Description
Region: Loire Valley, France
Appellation: Muscadet Sevre et Maine
Type/Style: White Wine
Grapes: Melon de Bourgogne
After six years of enology school in Nantes, the humble Alexandre Déramé took over his family estate winery. