Tasting Notes
100% very old vines Sauvignon - from a 1.1 ha block, it is in some ways the Petit Buisson's older sibling and almost unlike any other Sauvignon Blanc that you can imagine. Once picked, the grapes are transferred to the winery, by refrigerated truck if necessary, and are fermented with absolute minimal intervention; the juice is pressed and decanted and transferred for fermentation into cask, where the wine remains on its lees until it is bottled straight from this vessel, without racking. Bright light lemon with floral lift and with intense stony minerality and brilliant notes of honeysuckle, verbena and hedgerow. This is a seriously good and very rare wine that will bring smiles all round and don't forget to put some away in the cellar! - Importer Note
This is an estate that has created major waves in France over the past 10 years. They are on every blackboard wine list in every important wine bar in Paris and their wines, despite the affordable prices, are strictly allocated.
Two things define the Puzelat brothers' wines : the diversity of their cuvées, and their tenacious work with nearly-extinct grape varieties that were common in the Loire not so long ago, but were put aside by the AOC for reasons having more to do with commercial simplification than quality and terroir.
Clos de Tue-Bœuf is run by two brothers, Jean-Marie and Thierry Puzelat, who tend their 10-hectare family estate in Les Montils (in the Cheverny AOC) and rent 6 hectares in a village nearby, in the Touraine AOC. The region, near the hunting grounds of Sologne, has always used a wide variety of grapes. The brothers were lucky: their father had always worked Clos du Tue Bœuf with a very limited range of organic products and so the soils are alive; he also had never machine-harvested his vineyards or used industrial yeasts. The resultant wines are vibrant, translucent, and explosively flavourful and in many ways taste like they are home-made in that they have an honesty, truthfulness and wholesomeness in their flavours.
Thierry would have liked to expand the Clos du Tue Bœuf, by renting or buying more vineyards but his brother Jean-Marie, single and in his late forties, did not want to add more vineyard and cellar work to his already heavy schedule. So Thierry started a separate business with a friend, set up a winery in the village of Les Montils, and sourced excellent vineyards and growers to buy their grapes.
True to his conviction that good wine is made from healthy grapes, he has selected grape growers who farm their plots organically and bio-dynamic for some and so he now offers a range of local wines, both from Touraine and Cheverny. They are naturally every bit as good and interesting as those of Clos de Tue Boeuf. - Importer Note
| Product Type | Wine White Sauvignon Blanc |
| Volume | 750ml |
| Country | France |
| Region | Loire Valley |
| Sub Region | Touraine |
| Winemaking Practices | Natural |
| Vineyard Practices | Organic/Biodynamic |