LA GRANDE GRIVE 2021 (Domaine Perrault-Jadaud)

TERROIR

The estate's vineyards are located in the villages of Vouvray and Noizay, along the slopes bordering the Loire river. The terroirs are mainly clay-limestone and date from the Upper Cretaceous (-99.6 to -65.5 million years ago) and the Miocene (-23 to -5 million years ago). It includes :

• a yellow tufa soil localted in Vouvray, which was formed in the Turonian period (-93.5 to -89.3 Ma), a geological stage of the Upper Cretaceous period characterised by a continuous marine sedimentation, when the region was still under water, forming a soft, sandy yellow chalk bed, rich in quartz.

• a soil composed of three different layers, in Noizay, at a place called Les Hauts-Bois, with :
  
  
  • at the top, a formation of sands and gravels called sables de Montreuil, whose sedimentation is continental and dates from the end of the Miocene, 5 million years ago; this formation is frequently clayey and contains pebbles and cobbles composed of Oligocene burstones and Cretaceous flints from the underlying formations, as well as Jurassic limestones of distant origin.
  • In the middle, a layer dating from the Upper Eocene (-37.2 to -33.9 Ma) is found, composed of puddingstones and siliceous pebbles made up of an aggregate of flint and Jurassic cherts within an extremely hard cement.
  • and at the bottom, a layer of flint clays emerges, which result from the alteration of the underlying Turonian formations: these are very sandy clays, strongly red-coloured by the iron oxides and which surround Turonian flints.
  
  
  

WINEGROWING & WINEMAKING

The estate's vines are cultivated according to the principles of the Organic Agriculture, but in the absence of Ecocert certification, we cannot classify the wines as organic. The old Chenin vines that give birth to the LA GRANDE GRIVE cuvée are about 80 years old, and their very low yield of 25 hl/ha produces a dense and fragrant wine.

The grapes are harvested by hand and then taken to the estate's troglodyte cellars where they are pressed before being vatted for a cold settling operation.
Once the coarser lees have been removed, the must is then transferred to old 300 litre barrels (between 2 and 3 wines). The alcoholic fermentation takes place spontaneously in the presence of the native yeasts, followed by the malolactic fermentation, which takes place at around 70% during the 9 months of maturation.
Once the maturation is complete, the musts are blended and filtered before bottling, which is made in the summer following the harvest.

• Residual sugar : 1,4 g/l
• Total SO2 : 50 mg/l