Sebastien Brunet, Arpent Vouvray Sec 2018 (750 ml)

Appellation: Vouvray.
Cuvée: Arpent.
Colour: White.
Grapes: Chenin Blanc.
About: Sébastien’s entry level wine made from a selection of almost all of his vineyards. A perfect demonstration of how Sébastien makes some of the most taut yet expressive wines of all Vouvray. The Cuvée name comes the first year of production, 2007, when all the fruit came from a single parcel sized “one Arpent”, which is an old French unit of measure, just under half a hectare.

Vines
Location: from the communes of Chançay and Vernou.
Size: 5 hectares.
Age: vines planted in 1980.
Soils: clay soils comprising a lot of silex.
Exposition: north-facing.
Altitude: 100m.
Training: on wire, cordon de royat.
Farming: organic, cover crops.
Average yield hl/ha: 40.
Climate: continental with cool, wet winters and hot, dry summers.

Winemaking
Fruit is hand harvested into small 15kg boxes, and carefully sorted on arrival at the winery. It’s immediately very slowly pressed for about 5h and cold-settled overnight. Moved to stainless steel tank, it’s fermented using natural yeasts at a naturally cool cellar temperature, around 16 to 22º. About 20% is moved to finish ferment and then to age in 10 year old barriques. No sulfites are added until just before bottling. It’s aged for 6 months before bottling, without fining or filtration, except for a gross filtration to remove large particles.