Clos Rougeard - Saumur Champigny Blanc Breze 2017

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The wine ferments and ages two years in 20% new oak, the rest in barrels of one to three wines. It then ages in bottle an additional three years before release

Clos Rougeard Description

The most iconic estate in the Loire and one of France’s most celebrated estates, Clos Rougeard has a cult following for their incredibly rare, age-worthy wines.

Founded in the 17th century, the Foucault family have painstakingly farmed some of the best vineyard plots in Saumur-Champigny and Saumur. Since the 1960s brothers Charly and Nady Foucault ran the domaine taking it to new heights. The incredible quality of the wines starts in the vineyards which are farmed with exacting standards using traditional methods - organic and biodynamic practices, ploughing to control weeds, massale selection to propagate vines, and pruning to keep yields low.

In the cellar they are just as demanding. The grapes are destemmed and fermented with native yeasts. The wines undergo a long, gentle fermentation with foot treading or pumping over as needed. Then, after 18-24 months in barrel in the incredibly cool tuffeau cellars, they are bottled unfined and unfiltered, and aged in bottle before release.

In 2017, following the passing of Charly in December 2015, the Foucault family decided to sell the estate to the Bouygues family, owners of Chateau Montrose which they've taken to new heights.

The wines of Clos Rougeard are brilliant, beautifully elegant, and beguiling wines that somehow manage to be concentrated yet delicate.

Vinous: 94 Points

The phrase 'ripe yet precise' encapsulates the 2017 Bréze, Clos Rougeard's single and singular, dry white wine. It has two different fruit spectrums - there's citrus fruit from the north-facing vines and a later picked, riper, almost tropical, cooked pineapple character.Fermented in barrel, there are oak-derived vanilla flavors that join the fruit while a whiff of match stick indicates a lightly reductive character that needs air. It is round yet retains a bright, racy freshness that you often see in Brézé whites. Focused and fine, this has the substance and line to evolve gracefully.