Michel Bregeon Muscadet Sevre et Maine Sur Lie 2021

Alcohol: 12.5%

Grape(s): 100% Melon de Bourgogne

Localization: Pays Nantais, Loire Valley, France

Tasting Notes: It fills the mouth with suspicions of honeysuckle and pulpy stone fruits, all while maintaining classic notes of iodine and the sea breeze that make this the vinous equivalent of tide pooling.

The Domain: Michel Brégeon is part renegade, part crusader, and full-blown terrorist. Over the years, he has become an ardent defender of the Muscadet-Sèvre-et-Maine terroir, the most highly regarded of the four appellations in the Pays Nantais. Thanks to his deep understanding of the nuances of the land, he plays the game much differently than the region’s caves cooperatives and negociants, who produce en masse and lose the subtlety of the appellation. For seven years, he worked for his family’s domaine before setting out on his own in 1975. When his father retired in 1989, he gave his remaining vineyard land to Michel. Today, the domaine comprises 10 hectares of vineyards in clay, silica, and gabbro soils. Gabbro is old, blue-green, volcanic rock, rarely found in vineyard land. Formed by magma eruptions under the ocean floor, it is said to impart intense complexity to the domaine’s wines. His corner of the Muscadet-Sèvre-et-Maine, Gorges, is particularly known for this rock, and all of Michel’s vines are planted in it. His small community of vignerons is actively seeking recognition and preservation of this particular cru, called “Gorgeois.”

Though Michel retired after the 2010 vintage, the domaine’s legacy lives on with the young vigneron, and Muscadet native, Fred Lailler. With the consult of Michel, Fred has continued the Brégeon ethic of producing wines from only the top terroirs of the region and he has started the process of converting the vineyards to organic farming practices, a transition that will be complete in 2019.