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Jean Christophe Garnier "Gamay-Aunis"

Regular price $33.00

Only 11 in stock

Grapes: 50% Gamay + 50% Pineau d'Aunis

Region: Loire, France

Vintage: 2023

Viticulture: Organic

Soils: Clay, Schist, Loam

Vinification: harvested by hand, 6 to 7 day carbonic maceration (whole cluster) in fiberglass and stainless steel tanks

Aging: 9 months

Fining or Filtering: None

Sulfur: None added

Notes from the Importer: 

For years now, Jean-Christophe Garnier’s complex Chenin Blancs and easy drinking reds are wines we have loved and admired from afar. From first discovering them at The Ten Bells in the late aughts (the cash only days!), ordering bottles whenever in Paris or the obligatory magnum following post-Dive Bouteille romps at le Cercle Rouge in Angers, Garnier’s work is something we’ve long admired as fans. And based on the immediate excitement of our customers bringing the wines back to the US market after a six year hiatus, it would seem many of you feel the same way!

With no family ties to viticulture or winemaking, Garnier found his passion for wine as a sommelier in his home region of Brittany. In the late 1990’s, he took a year off to go stud viticulture in hopes to deepen his knowledge before opening a wine bar with a friend. Due to its proximity to Brittany, he enrolled in a school close to the viticultural region of Anjou, where he was placed in an apprenticeship working with Mark Angeli of the legendary Ferme de la Sansonièrre. Typical of Angeli, Mark immediately encouraged JC to start a new life by creating his own estate. After completing his curriculum, Garnier went back to restaurants for a couple of years but ultimately returned to Anjou after Angeli found him a couple of hectares to start his own estate in 2002.

Far from the hotbed of forward-thinking producers that currently populate the area, Anjou was at the time a struggling region known mostly for its sweet Bonnezeaux and Coteaux du Layon appellation wines, with generic Anjou whites mostly produced as cloyingly sweet, sterile-filtered copycats of the aforementioned AOC’s. The wines made with red grapes weren’t faring so well either: tannic, rustic Grolleau and Cab Franc/Cab Sauv blends or Rosé d'Anjou, another cloyingly sweet, sterile-filtered beverage that had become increasingly difficult to sell by the turn of the millennium.

Garnier, along with a small group of now legendary trailblazers- Mark Angeli, Richard Leroy, Patrick Baudoin and Agnès and René Mosse to name a few- took advantage of the region’s identity crisis, gaining access to cheap, readily available land from the mid 1990’s through the mid 2000’s. Decades ahead of their time, these outsiders saw the potential to break away from sweet wine production, particularly by producing dry or off-dry whites highlighting the incredibly varied types of schist, terroirs, micro-climates, expositions, and elevations the region has to offer.

Starting with 2.3 hectares in 2002, from the beginning Garnier’s production has consisted of single vineyard expressions of Chenin Blanc: starting with les Dreuillés (no longer in production), over the years this has come to include Bézigon, la Roche, Rouchefert and the recently acquired Les Justices and 13 Vents, with each wine named after their respective lieu-dit. The Chenin  grapes are direct-pressed and, while vinified and aged in various vessels, the intent is always to express terroir through wines approachable in youth but ultimately meant to cellar and age.

Reds came only in 2010, with Pineau d'Aunis, Grolleau, Gamay, Cabernet Franc, and Cabernet Sauvignon rounding out the lineup. In contrast to the more serious nature of the whites, JC opts for short, infusion stye whole-cluster macerations for his reds, resulting in a more vin-de-soif style. Most of his reds are bottled very early -some as early as November of the same year- and meant to drink relatively young. The one exception is "Les Tailles", a lieu-dit planted in Cabernet Franc that sees a 12 day, whole-cluster infusion maceration then ferments and ages 12 months in barrel before release.

The estate has been certified organic since its inception. Garnier currently farms 10 hectares of vines, though a significant amount of that land consists of new plantations, of which only some of the parcels are just starting to produce fruit. Four distinct and seperate sectors are farmed, three surrounding the village of Saint-Lambert-du-Lattay and one in the village of Saint-Aubin-de-Luigné. Creating competition for the vines so they can sink their roots further into the mother rock, he likes to plant at a much higher density than what is tradtional in the region, 6500 to 7000 vines per hectare versus the typical 5000 to 5500. 

In addition to his own production, for the last few years Garnier has purchased the equivalent of two hectares of organically farmed fruit from a nearby vigneron with soils quasi-indentical to those he farms. Including the single négociant cuvée "Les Nouettes", production is split roughly 50/50 between white and red wines.

In the cellar, Garnier began omitting S02 from his wines in the 2006 vintage, the same year he intentionally declassified his wines from Anjou to Vin de Table (a now common occurence that was all but unheard of at the time). Many vintages were vinified entirely without added sulfites between 2006 and 2016, though in two vintages Garnier felt obliged to use very small amounts at press. However, with time and experience he has come to believe those sulfur additions did nothing to alter the identity or course of those wines, leading him to stick to a stricly zero S02 policy from the the 2016 vintage onwards. From our experience, this decision comes less from dogma and more from JC's cerebral, attentive nature and conviction that vinifying this way best expresses his terroirs.

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