Before my first-ever trip to the Loire Valley in May 2022, I wasn’t going to leave anything to chance. I had to make the most of my week, so I meticulously planned all of my visits in advance, organizing my schedule down to the minute, right down to the drive time between domaines. I left little, if any, room for spontaneity.
Within 24 hours after arriving to the region, I received an insider tip from an Instagram follower who suggested visiting Aurélien Revillot, who was a relative newcomer to the Bourgueil appellation. A quick Google search revealed that the domaine was part of Becky Wasserman’s portfolio, which also included exemplary Loire producers like Arnaud Lambert, Romain Guiberteau, and Antoine Sanzay, all of whom were already part of my itinerary for their shared passion for the parcellaire approach of producing terroir-driven expressions of Cabernet Franc.
After a little juggling, I found one spot in my jam-packed itinerary and, lucky for me, Aurélien was quick to reply and confirmed his availability. It was a very warm May afternoon, and upon arriving at the domaine, I was greeted by Aurélien himself, who quickly apologized for his appearance – spring is a busy time in the vineyards, and he was a one-man show and had been working in his parcels all morning.
Once introductions were out of the way, he introduced his domaine by way of a laminated map of the Bourgueil appellation, his parcels marked with colour-coded stickers. A second laminated map quickly followed, this one showing the appellation’s underlying geology and how the terroirs shift from the slopes down to the flatter sites closer to the Loire.
Aurélien talked through his approach and the parallels between his native Burgundy and Bourgueil. His goal was to apply a similar philosophy to his domaine: one cuvée blended from several parcels as the entry-level wine, but the real joy, and the real challenge, lay in making single-vineyard wines from his best parcels on the slopes and discovering just how site-expressive Cabernet Franc could be. It was immediately apparent that I had found a kindred spirit in Bourgueil.
At the time of that first visit, Aurélien had three finished cuvées, with two additional cuvées parcellaires set to join the range starting with the 2020 vintage. So when I ran into him at La Paulée d’Anjou this past June and he invited me to the domaine for a three-vintage vertical tasting of his range, the two newer cuvées included. There was no itinerary to juggle this time. I simply said yes.
The Domaine
Aurélien comes from a family of agriculteurs in the Mâconnais, in southern Burgundy. He developed a passion for wine at an early age and studied in Dijon, completing degrees in both viticulture and winemaking, before working vintages across France, in Alsace, the Languedoc, and Burgundy, as well as abroad, with stints at Domaine Drouhin in Oregon and Newton Johnson in South Africa. Eventually he landed in the Loire Valley, with the Caslot family of Domaine de la Chevalerie in Bourgueil for an eight-month stage in 2010.