Dom. de la Pepiere

Marc Ollivier’s Muscadet-sur-Lie is the authentic item — it has lees contact until the time of bottling. This extended contact gives it the crispness that makes Muscadet so refreshing. It is the traditional way to make Muscadet, but has become the exception as growers and shippers rush to bottle “technically correct” wines by early January.

Ollivier hand harvests, uses natural yeasts, waits for the wine to finish and bottles with a very light filtration. The vineyards are in old vines (40 years and older) with a particularly good exposition on a plateau overlooking the river Sèvre. All the vineyards are from original stock: Ollivier is the only grower in the Muscadet who does not have a single clonal selection in his vineyards.

Ollivier also produces a very-old-vine cuvée of Muscadet from a single-plot vineyard in schist, the Clos des Briords. These are among the oldest vines in his estate (planted in 1930) and they enjoy a particularly good exposition. Also, when most of his estate’s vines are planted on poor, shallow soil with hard granite very close to the surface, the Clos des Briords has a much deeper top soil of clay and silica over a brittle granite subsoil: ensuring excellent drainage in wet years, and better moisture retention in dry summers.

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