Domaine Mosse - Chenin, Loire, France (2020)

TASTING NOTES

Textbook Loire Chenin Blanc. Slightly baked apple, pear, quince, wet wool, lemon curd, white flower and wet minerals. Purity and weight on the palate, incredibly focused, intense and long finish. Bottled with just a touch of carbon dioxide which often presents a slight spritz that fades after opening. 

Agnès and René Mosse, along with their sons Joseph and Sylvestre, live and work in the village of St-Lambert-du-Lattay, a village in the Coteaux-du-Layon area of Anjou. They adopted organic viticulture techniques from the start, plowing between and under the rows, and use biodynamic preparations to treat the vines and soil. In their area of "Anjou Noir" (Black Anjou, so called because of the dark color of the soils of slate and volcanic rocks), the soils are shallow, with subsoils of schist and sandstone, and varying amounts of clay on the surface.

With all the efforts put into vineyard work, it is equally important to them to vinify in a natural fashion, and they are particularly attentive to minimizing manipulations and the use of sulfur. All the wines are barrel-fermented and aged. The whites usually go through their malolactic fermentation. The barrels are renewed as needed, but are always older as to not impart oak flavours. 

Fermented in old oak, not to provide any oak flavour but in order to help round off any sharp edges in the wines through the micro-oxygenation.

The Mosse vineyards lie around the Layon river, a tributary to the Loire, which provides the perfect microclimate for a long slow ripening of the grapes. This helps achieve intense fruit character whilst retaining the acidity needed to keep the wines fresh and balanced.