What grapes are commonly grown in the Loire valley? What is it like to be an organic, sustainable winery in The Loire? Join me in Episode #143 of The Wine CEO Podcast as I speak with Charlotte, the current apprentice at Chateau de Miniere, an amazing winery in the heart of Bourgueil, a small appellation known for outstanding Cabernet Franc.
Chateau de Miniere is open for wine tastings at their beautiful winery and they operate as an AirBnB and special event venue! Check out their website for more info: https://www.chateaudeminiere.com/
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Hey friends and welcome to the wine CEO podcast show last week our episode was all about the lir valley I did a very quick overview oneone of everything you need to know about the lir valley top great varieties grown here names of the main regions and Appalachians so if you
Miss that episode hit pause and go check it out because it has a lot of great information that is going to help build into today’s episode today I’m speaking with the cellor manager at chatau Minier Charlotte Charlotte was an amazing Resource as I was going through the lir
Valley she shared what it’s like to live and work in this beautiful region and spoke about the unique biodynamic practices at Chateau Miner it’s an episode you don’t want to miss so let’s dive into my conversation with Charlotte well High Wine CEO podcast listeners I’m so excited because I am currently in the lir valley and today I’m visiting Chateau manier and I have Charlotte who is the wine tourism and seller door manager here and she’s in an apprenticeship studying wine and working at chatau Miner and so she’s here to
Tell us a little bit more about the lair Valley as well as chat Miner so Charlotte welcome to Wine CEO podcast thank you yes so happy to have you here so would you mind first telling our listeners a little bit about the lir valley so we’ve been going through this
Series on France so they’ve learned about burgundy and the rone and they’re going to learn more about champagne and Bordeaux and other regions so if you had to give a quick overview of the lir what makes this region so special so the valley is obviously amazing because it’s
The wine region that’s going to be all along the river which is uh a wide river still uh still going on in France it’s very long river it’s beautiful it’s very flat and it’s actually perfect for one growing uh we have a cool climate we
Have the INF of the ocean uh it’s going to be you’re going to have amazing great varieties of course we have cab we make a lot of different wines out of it um yeah that’s amazing and so for this region in particular um the Shannon Blanc and Cabernet Fran are the main
Grape varieties there are some others that are are found throughout the region as well well um if you had to categorize the uh flavor notes that you get from Cabernet Franc and shanon Blanc from this area are they lighter are they heavier what would you explain to the
Listeners so it really depends where we where we are on the region uh and what you want to do with it cab as we taste it is a wine you can make very light and fruity wine out of it it can be very spicy it can be very structured uh I
Would say main characters will be B Peppa as we taste it uh red fruits dark fruits um yeah so a wine very poent you can make light heavy wines um bold sharp something also very smooth and chbl is really it depends because we do those
Parking wies out of it uh we do the dry wines out of it some very mineral uh on the dry wines we do the sweet wines out of it we taste is very honey like uh so would be mainly uh honey like AAA like white lot of white flowers and a very
Nice minerality so there’s a lot of variety across the lir valley definitely and there’s also um Savon Blanc that’s grown here right so there’s some other kind of minor grape varieties can you mention some of those for us yeah we’re going to have some La we’re going to
Have Shon of course we do a lot of sparking lines out of it we’re going to have a little bit of of P of G so it’s a little bit of Co malbe also uh so yeah we grow a little bit of everything here that’s I think the biggest thing that
I’ve learned about the lair there’s incredible diversity right there’s a lot of different grape varieties it’s a cooler climate so the uniqueness of the Tero I think gives you a very specific profile where the the grapes that are grown here are going to be very uniquely l driven style absolutely it’s going to
Be lighter than whatever else you’re going to find from other countries region as you say it’s cool climate you don’t find a lot of K for example in cool climate uh for example biggest country producing Chan is South Africa which is obviously very hot climate so
It’s going to be very different and we have also different songs all along the valley that’s going to make the wines so different I think one of the things that I didn’t quite appreciate before coming here was how large the lir valley is it’s so spread out and driving from one
Area to the next can take a really long time it’s actually pretty long yeah if you go all along the valley it’s it takes 4 hours maybe maybe more yeah Abol it’s crazy it’s big and the um diversity from one region to the next is so
Incredible I mean you have you’re on the the beach you have like the coastal area but then you come along and you have these beautiful forests with trees and then long Plains of farms I mean it’s really incredible absolutely some people do it biking all along the bik the whole
Way yeah it’s a super famous thing that’s crazy that’ be a long bike right could do that amazing well and then you can taste it all the region wies you can appreciate the landscape yeah definitely so when talking about appreciating landscape so um we toured chat Miner and
Um if you could tell us a little bit about this Winery specifically the um uniqueness of the Flora and the fauna this is an organic Winery so tell us a bit about chetto Miner so chat Minier is currently owned by katkin vanen which is the Belgium owner uh she bought the
