Grapes: Chenin Blanc
Region: Saumur, France
Vintage: 2024
Viticulture: Organic
Soils: limestone, calcareous, silty sand soil
Vinification: Pressed with whole clusters, settled for 24 hours and racked, 3-week ambient yeast fermentation in stainless steel, full malolactic conversion, aged for 6 months in stainless steel, tangential flow filtration, 20-30 ppm SO2 added after pressing and adjusted after fermentation and before bottling if needed.
Aging: 6 months
Fining or Filtering: No fining, lightly filtered
Sulfur: Minimal at bottling
Notes from the Importer: With the 2024 vintage, Romain Guiberteau, Brendan Stater-West, Camille Guiberteau (Romain's daughter) and her partner, Alex Crochet, have launched a new négociant project: Chai de la Dive. This initiative reflects a growing commitment to the local organic farming community by purchasing high-quality fruit from neighboring vineyards.
Although these wines will now appear under a different label, significant portions of the fruit are still farmed by the teams of Romain and Brendan. The change allows them to focus their respective domaines on site-specific, age-worthy bottlings, while Chai de la Dive becomes home to earlier-release, more accessible wines.
All wines are bottled at Domaine Guiberteau, with Romain’s name on the back labels—a nod to both origin and continuity, and the start of a new identity under Chai de la Dive.
The word “Chai” refers to a wine cellar in French. “La Dive” is a nod to the village of Saint-Just-sur-Dive, the historic home of Domaine Guiberteau, and also evokes the nearby La Dive River.
