Domaine de la Cotelleraie, 2019 St-Nicolas-de-Bourgueil “Les Perruches”
Cab Franc du Jour #135
The Vallée family’s roots in St-Nicolas-de-Bourgueil stretch back several centuries, and the domaine’s origins follow a path familiar to many estates in the Loire Valley. When Domaine de la Cotelleraie was established in the 1950s by Claude Vallée, it was a polyculture farm with just a handful of hectares of vines planted alongside asparagus, tree fruits, and other crops. Claude’s son Gérald took over in 1997, and today the domaine has grown to 27 hectares of vines focused exclusively on viticulture, with holdings that include some of the most coveted lieux-dits in the region.
All 27 hectares are planted with Cabernet Franc, from which Gérald produces a range of seven cuvées, including three cuvées parcellaires: Les Mauguerets, Les Perruches, and Le Vau Jaumier, each from a distinct terroir. The vineyards have been farmed without synthetic treatments or fertilisers since 1999, and Gérald began converting to organic viticulture in 2009, receiving full certification with the 2012 vintage.
St-Nicolas-de-Bourgueil
The appellation of St-Nicolas-de-Bourgueil encompasses a single village of the same name, beginning at the western boundary of the Bourgueil commune and stretching roughly 6km further west. A few features of this appellation are worth understanding in some detail.
The way St-Nicolas-de-Bourgueil is positioned along the Loire as the river begins its dogleg toward Saumur gives the appellation as a whole a slightly south-southwest orientation. Combined with its proximity to the mouth of the Vienne tributary, this makes St-Nicolas-de-Bourgueil a touch warmer than the Bourgueil AOP, with harvest sometimes starting up to 10 days ahead of its neighbour to the east.
The ancient alluvial terrace that begins in the commune of Restigné and continues westward across the Bourgueil AOP widens as it enters St-Nicolas-de-Bourgueil, owing to the slight change in the Loire’s course. As a result, the ancient alluvium accounts for roughly 65% of the appellation’s vineyard area. As this terrace expands, the zones of recent alluvium and the côte, where the tuffeau chalk-dominated soils are found, narrow considerably.
Les Perruches
Today’s wine comes from vines planted on a small pocket of recent alluvium close to the Loire, at an elevation of around 30m above sea level. This patch of land sits ever so slightly above the surrounding terrain, which is too fertile for viticulture, forming something of an island of workable soil roughly 2.5km from east to west and only 800m wide. It lies just south of the Changeon River and north of the border of the commune of Chouzé-sur-Loire, about 3km from the Loire itself.
The soils here are dominated by hydromorphic sands and clayey-sands over a deep subsoil of flint gravels rich in iron oxide. This combination provides a good balance of water retention and drainage, without the degree of hydric stress that can affect some of the gravel-dominated terroirs further north on the ancient alluvial terrace. The name “Perruches” itself refers to soils with a flint component, a term that appears across a number of areas in the Loire Valley.
The Les Perruches lieu-dit covers 4 hectares of vines planted in 1975, with soils of clayey-sands and flint gravels over that deep flinty gravel subsoil.
In the Cellar
The fruit is hand-harvested and fully destemmed. Fermentation takes place in large wooden vats with indigenous yeast, reaching a maximum temperature of around 28C. Total maceration runs one month, beginning with pigeage by foot during the first 10 days before transitioning to maceration through infusion for the remainder of the post-fermentation period. The wine is then aged over 15 months in older barrels.
Wine Details
Producer: Domaine de la Cotelleraie (Gérald Vallée)
Appellation: St-Nicolas-de-Bourgueil
Commune: St-Nicolas-de-Bourgueil
Lieux-Dits: Les Perruches
Soils: Deep clayey-sand with flint gravels, over a subsoil of flinty gravels rich in iron oxide
Alcohol: 12.5%