Property in 2010 uh she loved of course the Caston the place uh the region is amazing and the Vineyards are really really nice nice potential uh so as you said we’re working here organic towards biodynamic we don’t use any chemicals anything we just uh help uh we asking
Nature to help us to support us and this is where we get the help for production um yeah I was really impressed cuz as we were walking around touring the vines you were talking about the uh plants and flowers that have been planted to encourage Birds to come to the area to
Feed off of pests and insects so you don’t have to spray the vines Inc and then I you also mentioned the bees right the honey bees and how they can help with pollination absolutely so we have 10 beehives um and they’re going to help us poize all the flowers we have all the
Little plants we have they’re going to keep it uh going from one gr season to another um yeah they’re going to have this little uh wi plus as we see the habitat for insects keep on going um so it’s just a really nice part of the cycle here that’s amazing and here you
Grow just Shannon Blanc and Cabernet Franc correct okay and you mentioned about 80% is harvested by hand yes okay amazing that’s the most we can do by hand and the rest is going to be doing mean cuz we don’t have the hand power but yeah sure so in this particular
Region you have to help me with the name of the region b b region bgy region hard to so hard to say um but it’s predominantly Cabernet Fran abut right and so um tell us a little bit about the style of the Bor cabern Frank so a
Classic bu would be a a red wine would be all for example 12 months uh we don’t do new Oak barels would be too strong for the Kon for the region we have here uh so structed wine is really made to eat with uh very nice easy to pair with
Whatever dish that has meat that’s and sauce um yeah it’s basically a wine easy well balanced that you want to drink while eating yeah amazing and how about the classification system within lir can you walk us through that a little bit just how different wines are classified
Absolutely so you’re going to have the appalation for the whole region you’re going to have which is f parking one the a that’s going to be F parking of the whole region as well uh then you’re going to have the different sub region which are noru T
And and in all these little regions you’re going to have the sub divisions which are all the a that we have so here we are for example in B inside T inside guali okay amazing and do you have any type of classification like Grand crew or anything like some of the other
French wine regions have we have uh one grand crew which we are really proud of is a k uh you can find it in the an region uh south of an which is a big town of the region um it’s going to be an amazing Grand crew it’s a sweet wine
Late Harvest uh where we actually use but butes which is little mushrooms going to help us dry out the grapes and have these amazing flavors um yeah and how does a winery reach ground crew status is it based on the um the actual soil the terar that’s tested how is that
Designation made so for example for G crew it’s is very specific it’s a very small area are it’s let’s say just one scope uh where you can have gr crew you’re going to PL CH of course 100% uh and then you have to respect of course
The we call it Kash it’s the rules fortification for planting uh and for the wies are producing um yes amazing so and actually you cannot do every year because buttis is something very special that needs a particular micro climate uh so you cannot do it every year okay how
About wine tourism in the lir do you feel like it’s growing is it more popular to be able to go to a winery visit a seller door and come and taste I think it’s being uh it’s a big boom uh curreny in the valley a lot of wineries
Are opening to customers to opening tours tastings wine tourism a lot of wineries are looking for someone in charge of wine tourism so it’s really something that’s booming right now here and we’re proud of because we over reach and really want to promote it amazing and chhat Miner actually has an Airbnb
That’s attached to it and event space absolutely beautiful Chateau I’m sure perfect for weddings and other special events and there’s also some lovely chickens that are walking around behind us as we’re recording which is fun as well so beautiful Chateau and that’s a great thing about the lir region in
General so many incredible Chate to be able to visit I mean it’s a stunning region and I think if you have a car and you can drive around you could spend weeks just enjoying the region it’s stunning you just want to you can have a little CH and try to visit all the
Castles we have that’s that take a long time yeah but there’s so many beautiful things to so it really is a stunning region yeah it’s amazing we love to live here good that’s amazing well Charlotte thank you so much I’ll definitely include all the information for shat Min
Year I know you export to the US and so I’ll include all the details in today’s show notes but uh thank you for telling us a little about the lir your home and the wines that you have here at chatam manir thank you for coming here of course I hope you enjoyed my
Conversation today with Charlotte she was such a joy to speak with and had incredible knowledge of the region and chatau de minere if you want to visit this Winery definitely check out the description below I have links to to check out their website remember they have an Airbnb you can go visit for
Tastings and it is a beautiful beautiful Winery to visit if you learned something new today I hope you can like and share this episode with your friends the best way for others to learn about the wine CEO podcast and get free approachable wine content is for you to share By Word
Of Mouth more about my show if you haven’t subscribed to my channel yet please do so you don’t want to miss all the incredible episodes coming up in the near future I have a lot more content on France from all of my travels over this summer and you don’t want to miss it
Until next week friends drink something new and delicious and I will catch you all in the next episode of The Wine CEO Podcast