Les Fresnettes 2021 | Château de Targé | Saumur Blanc

The house was a hunting lodge that Louis XIV gave to his secretary, Phélypeaux de Pontchartrain. In 1655 Pontchartrain handed it over as a dowry when his daughter married Joseph Gigault de Targé-Parnay, and that is where both the name and the date come from: it entered the family as a wedding gift and has never left it.

It stands in Parnay, Maine-et-Loire, on the tuffeau plateau above the Loire. The two world wars left the estate battered, and it was Fresnette Ferry and Edgard Pisani who brought it back, over twenty years of work.

Their son Édouard Pisani-Ferry arrived at the estate on 1 August 1976, aged twenty-two and newly qualified as an agricultural engineer in Montpellier. He cut yields and expanded the property to today's twenty-four hectares. He is the son of Edgard Pisani, minister of Agriculture under de Gaulle, and of Fresnette Ferry, granddaughter of Charles Ferry, brother of Jules Ferry.

The estate is now run by his son Paul Pisani-Ferry, certified organic since 2020 and holding the HVE distinction. They bottle Cabernet Franc red under Saumur-Champigny, Chenin Blanc white under Saumur, and sparkling wines aged in troglodyte cellars.

Les Fresnettes is the ash-tree plot, which is where its name comes from: tuffeau subsoil under a cover of clay and silt between 25 centimetres and a metre deep, planted entirely with Chenin Blanc. It is picked by hand in two or three passes, and after pneumatic pressing the wine ferments and ages for nine to twelve months in 400-litre demi-muids, one third new oak, one third one-wine and one third two-wine barrels.