Clos Henri

The name is a tribute. The Bourgeois family has grown vines in Chavignol, in Sancerre, since 1696, but it was Henri Bourgeois who in the 1950s began with two hectares on the village slopes, betting on a region that back then was nobody. The family domaine carries his name, and so does this estate on the other side of the world.

His sons Jean-Marie and Rémi joined in the 1960s and eventually set out on what the family calls the great search: twelve years travelling the planet to find a terroir capable of giving Sauvignon Blanc the precision of the Loire. They found it in 2000 in the Wairau Valley, in Marlborough, where the soils resembled Sancerre's more than any others. They bought 98 hectares of native pasture and called it Clos Henri: after their father, and after the French tradition of the enclosed vineyard.

The estate is split in two by the Wairau Fault, and that fracture is its whole point: on one side, glacial greywacke stones laid down by the Otiran glaciation some 75,000 years ago; on the other, wind-blown Waimaunga clays. Two different soils within the same property, bottled separately.

The vineyard has been certified organic by BioGro since the 2013 vintage, with biodynamic practices.