Jérémie Mourat
I am in the unusual position of having visited the vineyards of the little-known Fiefs-Vendéens appellations, the little islands of viticulture and winemaking far to the south of Nantes, long before I ever ventured onto the soils of the much more widely-appreciated wines of Muscadet. This was thanks to a holiday taken in the region many years ago, when I encountered these vines digging their roots into sandy soils, the sea breezes casting the salty Atlantic spray over their leaves. Such imagery naturally conjures up thoughts of Muscadet, and it is tempting to think that the wines made here are just the same, a somehow ‘lesser’ version perhaps. Nothing, however, could be further from the truth; for a start Melon de Bourgogne is something of a rarity in the Fiefs-Vendéens, and the vines I saw liberally dosed with sea salt were far more likely to have been Chenin Blanc, or perhaps even Pinot Noir.
These are complex little islands of viticulture, on the wane in recent years, as I have already described in my introduction to my profile of Domaine Saint-Nicolas, another Fiefs-Vendéens stalwart. You need energy, enthusiasm, determination and perhaps a willingness to innovate in this downtrodden corner of France’s vineyards. One vigneron with the necessary gall is Jérémie Mourat, who turns out a complex and certainly esoteric range of wines from his extensive ‘collection’ of domaines. He began over a decade ago with the familial property, Château Marie de Fou, handed down to him by his father, but the dynamic and forward-looking Jérémie has since overseen a great expansion of the estate with the acquisition of other vineyards, including two very significant domaines, these being Moulin Blanc and Clos Saint-André.
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