Domaine Jaulin-Plaisantin, 2020 Update
It is a few years since I last called in on Yves Plaisantin at the domaine he shares with Sébastien Jaulin up on Chinon’s première côte, and so it was a delight to bump into him recently in Tours. For those who don’t remember, Yves trained in the Rhône Valley, followed by a long stint in the USA, only returning to France in 2008. Looking to settle down and make wine, he entered a partnership with Sébastien, who had the vineyards and the cellars, but perhaps not the energy or resolve to carry on alone. Meanwhile, Yves and Matthieu Baudry established the Cabane à Vin, a popular wine bar in Chinon’s town centre now run by Yves’ wife Émilie Riopel, a French-Canadian. It was there, if I recall correctly, that I first encountered the Jaulin-Plaisantin wines.
When I last visited this domaine Yves (pictured) and Sébastien had a nicely defined portfolio of reds, while the white was something of an afterthought; with no suitable white vines planted (other than a few rows of Semillon – quite a curiosity for this part of the world), they found themselves producing one from fruit purchased in Montlouis-sur-Loire. With a combination of planting and top-grafting, however, this is now changing, and the portfolio now includes a home-grown, home-vinified white, which I also report on here.
The Wines
Working my way through the red wines first, the entry-level cuvée from sandy soils, the 2017 Dolmen, was good enough, as was the 2016 Les Hauts et Les Bas. This latter cuvée is usually comprised of roughly equal parts fruit from the clay and flint soils of the plateau and more gravelly soils on the valley floor (hence the name). In this vintage, however, frost seriously curtailed the potential of the vines in the lower parts of the appellation, so the blend is more reliant on the clay-flint soils than usual, which shows through as a rather robust character which will need some cellar time to resolve.
