Jean-Maurice Raffault: Tasting & Drinking
With a large domaine, boasting well over 40 hectares of vines, encompassing a broad array of Chinon terroirs, and several good-sized parcels of Chenin Blanc, Rodolphe Raffault of Jean-Maurice Raffault has an appropriately interesting array of cuvées to offer. He covers the full spectrum of possibilities in Chinon, with two cuvées of white, a rosé and easy-drinking reds from alluvial terroirs, all the way up to more serious oak-aged cuvées from some prestigious and historic sites featuring limestone and clay soils.
Without a doubt the portfolio’s flagship – in terms of vineyard, and cuvée – is the Clos de l’Hospice. Rodolphe Raffault deserves much credit for taking on this vineyard and returning it to viticulture, which was present here for several centuries prior to phylloxera. It is remarkable to think – because the phylloxera epidemic seems like ancient history – that this replanting is a facet of the post-phylloxera recovery in Chinon, still ongoing close to 150 years later.
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