Collection: Domaine la Taupe Bruno

Bruno Allion has recently retired and sold his vineyards to two couples - he split the domaine in two, the new owners taking around 6.5 hectares each - his final vintage was 2016, but he helped the new owners in 2017. 2018 will be their first release, and I am excited to continue working with them all - more about them in the future!These 2015's on offer are some of the last wines you will see from Bruno - 2015 was a great vintage too, and the wines are truly superb. He makes wines of incredible quality, that are clean and pure and super expressive - they are free and alive in every sense - and of extremely good value considering the quality.Bruno came from a family of winemakers, and started Domaine de Pontcher back in 1981. The Domaine is (was) 13 hectares in size, with parcels in and around the tiny village of Thésée (Touraine). He began by selling his grapes to a local co-op, but then decided to make a small amount of his own wine on the side. He stopped making his own wine for a while due to a number of reasons, but in 2004 Thierry Puzelat convinced him to start vinifying himself again. In 2007 he stopped working with the co-op, but still sold some of his grapes to other like-minded vignerons. Bruno began converting his vineyards to organic back in 1995, then moved to biodynamics in 1997 (he is fully certified by Demeter). Bruno works with and shares his knowledge amongst other like-minded vignerons in the area, such as Noella Morantin, Paul and Corinne Gillet, Joel Courtault, Laurent Saillard and Julien Pineau. Bruno works together with this group, making the biodynamic preparations, and the group helps each other whenever they can in the vineyards. I first visited Bruno's vineyards in November 2015. It was an incredible experience, as I had never witnessed any vineyards quite like them ‚– there was a real presence of energy, almost like we were inside an orb of some sorts. It's a strange concept, but the place was buzzing. There were wild flowers and herbs everywhere, many trees, birds, bees, insects, fruit trees and vegetable gardens. The place was alive, and nature was in harmony. This was a stark contrast to other vineyards we had seen on the drive there ‚– those with dry brown lifeless soil, and no life whatsoever. I had first tasted Bruno's wines earlier that year in January, and now I had an understanding of why they were so alive and energetic ‚– it all starts in the vineyards! They are extremely beautiful sites, and the soils are a mix of clay, silex and limestone. All grapes are picked by hand, and sorted manually too. Bruno makes wine as naturally as possible. There are no additions of any sort, and he hasn't used any sulfites since 2005 ‚– again, it was Thierry Puzelat who convinced him that he didn't need sulfites. Elevage can be for up to 3 years, and because the cellar is underground, it is cool, and ferments are very slow ‚– sometimes even stopping in Autumn and then restarting in the Spring. Bruno sometimes keeps wines in old barrels for different lengths of time ‚– for example, for 2015 Surin, he has made four separate bottlings, with the 4th bottling only occurring last month. This makes for interesting variances and textures in the wine ‚– a real treat to see the difference between them all. Everything is bottled by gravity as well, and there is no fining or filtration. And, to see how clean he is in the cellar ‚– I love this, because it shows in the wines as well.

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