Domaine Philippe Alliet: Vineyards
Philippe Alliet and his wife Claude have a house in the heart of Cravant-les-Coteaux, which is to Chinon what Chavignol is to Sancerre (I am hoping this makes sense to someone other than just me). Nevertheless the domaine is today centred around the cellars on the road running westwards out of Briançon and its surrounding 8 hectares of vines (not the totality of the domaine – there are another 10 hectares here and there). During his early years Philippe worked between three smaller cellars, but in 2005 he built this new and well-equipped facility here, and he has since further developed and expanded it. These cellars have now been, for two decades, the beating heart of the Alliet domaine.
Today Philippe and Pierre Alliet have around 18 hectares of the Chinon appellation to work with, planted almost exclusively to Cabernet Franc, although a few years ago he also established a 1-hectare parcel of Chenin Blanc, adding a limited-production white cuvée to the range. As noted many of these vines sit on sandy-gravelly soils wrapped around the cellars, Philippe’s more recent acquisitions gave him access to vines on more prestigious clay and limestone terroirs, facilitating the production of more prestigious cuvées with more structure and cellaring potential. Broadly speaking, then, the vineyard can be divided into two.
The vines of the Coteau de Noiré (pictured below) sit overlooking the road La Grille, which itself sits above the D21, the main road from Chinon out to Cravant-les-Coteaux and Panzoult. Of note, it is held that the road beneath the Coteau de Noiré was that travelled by Joan of Arc and her small guard of six soldiers when she made her journey from Vaucouleurs to Chinon for her inaugural audience with the Dauphin. Having walked the road myself, it is not too difficult to imagine this small Medieval entourage making their way along this narrow and leafy lane.
Moving up the slope, from the D21 at its foot to the very summit, the rocks underfoot are very different. Below the D21 the soils are all very recent alluvial deposits, a mix of gravel, sand, stones and some clay, this being the flood plain of the Vienne. Move north up the slope, however, and the geology quickly changes.
