Domaine de la Pépière, 2015 Update
I had resigned myself to not tasting with Marc Ollivier and Rémi Branger (and not meeting the newest member of the team, Gwénaëlle Croix, for the first time) this year, having found them missing from their usual spot at the Salon des Vins de Loire. But then I experienced a sudden reversal of fortunes when I suddenly chanced upon Rémi at La Levée de la Loire, the organic wine salon. There was no Marc, no Gwénaëlle, and the range of wines being poured felt a little muted (no Cuvée Trois or Cuvée Quatre, for example, no Château-Thébaud, and no Clos Cormerais either), even so this was still an excellent opportunity to hear Rémi’s account of the 2014 growing season, and to taste a number of wines from the vintage.
I have already give a detailed account of the growing season in my 2014 Muscadet report, with comments from Jérôme Choblet and Pierre-Marie Luneau, and Rémi (pictured above) did not say anything out of synchrony with his peers. In other words, he was as worried as anyone else by the cool and wet summer weather, in July but especially in August, but his spirits began to lift once the skies cleared during the last week of the month. The September weather was a dream, warm, dry and sunny, and this continued right through to October 8th. Finally, after three short years, the Muscadet vignerons have a vintage that brought not only the potential for quality, but also quantity (important, because vignerons have bank managers too). Rémi reported that the yield across the entire domaine in 2014 was 44 hl/ha, very close to the norm of 45-50 hl/ha. This is a much more respectable figure than the yields in 2013 and 2012, which were respectively three-quarters and one-half of the norm.
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