Les Quatre Piliers Première Cuvée Pinot D’Aunis 2021 (6 Bottles) Loire Valley

by Fine Wine Cellars

$496.00 GST Included

AUSTRALIA WIDE SHIPPING INCLUDED

Pineau d’Aunis is making a comeback in the Loire Valley. This enigmatic variety almost vanished in the early 1970s before starting a slow but steady renaissance.

Today, nearly 500 hectares of Pineau d’Aunis are planted (so we’re told), chiefly in the lesser-known Loire regions such as the Touraine appellation and Coteaux du Loire.

Loved by the natural people–not to mention a favourite of the thirsty fruit fly Drosophila suzukii–we’ve not had too much experience with Pineau d’Aunis outside of some lovely, fragrant reds from Eric Nicolas Domaine de Bellivière.

Regardless, the finest wines for this variety seem to combine beautiful perfumes of wild strawberry, red flower and market-fresh berries with engaging peppery spice and rippling silky fruit—at least, that’s what you get at Les Quatre Piliers.

Low yields are key to the purity and quality on offer here, as is the sensitive winemaking ethos that includes just a little hand plunging and only a pinch of sulphur at bottling. Aging occurs in Valentin’s bespoke oak barrels, whose staves are personally selected and dried in-house before being coopered in Burgundy.

The juice ages on lees for 12 months before being bottled, again, without filtration.

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About Les Quatre Piliers Wines

Son of a winemaker from Touraine, originally from the Cher Valley, Valentin Desloges, 28, learned his trade with inspiring winemakers: Vincent Sipp in Alsace, the Todeschini family at Château Mangot in Saint-Émilion, Thierry and Paul Pillot in Chassagne-Montrachet and Raphaël Coche at Coche-Dury in Meursault. Mentors from varied terroirs, who allowed him to understand work in the vineyard as well as in the cellar.

Today at the head of the Domaine des Quatre Piliers (in Noyers-sur-Cher in Touraine), the young man returns to his native land to begin his new story starting from a blank page, but seasoned by his varied experiences and nourished by influences. The fruit of passionate and ultra-meticulous work, Valentin makes local wines, precise and fine while being marked by generosity.

The 10 ha vineyard, in the beating heart of the AOC Touraine valley, is divided into nearly 25 plots (the largest is barely over a hectare), a succession of small gardens converted to organic upon takeover, where Sauvignon Blanc, Chenin Blanc, Cabernet Franc, Pinot Noir and Côt (Malbec) grow on predominantly clay-limestone soils.

The Cher never strays more than a kilometer from the vines and divides the estate’s vines into two distinct zones on the right and left banks.

It contributes to the circulation of warm air currents that purify the vineyard and reinforces the oceanic influence coming from the west and the Loire. Beneath the entire surface of the vineyard, it is a white paradise: gigantic quarries of immaculate tuffeau, dug 30 m underground, encourage mineral exchange and pierce the Quatre Piliers vineyard with aeration shafts.

Fine Wine Cellars

On the one hand, our role as a merchant of all things wine & spirits could not be simpler. We aim to source the most delicious, the most authentic, and the highest quality products possible from Australia and around the world in order to offer them to our clients. We live or die by how well we perform this task. Of course things are rarely as simple or as easy as they seem. Hunting for wines & spirits is no different. Apart from the months spent travelling, countless days and evenings spent tasting and the outrageous wine expenditure in the name of ‘research’, sourcing quality wine and spirits requires expertise and experience. Understanding the potential of a producer and their products is much more than just a slurp and a spit.

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