Villemade Cheverny Rouge

Grapes: Pinot Noir + Gamay

Region: Cheverny, France

Vintage: 2021

Viticulture: Organic

Soils: Sand + Flint + Clay

Vinification: 80% whole-cluster + 20% destemmed, macerated for 15-20 days, then pressed and fermented in concrete + wooden tronconic vats. No pump-overs, pigeage, rackings or filtration.

Aging: 6 months

Fining or Filtering: None

Sulfur: 1g added at bottling

Notes from the Importer: Hervé Villemade has been working his family's vines in Cellettes since taking over from his father in 1995. Today, the estate represents about 22 hectares of organically farmed fruit within the Cheverny and Cour-Cheverny AOCs, along with a négociant license to supplement production with local grapes.

When Hervé first took over, everything was farmed chemically and vinified
conventionally. Unaware of an alternative, he followed in his parents' footsteps but quickly found his work "uninspired and bland." Around 1997, Hervé was introduced to the wines of Marcel Lapierre and Clos du Tue-Boeuf. Both immediately struck a chord with him.

Coincidentally, at the exact same time that he was discovering these wines, Hervé started developing a very serious allergy to sulfur. He decided to eliminate it from the cellar, but his first sans souffre vinifications quickly led to the conclusion that to make wine this way, you needed the hightest quality grapes. So in 2000, Hervé decided to convert the estate to organic viticulture.