François et Julien Pinon: Vineyards
Today Julien Pinon has sway over the same 13.5 hectares of vines, scattered in a multitude of locations all around the valley. Some can be pointed with ease, whereas others are out of sight over the hill behind the house, or more distant. This is not an uncommon situation in the Loire Valley; maintaining many different plots can insulate the vigneron against the devastating effects of vine disease or climate, for if one hectare of fruit is lost in one vineyard due to hail or mildew there are usually other more distant plots that have hopefully fared better. Sadly, this arrangement didn’t help François much in 2013 when a hailstorm swept up the valley, destroying all in its path, nevertheless even then some peripheral parcels were spared, and François still managed to make a little wine.
Terroir is a defining feature of any Vouvray vineyard, and François Pinon’s domaine is no exception. The base rock throughout the valley is Turonian limestone, from the Lower Turonian to be precise, which is perhaps up to 94 million years old (François claims 100 million years, but these geological boundaries are always rather fuzzy). Atop this there are two principle types of soil, each perhaps 1.5 metres deep. The first is clay and silica, the second is a rocky soil of flint.
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