Domaine des Forges Coteaux du Layon Chaume Les Onnis 1995

This week’s Weekend Wine is a lesson in know your lieu-dit.

Many years ago – looking at the vintage, clearly less than thirty, although the exact date was washed down the plughole of lost memories long ago – I bought a few bottles of the 1995 Coteaux du Layon Chaume Les Onnis from Domaine des Forges at auction. The price has similarly long faded from memory; all I can say for certain is that I picked them up for a song.

I have over the years spent a lot of time scouring wine auction catalogues for older wines from the Loire Valley. They would often be overlooked by other buyers, who were presumably more interested in blue chip wines from Bordeaux, Burgundy and the like, and a cheekily low bid submitted by post (provincial auction houses were not among the earliest adopters of new-fangled technologies such as the internet and email) could sometimes secure the lot. I once got burned with a mis-described lot, but on the whole I acquired a lot of desirable Loire wines for pennies. This was also a time when you could backfill with older vintages of Bordeaux for similar sums of money, although those days seem to have passed (for the moment anyway).

Anyway, I digress. It was via an auction purchase that these bottles of Coteaux du Layon Chaume came into my cellar. At the time I was still rather green around the gills, and I knew next to nothing about Domaine des Forges, and even less about Les Onnis. But I knew what Coteaux du Layon meant, and that the vintage in question was a decent one. That was enough for me, and a low bid secured the lot. On receipt of the bottles, a few weeks later, I promptly pulled the cork on the first bottle, and poured the wine.

And the quality just blew me away. It was one of the most remarkable examples of Coteaux du Layon I had ever tasted (and decades later, it still is). Which left me with a question; compared to other sweet Layon wines I had encountered, why was this wine so good?

Which brings us to our lesson in know your lieu-dit.

Les Onnis lies in the commune of Rochefort-sur-Loire, centred around the town of the same name, which as this name suggests sits on the banks of the Loire. And yet it is also one of the seven ‘village’ communes of the Coteaux du Layon appellation. Which begs the question; how can a commune on the banks of one river, the Loire, be one of the principal communes of an appellation stretched along the banks of another river, the Layon?

The answer lies in the unusual shape of the commune, which stretches up the hill behind the town, over the broad crest of the Corniche Angevine, and down the slope on the opposite side, to the waters of the Layon. And it is here that we find the little village of Chaume, at the heart of the Quarts de Chaume and Coteaux du Layon Chaume appellations.

The lieu-dit of Les Onnis sits low down on the slope, touching the waters of the Layon, within the Coteaux du Layon Chaume appellation. Indeed, it is the only commune of this appellation to enjoy this position, as most of the eligible vineyards are higher up the slope. To the east is the lieu-dit of La Pouëze, around which Les Onnis is wrapped, both at the bottom and top of the slope; La Pouëze has the Quarts de Chaume appellation. To the west is Les Chevaux, in the Coteaux du Layon Chaume appellation, but it sits in a more midslope position.

So this explains the character of wines coming from Les Onnis. Like your favourite Burgundy premier cru, the one which neighbours that grand cru vineyard the wines of which you could last afford to buy and drink more than a decade ago, Les Onnis is Quarts de Chaume in all but name. It enjoys the same aspect, drainage and bedrock, the thin soils resting over schiste gréseux (metamorphosed sandstone), sandstone and puddingstone, and there is even a streak of phyllitic schist and metagreywacke at the very foot of the slope, like that which dominates much of the lower vineyards of Quarts de Chaume. The lieu-dit covers 14 hectares all told, although a large slice of this is land at the foot of the slope between the old railway line and the river, and there is a wooded section not currently amenable to planting. This leaves approximately 9 hectares on the slopes which are cultivated.

Domaine des Forges, run by the Branchereau family and which can trace its origins back to the purchase of 2 hectares of vines by Pierre Robineau in 1890, is without any doubt the leading exponent of Les Onnis. Domaine Blouin also bottles an example, and Raymond Morin at Domaine du Landreau also owns vines here, although he promotes the lieu-dit through a dry cuvée. Neither enjoy the market presence or reputation of the Banchereau domaine.

The 1995 Coteaux du Layon Chaume Premier Cru Les Onnis from Domaine des Forges, revisited at thirty years of age, displays a rich, shimmering, burnished, orange-gold hue in the glass, a combination of botrytis and bottle age, the colour entirely appropriate. This is confirmed by the nose, a quite beautiful melding of toasted praline, dried orange slices and grilled peach, with deeper botrytis notes of fine tobacco and liquorice, as well as a dusting of powdered chalk. The palate is simply gorgeous, with a core of honeyed caramel, liquorice, orange slices and black tea leaves, all wrapped within a dense and velvety texture, cut with fine veins of bitter-botrytis phenolics as well as bright acidity. This has everything a botrytised sweet wine should have; sweetness, complexity, minerality, acidity and bitterness, all cushioned within a velvety polish. This is delicious, and still going strong. No rush to drink here. The alcohol is 13.5% on the label. 97/100 (13/10/25)

Read more in:

• My profile of Domaine des Forges
• My guide to the Coteaux du Layon and Coteaux du Layon Chaume appellations
• My guide to Quarts de Chaume

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