Interview with a winemaker from the Loire region: Vincent Denis, winemaker and sales director, Domaine du Petit Clocher, Cléré-sur-Layon.
📽️ Interviews with Loire winemakers & Loire winery proprietors
I’m Vincent Denis from Domaine du Petit Clocher. I’m the winemaker and sales director for the estate. Our estate is a family story, as I run the business in partnership with my two cousins: Julian, who is cellar master, and Stéphane, who is a vineyard manager.
Our estate was founded in the 1920s and has grown today into approximately 86 hectares of vineyards.
Wines and soils
Our estate is in the south of the Anjou area, and thanks to this location we have a variety of different terroirs.
The first, the schist on which we grow mostly Chenin brings a lot of minerality to our wines.
The second, the volcanic or igneous rock, brings us earlier ripening in the red wines and hence a very fruity, stewed fruit character to our Cabernet Francs and Cabernet Sauvignons.
Our different wines include Coteaux du Layon, Anjou Blanc and Anjou Villages where we use barrel-ageing for six to twelve months to achieve quite rich and powerful wines as well as more summery wines such as Anjou Rouge, Rosés de Loire and a little IGP white.
For these, we use stainless steel vats, the aim being to make appealing, drinkable and fruity wines.
Sales and export
We have been exporting for around 20 years now and are distributed in about 15 countries.
I travel more and more often to Russia to meet the sommeliers of our clients in person and also to meet their customers face to face.
It is always a pleasure to travel and to meet all of our clientele, be it in Russia, the US or elsewhere around the world.
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