Benot Courault “Le Petit Chemin” 2021
Made from a Loire winemaker’s youngest vines, farmed with horses on a plot that’s closer to a garden than a vineyard.
Grape Varietals & Region: 100% Chenin Blanc from Benot’s youngest vines on a 0.7-hectare extension plot, Le Prieur, within Faye-d’Anjou, a small village south of Angers along the Layon river in Anjou, Loire Valley.
Taste Profile: A fresh nose of yellow apple, pear and honeysuckle over a chalky mineral undertone. Medium-bodied with crisp acidity, generous lemon and lime citrus flavours, and a saline mineral backbone.
Winemaking Process: Hand-harvested and direct-pressed, then fermented with wild yeasts in large foudre, where the wine also ages briefly before bottling unfined and unfiltered.
Winemaker: Benot Courault farms this Anjou plot organically and biodynamically, using horses rather than tractors to work the soil treating the vineyard less like an industrial site and more like a farm-garden. He’s widely regarded as one of the Loire’s most exacting Chenin Blanc producers, and Le Petit Chemin, drawn from his youngest vines, is his most immediate, energetic expression of the grape.
