Les Nuits Fresches 2022

Marc Houtin and Alexandre Forge took over Les Vignes du Fresche in 2022, at La Pommeraye on the Mauges side of the Loire. Houtin also runs La Grange aux Belles; Forge is an oenologist of some twenty years who keeps a wine bar in Angers besides. Their twenty-four hectares sit in a single unbroken parcel on a schist plateau above the river, farmed organically for more than two decades, with hedgerows and cover crops doing the work chemicals do elsewhere. Pinot Noir is not what Anjou is known for. What the schist gives it is energy rather than weight: red cherry, a peppery lift, and a taut mineral line that carries the finish well past where you expect it to stop.