Yannick Amirault Bourgueil Le Grand Clos 2021

Certified Organic (Ecocert)

This wine is produced from old vines averaging more than 45 years old which are located around the middle of the slope on the best soils. The soils are superficially clay with flint, a mix also known as perruches, with deeper limestone. The wine is matured in 400 litre demi-muid barrels for 24 months and is the richest and deepest wine in his cellar. In great years the wine is a thick almost impenetrable black colour with amazing concentration and depth of mulberry and black raspberry fruit with anise and spice notes that linger for ages. This is a wine that shows very well at a relatively young age, and which will also age effortlessly for decades. This wine has remarkable depth of fruit supported by substantial fine tannins with just enough acidity to keep the wine fresh and appetizing without becoming too heavy. From the fresh 2021 vintage, this is a remarkably fresh and pure wine of substantial depth and structure. This is Bourgueil, and Cabernet Franc, at its finest.

‘Yannick and Benoît make a simply marvellous array of wines, vibrant and perfumed yet dark and confident at the lower levels, the wines from the more sandy soils, while those from the limestone terroirs sitting up above the alluvial terrace are capable of much greater things, given ten or fifteen years in the cellar. These aren't just wines to challenge those made in Chinon. Nor are these wines about which we should enthuse solely in the context of Bourgueil and St Nicolas de Bourgueil. This domaine, I believe, turns out some of the very best red wines in the entire Loire Valley. Overlook them to your disadvantage.’ Chris Kissack, The Wine Doctor, January 2018.

Bourgueil is located west of Tours in the western part of the Loire Valley. Bourgueil is situated on the northern side of the Loire, across the river from Chinon, and represents one of the northern-most appellations for growing red grape varieties in France. There are a variety of soil types here with the biggest and most cellar-worthy wines generally coming from the best vineyards on the slopes located further away from the Loire to the north and north-east of the town of Bourgueil. The vineyards on the flat gravelly river soils closer to the Loire yield wines which are usually aromatic, elegant and earlier to mature.

Amirault has about 13 hectares of vineyard holdings in Bourgueil, mostly located on, or just at, the base of these slopes to the north and northeast of the village of Bourgueil. Yannicks son Benoit now runs the estate and like his father he has chosen to work organically in the vineyards and is certified organic (Ecocert). All vinifications are made with indigenous yeasts with minimal SO2 and ageing takes place in a mixture of large tronconic oak vats, larger demi-muid barrels and increasingly in clay amphora. Extraction is long (up to 6 weeks) yet very gentle. All wines are bottled unfined and unfiltered.