Château Pierre-Bise: Anjou & Savennières
Generalising, for the white wines the freshly-picked fruit is gently pressed using a pneumatic Coquard press with a small addition of sulphites at this moment. Reds are of course destemmed, the fruit macerated with the juice. Back to whites, thereafter the juice is allowed to settled over a day or two and then fermented in a mix of older wooden vessels, typically large foudres, with overspill being vinified in 400-litre barrels. In recent years, the Papin family have also added a number of 10-hectolitre sandstone jarres to the mix as well. A little steel is also used. As you would expect there is no role for added sugar, enzymes or yeasts. Thereafter there are no further sulphite additions during the élevage, so many of the wines, not just red but white, undergo malolactic fermentation. Some dry whites are influenced by botrytis as well (not that unusual in Anjou – it requires a huge amount of effort to produce a botrytis-free wine), another factor which can make for a very distinctive style which might not, in some cases, be to everybody’s taste. The élevage takes place in the same range of vessels employed for the fermentation. The wines see a second dose of sulphites before bottling.
The range of wines here starts with Anjou, in both colours, before progressing across the river to Savennières, where the Papin family own several parcels, all vinified separately. Then of course there are the sweet wines for which Claude was, I believe, first recognised, and rightly so in my opinion; I look at these latter styles on the next page. The fruit is picked by hand, and all is vinified in the cellars at Château Pierre-Bise. The Anjou and Savennières cuvées are as follows.
The best known white cuvée is the Anjou Blanc Haut de la Garde, sourced from a north to north-west facing 8-hectare vineyard on the south bank of the Loire with a mixed terroir of schist, sandstone and rhyolite, an igneous rock with a high silica content.
