Les Nuits Fresches 2022

• Its peppery lift suits duck and heat: larb pet or ayam taliwang.
• Or roast pork with prunes, cooked slowly and eaten warm.

Les Vignes du Fresche sits on a plateau of black schist above the Loire at La Pommeraye, in the part of Anjou known as Anjou Noir. For decades it was the Boré family's Domaine du Fresche, and Alain Boré converted it to organic farming in 2000, long before it was fashionable here.

In 2022 the estate passed to Marc Houtin, who founded La Grange aux Belles, and it has since been joined by Alexandre Forge, who runs the wine bar and shop À boire et à manger in Angers. Between them they know natural wine from both sides of the bar.

The vines sit in one unbroken block of twenty-four hectares, sandy clay over black schist. Alongside the organic farming they have planted trees and hedgerows and let cover crops grow between the rows, treating the whole plateau as something to look after rather than a production site.

In the cellar they work with whole bunches and carbonic maceration, native yeasts and very little sulphur, and much of the range is bottled without fining or filtration.

Racine carries three of their wines. Radicalement Rouge and Radicalement Blanc are the direct, everyday end of the range: a juicy blend of Cabernet Franc, Gamay, Grolleau and Cabernet Sauvignon, and a taut, saline Chenin. Les Nuits Fresches is Pinot Noir, unusual for Anjou, and the schist gives it energy rather than weight.