Château de Minière, 2024 Update
The eastern-most corner of the Bourgueil appellation, in particular Ingrandes-sur-Touraine (which has since been absorbed into the new larger commune of Coteaux-sur-Loire), is home to some significant domaines and vineyards. Domaine des Ouches, for example, and Lamé Delisle Boucard, domaines which have long enjoyed good reputations. And I really do mean long, particularly in the case of Lamé Delisle Boucard – a trip into the cellars here could see you tasting Bourgueil from decades before you were born.
There are noteworthy additions to the Bourgueil wine scene in more recent years as well though, perhaps the most prominent of which is Château de Minière.
The property was acquired by Belgian Kathleen Mareels-Van den Berghe, who in 2010 came to the Loire Valley looking for a holiday home and yet ended up buying a rambling old château and vineyard (isn’t that always how it happens?). She found herself the new owner of 23 hectares of vines, some of which were in less desirable parts of the appellation (on the lower soils of modern alluvium), but some were tip-top, parcels of old vines situated high up the clay-limestone slopes. Over the years that followed the vineyard was restructured, more distant parcels on less desirable soils disposed of, allowing for a consolidation of the vineyard around the château. Meanwhile the old vines were gathered together to fed into a new cuvée, the Vignes Centenaires de Minière, surely one of the better additions to the Bourgueil pantheon in recent years.
