Chéreau-Carré: Vineyards
Thanks to the acquisitions made by Bernard Chéreau (the elder), there are now several domaines and vineyards under the Chéreau-Carré umbrella. The terroir is varied, inevitable with such a scattered collection of domaines, and it features shale, schist, gneiss and orthogneiss. Naturally the vineyards are planted with the one true Muscadet variety, Melon de Bourgogne. The vineyards really deserve more individual and detailed inspection than this though, and they are as follows.
Château de Chasseloir, the earliest addition to the Chéreau empire, has a long history. This was once the seat of Comte Leloup and his family, who were local nobility. As such they were under considerable threat as Revolution spread across France during the latter years of the 18th century. As I have already discussed in my profile of Château du Coing de St-Fiacre, however, the Nantais was not a region predisposed to revolution, and was in fact the origin of a counter-revolutionary uprising by a Catholic and Royalist army, the result of which was the Guerre de Vendée (1793 – 1796). This pro-royalist retaliation led by Charles de Bonchamps, François de Charette and others was eventually crushed by the Republicans, who then moved through the Vendée destroying nearly everything in their path.
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