Sylvain Dittière (La Porte Saint Jean), 2017 'Les Pouches' Saumur Rouge
The names Sylvain Dittière or La Porte Saint Jean may not be immediately familiar to many of you, but if there was any name from the new generation of vignerons in Saumur that your should remember, it is Sylvain Dittière.
A Loire Valley native, Sylvain's family cultivated roses locally in the Loire, and at the age of 16, Sylvain fell in love with the woman that would eventually become his partner, Pauline Foucault, daughter of Charly and Françoise Foucault, of Clos Rougeard and Château Yvonne respectively.
Sylvain's journey in wine began not long after meeting Pauline when he started working at Château Yvonne in Saumur-Champigny in 1999 when the project was originally under the guidance of Françoise Foucault. In addition to completing his formal winemaking studies and being intimately connected to Clos Rougeard, Sylvain also spent time working with Pauline's brother Antoine Foucault of Domaine du Collier, as well as Thierry Germain of Domaine des Roches Neuves in Saumur-Champigny, as well as Gerard Gauby in the Roussillon and Marc Tempé in Alsace.
Sylvain established La Porte Saint Jean in the commune of Montreuil-Bellay in Saumur in 2010. In Saumur, Sylvain is farming 6 hectares worth of vineyards, about 4 hectares are Cabernet Franc and two hectares are devoted to Chenin Blanc and Sauvignon Blanc.
Today we're looking at his cuvée Les Pouches, which is coming from a single lieu-dit in Montreuil-Bellay, and one of two Saumur Rouge he makes, along with Les Cormiers, which is another lieu-dit located in the commune of Doué-en-Fontaine.
As I haven't done too many videos featuring wines from the Saumur appellation specifically, let me give you a quick overview of this appellation. So the Saumur AOP covers 31 communes across 3 departments in the Loire, and it encompasses 5 appellations: Saumur Rouge, Saumur Blanc, Saumur Rosé, Saumur Puy Notre Dame and Saumur Mousseux. It also covers the 9 communes of AOP Saumur-Champigny for bubbles, whites and rosés.
Across this large appellation, there is a lot of diversity of terroirs, but what I want to focus on today relates specifically to the commune of Montreuil-Bellay. This commune is about 15km south of the village of Saumur. And what is important to note about this place, at least geologically speaking, here we find the Montreuil-Bellay fault, which stretches about 150 km, and through tectonic activity over hundreds of millions of years, this has exposed a different bedrock and soils in several communes in Saumur.
So across four communes here in Saumur, specifically Doué-en-Fontaine, Brossay, Vaudelnay, and Montreuil-Bellay, we find a narrow band of Jurassic-era limestones and soils. And just as with the Turonian tuffeau chalks we find in Saumur-Champigny, Chinon and Bourgueil, there is a lot of complexity to the Jurassic-era soils we find here in these four communes. Specifically in the commune of Montreuil-Bellay, the main viticultural area of the commune is flanked on the west and east sides of the Thouet River, which is a tributary of the Loire that starts at the village of Saumur. Here we have huge variability of soils from lieu-dit to lieu-dit and parcel to parcel. There is everything from ancient alluvium from the Thouet, to Jurassic-era limestones and marls, to the Jurassic-era flinty limestone we find more predominantly in the commune of Brossay to the west, we even find some limestones, sands and clays that date to the Cenomanian era as well.
So, this lieu-dit of Les Pouches is situated right in the heart of the Montreuil-Bellay commune. It is on the east side of the Thouet River, and it lies on this very gentle west-northwest facing slope, essentially in this ancient riverbed.
Sylvain has 2 hectares of Cabernet Franc here, which he purchased in 2017. Half of the vines are around 20 years old and half of the vines are around 70 years of age. In his parcels, the soils are predominantly deep ancient alluvium, a clayey-sandy silt, so about 50% silt content, and this deep topsoil sits atop a bedrock of Jurassic-era yellow marl. The parcels are farmed organically, and have been the beginning.
The winemaking here is very traditional. Hand-picked fruit, that is meticulously sorted, once in the vineyard, and then twice in the cellar, before the berries are destemmed. Fermentation takes place in a combination of closed large, wooden conical tanks and concrete tanks. And maceration is through infusion, essentially the tanks are filled to the top with the berries and then closed, and during fermentation, the condensation that forms on the inside of the top of the tank helps to keep the cap wet during fermentation. The wine rests on skins about 4ish weeks. And aging takes place in one to three year old oak barrels, 225 and 228L oak barrels, for about two years in their underground cellars that date to the 13th century.
Key wine wine facts below:
Producer: La Porte Saint Jean (Sylvain Dittière)
Appellation: Saumur Rouge
Commune: Montreuil-Bellay
Lieux-Dits: Montreuil-Bellay
Soils: Deep clayey-sandy silt (ancient alluvium) topsoil, atop a Jurassic-era yellow marl bedrock
Alcohol: 12.5%
