Wine & Spirits - Fall 2022 - 60

Top 100 Wineries
FRANCE | LANGUEDOC-ROUSSILLON
Château Maris
This hemp winery in La Livinière has become a model for sustainable
winemaking, from its vineyard management to the wines it bottles.
ROBERT EDEN
earlIer thIs year, a saIlboat arrIved In
Port Elizabeth, New Jersey, bearing 10,000
bottles of wine-many of them from Château
Maris. It was, actually, Maris's second
sailboat shipment, as the first trip last
December proved both faster and far less
carbon-intensive than a container ship from
France to the US. While they'll need many
more sailboats to fully solve the issue of how
to ship wine overseas without huge carbon
expenditures, the effort is in step with the
estate's guiding philosophy. The Minervois
estate became the first B Corp-certified
winery in Europe in 2016, and it remains
just one of 26 worldwide. All the vineyards
have been farmed under organics and biodynamics
since Robert Eden took over the
estate in 1997; all of the estate's wine are
made in a hemp winery with a minimum
of inputs (some without sulfur additions),
bottled in ultralight glass and boxed with
recycled material. While the efforts require
more handwork in the vines and the winery,
the winery is not only minimizing its use of
carbon-based energy but also creating wines
with juicy exuberance. The Maris wines
often seem to glow from within, showing off
the garrigue-covered wilds of La Livinière.
-T.Q.T.
FOUNDED:
1997
OWNERS:
Robert Eden and
Kevin Parker
WINEMAKER:
Robert Eden
VITICULTURIST:
Benjamin Darnault
ACRES OWNED:
90
ANNUAL PRODUCTION:
12,000 cases
ESTATE GROWN:
100%
FARMING PRACTICES:
Biodynamic (Biodyvin,
Demeter); Certified
B Corp
IMPORTER:
Cordier,
New Rochelle, NY
60
2019 Minervois La Livinière La Touge
($22, 95 points) A blend based on syrah with
some grenache and carignan, this is vinified in
cement, both in eggs and vats. A plump, plummy
red, it retains a sense of cool, stony clarity that
brings light to its darkness, and beams those
dark flavors into long-lasting fragrance. It's at
once firmly structured and ethereal, a balance
that makes it addictive as well as potentially
long-lived.
2019 Minervois La Livinière Natural Selection
Syrah-Grenache ($22, 94 points) This
was selected from the same rocky, limestonestrewn
vineyard as La Touge and vinified the
same way but bottled earlier. As such, it feels
richer and more floral than the 2019 La Touge,
its sense of cool, breezy acidity and youthful exuberance
underlining the expansive flavors.
2019 Minervois La Livinière Les Planels
($28, 90 points) Oak's vanilla notes soften the
gruff blackberry power of this earthy, intense
Minervois. Made mainly from syrah planted 35
years ago, fermented in a mix of open-topped
concrete and wooden vats, it's ripe and spicy, a
full, forward red for steakhouse drinking.
WINE & SPIR IT S
F all 202 2
FRANCE | LOIRE VALLEY
Fournier Père et Fils
The terroirs of the eastern Loire come into focus in Fournier's singleparcel
wines and blends defined by soil type.
FREDERIC JaCQUET
In 1968, when Claude FournIer InherIted
his family's farm in Chaudoux, it was home
to goats, cows and vines. He saw an opportunity
in grape growing, first expanding
the plantings at the farm to 33 acres, then
purchasing other parcels in Sancerre, and
expanding into Pouilly-Fumé and Menetou-Salon.
By 2015, when Claude began to
consider retirement, he turned to Joost de
Willebois. The Dutch businessman, himself
retired from a career that included a stint
as chair of the Amsterdam stock exchange,
had settled his family at a 40-acre sauvignon
vineyard in Touraine. De Willebois purchased
Fournier's domaine and has built a
new team, including Jean-François Lefebvre,
who manages the collection of vineyards
with their varied soils, exposures and plant
material. Chief winemaker Frédéric Jacquet
focuses on the expression of each parcel, fermenting
them all separately, and bottling
single vineyards or blending the wines into
cuvées based on soils. -C.W.
2020 Sancerre Grande Cuvée La Chaudouillonne
(95 points, $45) La Chaudouillonne is a
blend from parcels in Verdigny where the soils
are packed with caillottes, the round river stones
that provide one family of terroirs in Sancerre. In
2020, Fournier's fruit gave an intensely aromatic
and floral sauvignon, its length shifting from lemony
citrus to herbal lemongrass. The wine feels
complete, with lasting acidity that gives shape
and structure to those exuberant flavors.
FOUNDED:
1926
WINEMAKER:
Frédéric Jacquet
VITICULTURIST:
Jean-François Lefebvre
OWNER:
Joost de Willebois
ACRES OWNED:
96
ANNUAL PRODUCTION:
24,000 cases
ESTATE GROWN:
100%
IMPORTER:
David Milligan
Selections,
Ridgefield, CT
2020 Menetou-Salon Côtes de Morogues
Blanc ($28, 93 points) Grown in the clay-rich
soils in Morogues, this sauvignon harmonizes
green florals and rich fruit in a way that manages
to feel generous yet restrained. It's a MenetouSalon
that invites you to sit with it and think,
rewarding patient tasters with scents of blossoming
lemon thyme, juicy pineapple-lemon fruit
and silky textures. The flavors come through as
clear on the fourth day open as they did on the
first, precise and lasting, suggesting the wine will
only improve with a few years in the cellar.
2019 Menetou-Salon Côtes de Morogues
Rouge ($28, 91 points) Fournier's range of
pinots, a small portion of the winery's total production,
showed well this year, with restrained
aromas and seductive magnetism. This one,
from Morogues, is lightly fruity and floral, its rustic
length stitching together dark tannins with
crushed-raspberry flavors.
Wine & Spirits - Fall 2022

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Wine & Spirits - Fall 2022
