Domaine Luneau-Papin: Wines
The winemaking has also evolved in recent years, although perhaps not so radically as the approach in the vineyard has changed. The Muscadet region is one where machine-harvesting rules, so the Luneau-Papin family are perhaps unusual in that they favour hand-harvesting. Having said that, picking by hand does seem to be associated to a fairly strong degree with commitment, and it is notable that most of the more renowned and admired domaines in the region (most of which are profiled on this site) do pick by hand. The pickers here are largely students from Nantes. As of the 2017 vintage these pickers serve around 30 hectares, and it is only the younger vines that are picked by machine now.
Once the fruit has arrived in the winery it is subject to a sorting by hand-and-eye, an essential step and one which saved the Luneau-Papin harvest from ruin in the 2011 vintage, when an insidious rot spread throughout the vineyards of Muscadet. The rot tended to hide within the bunches, and it was only Pierre Luneau-Papin’s oversight as the fruit arrived, not only spotting the problem but breaking open bunches and ruthlessly rejecting those that were afflicted, that saved the wines. This was a year when the wines of Pierre Luneau-Papin were as reliably sound as ever, while most wines from other domaines – even all your old favourites – had the characteristic brown-fruit, dead-fruit, geosmin-derived flavours of rot.
The fruit is taken through a gentle pressing followed by a cold débourbage, over a 36-hour period, to allow the larger solids to settled out of suspension. In some case there may first be a brief period of macération pelliculaire permitted, essentially macerating the lightly pressed grapes in the must, the skin contact allowing some of the phenolic and aromatic elements within the skin to enter the juice, before continuing with the vinification.
