Pierre Ménard: Wines
Pierre Ménard grew up in Valette, and in order to pursue his dream of making wine he started out vinifying in a nearby subterranean garage. “It was very cramped, but at least the temperature was good”, Pierre mused. In order to expand he took over his grandparents house, next-door to his childhood home. The bottom end of the house was little more than a cowshed, so this was cleaned out, restored, and a new concrete floor installed. It became a model cellar, bijou but clean and bright, and crammed with stainless steel vats, barrels, jarres and foudres. His first vintage in this new cellar was 2017. Pierre subsequently took over the rest of the house, and by the time I visited in 2023 not only was the cellar more organised, he also have a small extension to make use of.
Although Pierre enjoys sweet wine, he prefers his dry Chenin Blanc with absolutely no botrytis influence, principally because of the beliefs stated on the first page of this profile. Chenin Blanc expresses its origins well, but botrytis tends to mask this, botrytised wines reflecting the character of the vintage more than the place. As a consequence, the best expression of terroir would appear to come from completely dry, botrytis-free wines, and this is the style Pierre focuses on. He does produce some sweet wine too, but in suitably tiny amounts. The dry wines represent their origins, down to individual lieux-dits or even differing terroir within a parcel, whereas the sweet wines are made from fruit picked across the entire domaine.
Pierre expanded on his thoughts regarding botrytis and terroir expression. “In Anjou we are limited by the balance between ripeness and botrytis. You can’t allow the yields to be too high, as the green and unripe fruit character replaces the expression of the terroir. And if you allow the fruit to go too far and botrytis takes over it will hide many things, including terroir expression, and it limits precision in a wine too. By itself Chenin Blanc is not a very expressive variety, but it gives good structure and it is terroir-transparent”.
