Domaine de la Noblaie, 2014 Chinon ‘Les Chiens Chiens’
Domaine de la Noblaie is an estate that has been on my radar for some time. I think my first tasting with Jérôme was at ProWein likely back in 2010. And every year I would return to their stand to re-taste the wines. Today's wine is a bit of a cellar raid, a wine that I've been hanging on to for some time.
So this place where the domaine is located, La Noblaie, has a rich history of viticulture that goes back at least 500 years, possibly longer. The Cassini family, who were the first to create maps of the Kingdom of France back in the mid-1700s, noted "La Noblaie" as an important lieu-dit on one of their maps dating to 1765. The domaine is located in the hamlet of La Vau Breton, which first appears in historic records back in 1698, - and "vau" in old French meaning valley, and of course Breton, referring to the local name for Cabernet Franc - so this place was referred to as the Cabernet Franc Valley as far back as 1698.
So, fast forward to the modern era of the estate and its vineyards, Jérôme's grandparents - Jacqueline and Pierre Manzagol - purchased the estate and its 3ha of vineyards in 1952. Jérôme's first year at the estate was in 2003 - their 50th vintage - and today the estate has around 24 hectares of organically farmed vines, all in the commune of Ligré.
The commune of Ligré is on the south side, or the left bank, of the Vienne River, directly opposite the eastern part of the Chinon commune. Uniquely, Ligré does not have a border that butts up against the Vienne River, rather the commune of Rivière borders the river, and Ligré is set back further south. And because of this, none of the vineyards in Ligré are on any of the alluvial soils that we find close to the Vienne.
So the vineyards in Ligré are more or less concentrated in one area in the northwestern part of the commune. The vast majority of the commune, agriculturally speaking, are used for other crops. And here in this part of Ligré there is a large forested area that form this bit of a hill area at a higher elevation, and then the vineyards are all on the lower slopes beneath the forested area. As a result, the exposures of these vineyards are quite varied.
Now the soils in the commune are as varied as the exposures. The vineyards sitting above around 80m above sea level generally have the Senonian era hydromorphic clays mixed with flint sitting atop the upper Turonian tuffeau bedrock. The slopes at the lower elevations will be on the Upper Turonian yellow tuffeau or the Middle Turonain white micaceous tuffeau chalk depending on where the vines are on the slope. The subsoil and topsoil in these vineyards can be extremely varied as well, with some vineyards on more sandy topsoils, others more of a mix of a sand-silt-clay mix. So within this one commune there is a lot of diversity of exposures, altitudes and soils.
Today's wine is from 4.5ha of vines from a single lieu-dit, Les Chiens Chiens, and the planting dates of the vines varies with some of the oldest vines dating to 1945, and the youngest being planted in 2002. We are situated a little higher than 80m above sea level here, so we find here the Senonian era hydromorphic clay sub-soil, with about 40cm of Kaolinite clay on top of that, and then a topsoil of clay mixed with flint pebbles, and these soils combined are known locally as “cornuelles.”
On the winemaking side, the fruit is all hand harvested in several passes to ensure phenolic ripeness. The grapes are all destemmed, and then through gravity transferred to tank, where fermentation takes place with indigenous yeast. There was a maceration by infusion for about 3 weeks, with a bit of pigeage during that time. The wine is then transferred into 500L oak barrels where it ages for about 15 months before bottling.
Key wine facts below:
Producer: Domaine de la Noblaie
Appellation: Chinon
Commune: Ligré
Lieu-Dit: Les Chiens Chiens
Soil: Senonian era hydromorphic clay, kaolinite clay, and flint
Alcohol: 13.0%
