La Lunotte - 'Printemps' - Rosé of Gamay de Bouze - Loir-et-Cher, Loire Valley, FR - 2023

Notes from the Winery/Importer

100% Gamay de Bouze, pressed directly and aged in tank. Christophe does not make this rosé every year, but when he does, watch out!!!

A story about La Lunotte by Riley from Percy Wines:
"La Lunotte by Riley

I like to think I’m not that impressionable. I tend to be stuck in my ways, enjoying the things I did when I was 13 years old. I still have a soft spot for the Smiths and the Chemical Brothers. I still think cucumbers can be overwhelming - the lemon ones are banging though. And I still love cheesy, allegorical sci-fi. But life as a maker and seller of natural wines has given me pause to reconsider many things. On my first visit to Loir-et-Cher, homeland of the oft-misunderstood Sauvignon Blanc, I met Christophe Foucher and I became clay. His ideas about the Earth and its ecology, his frustration with overconsumption and consumerism, and his choice of pets all shook my confidence in what I thought was normal. I want a goose. I want to live off the crops I grow. I want to help living things flourish around me. I want to be more patient. And I want to make Sauvignon Blanc that tastes like no other.

Tasting with Christophe was freezing cold. His cellar, an old building made from tuffeau blocks, sits across from his modest house - depicted on his handmade labels - and has a gravely floor. Even with a borrowed puffy vest, my SoCal nose and toes were chilly. In the cellar, Christophe has elevated tanks, some stepped up on more permanent platforms while others are suspended high overhead on handbuilt portaledges. Gravity is considered a resource for bottling without pumps. We taste a few tanks, some Sauvignon and Gamay, and start to warm up a little. Christophe then scampers through a hole in the wall about waist high, and I realize we are meant to follow him. Emerging through the small passage into cobwebs, demi-muids and mold, his beautiful barrel room is lit by a single bulb in the corner. As we taste through some barrels, Christophe explains how the wines gain strength in aging, sometimes fermenting for long periods or taking on graisse, an oily texture that is harmless to the wine - even helpful for its aging - but demands time to resolve. Patience is key.

Back in the house, over a dinner of roast guinea hen, conversation went from polite to volatile rather quickly. I lost the thread without much command of French, but I thought maybe someone had said something to hit a nerve with Christophe. After a lengthy, impassioned monologue, he rose and left the table. I only learned later that Christophe’s speech was not directed at any of us. He was simply expressing frustration with the state of the world, ecological destruction and consumerism. When he returned, he was grinning, holding a bottle of late harvest Sauvignon. Smiles and laughs lit up once again around the table as we sipped nectar from the earth."

Notes on the Producer

A crescent moon hangs gentle and open, embracing the earthly tableau below. A small stone hut, cozily sealed off and hugged on either side by an upturned barrel and some knotty vines in the distance. This is the label of La Lunotte: a compact image of pastoral calm, perfectly encapsulating the incubatory atmosphere on the winemaking property of Christophe Foucher. Much like Christophe’s quiet contemplative facade, inside the sturdy stone structure a hushed and patient transformation unfolds. Barrels of older wine breathe long and quiet breaths, and fermenters gently babble like newborns. Life seems to emanate from the dank, fecund ground below.
Christophe’s domaine is composed of 5 hectares along the southern bank of the Cher River. Sauvignon and Menu Pineau are a large focus, but Christophe also tends to a smattering of Cabernet Franc and Gamay. The soils are a nourishing river-wash of flint, silex, clay and sand which shows in broad and textural strokes of ripe fruit, dense minerality and trebly acidity; a polytonal tribute to the Loire. Working alone and entirely by hand, Christophe dutifully stewards his small piece of land with humility and righteous sense of purpose.
Very few wines are such direct conduits to the place, persona and process behind them. Christophe’s DNA is intrinsically linked, and I can confidently say that there is nothing else quite like them. Their clear glass bottling isn’t an overt attempt at distinguishing them as natural and celebrating debased or eye-catching appearance, but rather a proud display of their crystalline purity. Natural wines’ transgressive aesthetics often grab headlines but these days what is truly radical is humble dedication to a personal craft unadulterated by fashion – wines rigidly driven by personality, artisanship translating human essence. Additives and bogus farming get in the way of that, but increasingly the en vogue threatens authenticity in wine as well. Since 2002, Christophe’s cellar work has continued largely unchanged: grapes are harvested as ripe as possible, generally in late October. Whites are pressed immediately and reds are left to macerate, whole-cluster, for a period of several weeks. All wines are laid down to long elevage in barrel for a period last as little as a year and as long as five. No additives are used at any time in Christophe’s winemaking.
-QKW