Muscadet Sèvre-et-Maine Sur Lie "Briords-Cuvée Vieilles Vignes"

Pépière
France
Loire
2022

100% Melon de Bourgogne. Briords is a 3-hectare lieu-dit in the cru of Château Thébaud. These vines are the estate's oldest plot, planted from massale selection 60-70 years ago. The sandy clay soils are rich in granite de Thébaud, a type differing from granite de Clisson in in its higher feldspar and clay content; it is cooler, holds water well and ripens the fruit more slowly. The farming is certified-biodynamic and the vineyard work including harvest is manual. As for the all Pepière wines, the fruit is direct-pressed 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 in large, underground, glass-lined cement tanks for 7 to 8 months.

 

92 points
"The 2022 Briords is beautifully defined on the nose with aromas of menthol, iodine, white orchard fruits and verbena. Perfectly balanced and medium-bodied, satiny and mineral, it’s tense with bright acids and concludes with a mineral finish of crushed stones. This is a stunning, energetic, delicately tangy wine made from vines planted on granodiorite (granite from Château-Thébaud)."
Yohan Castaing,
Wine Advocate
August 2023
93 points
"The 2022 vintage of Clos des Briords is another in a long line of stellar wines from this beautiful vineyard. Only the oldest vines in the domaine’s 4.4 hectares here are bottled as Clos des Briords, so that the vines range from fifty to more than seventy years of age that go into this Cuvée Vieilles Vignes. The bouquet is deep and very refined, offering up scents of lime, lemon, breadfruit, sweet leesy tones, white flowers, lovely salinity, complex minerality and just a touch 11 of iodine in the upper register. On the palate the wine is deep, full-bodied and complex, with lovely soil signature, a fine core, sound framing acids and lovely length and grip on the seamlessly balanced finish. In the warm summer of 2022, the acids here seem a bit lower than usual, but I have seen vintages like this of Clos de Briords age effortlessly twenty-five or thirty years, so I have no intention of sounding the alarm bells with this beautiful 2022 version! 2023-2050. "
John Gilman,
View From The Cellar
September 2023

SKU/Code: 
DB8966-22
Product Line: 
Wine
White
Varietal: 
Melon de Bourgogne
Farming Type: 
Biodynamic