Domaine de l'ECU

Domaine de l'Écu - VignArtea

MUSCADET    25 ha    BIODYNAMIC    WINEMAKER: Fred NIGER


ESTATE HISTORY


The Domaine de l'Ecu is located in Le Landreau, a village of Loire-Atlantique located 29 km east of Nantes. Famous for its great muscadet's wines produced by the winemaker Guy BOSSARD, the estate is managed by Fred NIGER since 2010, whose aytpique course makes it a character apart in the wine world. After lengthy law studies, and ten years spent working in an internet hosting company as a partner, Fred decided to turn to a more agricultural world and more in touch with the land. He returned to school to get a BTSA Viticulture-Oenology and began to work in 2008 at Guy BOSSARD's estate for his first harvest.

The relationship between the two men is excellent, sharing the same philosophy : the environment's respect and the accomplishment of a qualitative work through the elaboration of wines with identity, pur reflections of their soil. Because the plots share a very particular terroir whose soils are testament to the distant origins of the Armorican Massif. The latter was formed about 400 million years ago (Devonian and Carboniferous era), when it was raised on the earth surface by the dynamic processes of plate tectonics; the millions years long erosion that followed brought a wide variety of sedimentary and metamorphic rocks to the surface.



TERROIR


The Le Landreau village offers soils granite (rock born from a slow cooling of the magma in the Earth's mantle), as well as micaschists and gneisses with black and white micas, called "Landreau gneiss", both of which are metamorphic rocks having undergone recrystallization and deformation under the effect of large temperature and pressure variations. This close geological diversity allowed Guy BOSSARD to produce muscadet wines with their terroir's identity, each of them bearing the name of the rock on which the grapes grew : Gneiss, Orthogneiss, et Granite, three distinct aromatic profiles and a growing cellar potential.



WINEGROWING & WINEMAKING


Methodical and observant, Guy BOSSARD never used chemistry in his vineyard. He was one of the pioneers using the organic farming model in Maine et Loire, obtaining the Organic Agriculture certification in 1975, then the Demeter (biodynamic agriculture) label in 1998. He makes the fermentations with native yeasts whose natural diversity of strains allowed them to start spontaneously, without any delay or slowness. A success that he attributes to the absence of antifungal products on the vines, what is favoring a multiplicity of vigorous yeast strain. His past as a nurseryman also allows him to make his own rooted plants. The youngest vines are between thirty and forty years old, the oldest are from 1946.

In 2010, Guy sells the estate to Fred Niger. The latter, passionate about biodynamic technics and aware of the vineyard's excellent health he took over, goes even further in his quest for pure and unique wines. His meeting with Philippe Viret definitely convinced him to use new breeding containers and invests in terracotta jars. He currently has more than 75 amphoras with volumes ranging from 150 to 800 liters and he entertains himself trying new breeding techniques and vinifying new grape varieties: Chardonnay, Folle Blanche, Cabernet Sauvignon, Pinot Noir, an so on.

In the vineyard, yields are voluntarily limited to 30 hl/ha by green harvest (bunches removal), even if one could obtain 60 hl / ha, and this for the sole purpose of obtaining gastronomy wines with beautiful concentrated juices.


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