Herve Villemade, Cheverny Rouge 2024

60% Pinot noir, 40% Gamay

Loire, France

The grapes here come from the estate's youngest vines and are a mix of the three terroirs Hervé cultivates: sand and flint, clay and flint/silex and deep silt. The grapes are macerated, 80% whole-cluster, 20% destemmed, for 15 to 20 days. It is fermented and aged in concrete and wooden tronconic vats from 30 to 50hl in size. No pump-overs, pigeage, rackings or filtration.1 to 1.5 grams of sulfur is added at bottling. VEGAN.

Hervé Villemade has been working his family's vines in Cellettes since taking over from his father in 1995. Today, the estate represents 22ha within the Cheverny and Cour-Cheverny AOCs, along with a négociant license to supplement production with local grapes. Certified organic.

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.

The majority of the production consists of Cheverny Blanc and Cheverny Rouge, all farmed from the historic family parcels in Cellettes. Hervé's area is particularly vulnerable to spring frost, a phenomenon that has greatly accelerated in the last 20 years with global warming. Due to mild winters, the vines due not go into as deep a hybernation and beging budding weeks earlier than they used to. Spring frosts have always been common, but would occur at a point in the vines' vegetative cycle where little to no harm could be done.

Hervé has lost part of his crop to this phenomenon in most years, including nine vintages between 1995 and 2012 where 80% or more of his family land was destroyed. In such, Hervé has had to completetly overhaul and rethink his entreprise. He has invested in costly anti-frost towers, is pruning much later and leaving grass to intentionally compete with the vines. It also led him to begin a négociant business sourcing grapes from local purveyors.