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Jo Pithon Coteaux du Layon Saint Aubin Clos des Bois 1997

Another episode of vinous archaeology this week, featuring a long-forgotten vintage and a long-lost domaine.

For the vintage we head back not-quite three decades to 1997, a very successful year for the Coteaux du Layon and its crus, Quarts de Chaume and Bonnezeaux, (as well as the sweet wines of Vouvray and Montlouis-sur-Loire, it has to be said), producing wines that were on a par with those of the 1990 vintage. And as for the domaine, this offers the vinous researcher a real challenge, because although you can still find wines carrying his name even today, those wines have nothing to do with Jo Pithon and the truth is the domaine no longer exists. It was broken up in 2008, and a mere nubbin of vineyards which remained became the nidus around which Pithon-Paillé would grow (vineyards which would eventually be absorbed into Domaine Belargus).

For those not familiar with his story, Jo Pithon – who is now thoroughly retired – was one of the Layon Valley’s great figureheads. He began working as a vigneron in 1978, based in Les Bergères, a diminutive cellar nestled among the vineyards east of the town of Saint-Lambert-du-Lattay, and which is now home to Les Vignes Herbel. Here he set about developing his domaine with an entirely uncompromising level of commitment. If a particular slope was deserving of planting, Jo would plant it. It would not matter if heavy machinery was required to ready the land for planting, nor would it matter if the terrain was so steep it could only ever be worked by hand, or if the vines took six, seven, eight years or more to produce their first crop in such harsh soils. All that faded into irrelevance; Jo’s only concern was the quality of the fruit and the wines which resulted.

Jo Pithon Coteaux du Layon Saint Aubin Clos des Bois 1997

This approach produced some remarkable wines, but also resulted in ever-mounting debts, and eventually Jo had to accept outside investment. Enter Philippe Fournier, who settled these debt and thus took ownership of the domaine in 2005. Only three years would pass before the relationship between Philippe, a financially savvy investor who invited Stéphane Derenoncourt on board to consult, and Jo, a single-minded artisan who could not modify his methods to anyone else’s scheme, to implode. The relationship ended and the business was torn asunder. Philippe took what vines he had purchased to create Domaine FL, which left Jo with his aforementioned nubbin of vines, the beginning of Pithon-Paillé which he created with his stepson Jo Paillé.

Jo’s vines included a few important slivers of the Layon vineyard, most notably the Coteau des Treilles, but he had a number of other less-renowned parcels, one of which was the Clos des Bois in Saint-Aubin-de-Luigné. You have to be careful with any vineyard referencing the bois (the wood) alongside the Layon because there are many of them, including a very similarly named Clos du Bois in neighbouring Saint-Lambert-du-Lattay. This reflects the fact the landscape was once coated with a rich expanse of woodland, remnants of which are the few thin columns of trees which snake through the landscape, alongside the region’s rivers.

The Clos des Bois is situated on the left bank of the Layon, quite some way up the slope. There are about 18 hectares within the lieu-dit, of which Jo Pithon owned 1.5 hectares, planted mostly to Chenin Blanc but there was some Cabernet Franc here as well. The terroir underfoot is distinctive, because although the left bank of the Layon is dominated by the Série de Mauges, a broad bed of Brioverian schist which runs alongside the river, these vines are rooted into soils derived from a complex of younger Ordovician schist and quartzite, as well as Cenomanian sands, sandstone galets, gravel and clay.

Of note, the clos is located just to the west of Château La Fresnaye which provided a temporary base for Jo Pithon and his family after the bust up between him and his backer; Jo’s stepson Jo Paillé and his wife Wendy lived in the château for a while, despite the fact that it was reputedly haunted, and they made their first vintages together in the cellars there – I remember tasting the 2009 Coteaux du Layon Belargus des Treilles and other wines with Jo and Jo at the château – after which they acquired new cellars in Saint-Lambert-du-Lattay. Today, both cellars and vines are part of the Domaine Belargus portfolio, and feed into their blended Coteaux du Layon cuvée. If you are familiar with the map of the Belargus vines created by the illustrator Anne-Lise B., the vines of the Clos des Bois are (presumably) one of the two unnamed parcels in the bottom left.

The first thing to note about the 1997 Coteaux du Layon Saint-Aubin Clos des Bois from Jo Pithon is that the cork is entirely sound, coming out easily in one piece using a fairly ordinary corkscrew, despite the quarter-century it has passed lodged in the neck. Once in the glass the wine displays an incredible colour, shimmering with a lightly burnished amber gold, tinged with flecks of copper and red. The aromatics are nothing short of fabulous, and feel very true to the Pithon style, coming loaded with toasted apricot and grilled peach at the front, with layers of vanilla pod, crème caramel and praline, an intense and sweet complexity which feels very much alive. The palate is perfectly pure with a rich complexity to match the nose, certainly more at the liquoreux end of the spectrum, richly textured and fine-grained with a beautifully defined poise, the midpalate’s plush yet silky texture cut with veins of acidity and energy, leading in to an incredibly long finish. A quite brilliant liquoreux style, with not a hint of advanced age; this one has many decades ahead of it. From a 500 ml format. The alcohol on the label is 12%. 97/100 (16/9/24)

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