Domaine de la Pépière

Marc Ollivier founded the estate in 1984 in the hamlet of La Pépière, next to Maisdon-sur-Sèvre, in the heart of Muscadet Sèvre-et-Maine.

The name comes from pépie, an old French word for thirst, after the dry stony slopes above the hamlet. A winery called, quite literally, thirst.

He began with seven hectares and took three decades to build the vineyard, choosing parcels by terroir rather than convenience. Today it runs past forty hectares, half of them inside the appellation's crus communaux: Clisson, Château-Thébaud, Monnières-Saint-Fiacre and Gorges. That proportion is unusually high for an independent Muscadet estate.

The soils are granite, gneiss and gabbro, with granite dominant: not the usual thing in this area.

Ollivier farmed organically from the outset, when almost nobody in Muscadet did. The estate is certified biodynamic today.