Domaine des Roches Neuves

Thierry Germain comes from a line of Bordeaux growers and grew up in Saint-Émilion. In 1991 he did something that took some explaining in his circle: he moved to the Loire with his wife Marie and took over a domaine founded in 1850 by the Duveau family. The people of Saumur took a while to trust a newly arrived Bordelais.

What opened the door was his apprenticeship. He trained with the Foucault brothers of Clos Rougeard, the house that defined what Loire Cabernet Franc could become; he came to call Charly Foucault his spiritual father. That is where the estate's understanding of the variety comes from.

The vineyard grew slowly and in stages. They began with twelve hectares of Cabernet Franc; in 1996 they added two of Chenin and eight more of Cabernet Franc; and in 2012 two new sites came in, Clos de l'Echelier and Les Mémoires. Today there are twenty-eight hectares across sixty-one plots, with reds in Saumur-Champigny and whites in Saumur.

The terroir alternates chalky, sandy and clay-rich soils over tuffeau, the soft local limestone, which they single out as the key to the place. Conversion to organic came in the late 1990s and biodynamics in the early 2000s.