermentation was in large wooden vats with indigenous yeast, reaching a maximum fermentation temperature of about 28C. The total maceration was 1 month, and they did some pigeage by foot during the first 10 days, followed by maceration through infusion for the remainder of the post-fermentation maceration. The aging takes place over 15 months in older barrels.
Key wine wine facts below:
Producer: Domaine de la Cotelleraie (Gérald Vallée)
Appellation: St-Nicolas-de-Bourgueil
Commune: St-Nicolas-de-Bourgueil
Lieux-Dits: Les Perruches
Soils: Deep clayey-sand with flint gravels, over a subsoil of flinty gravels rich in iron oxide
Alcohol: 12.5%
