Saumur Champigny La Marginale 2023 Roches Neuves | Loire

Domaine des Roches Neuves ' Saumur Champigny La Marginale is an exceptional cuvée, produced in the best years, when the vintage achieves perfect balance. With its predominantly Turonian clay-limestone soils, this south-facing terroir benefits from early sunshine, which favors the ripening of the Cabernet Franc grape. The plot's natural grass cover and the soil aerated by ploughing and stripping encourage active microbial life and full expression of the terroir. Hand harvesting followed by rigorous table sorting ensures optimal grape quality. In the cellar, Thierry Germain favors slowness and precision: fermentation with indigenous yeasts in wooden vats with very light pumping over, maceration for more than 20 days, then ageing for twelve months in tuns.

Philippe Mischler sommelier at Mundovin: La Marginale du Domaine des Roches Neuves shows a striking balance between depth and tension. The ripeness of the vintage and the balancing purity of the juice are plain to see: the wine retains the freshness typical of the Loire, with a slender, precise structure. Thierry Germain 's mastery has produced an outstanding Saumur Champigny, both sensual and digestible.

The nose opens with a complex palette of stewed red and black fruits mingling with mentholated and delicately spicy notes. Aeration reveals abundant floral notes of fresh violets and the depth of pink pepper, while a touch of kirsch cherry and ripe bell pepper add a lovely vegetal freshness to the wine.

On the palate, the ripe material delivers a smooth tactile sensation with velvety, fleshy tannins. Perfectly-integrated acidity traces a vertical framework in which the deliciousness of red fruit stretches out with intensity. Thierry Germain has achieved a very high level of balance between richness and tension in this vintage, which will evolve harmoniously over a decade or so.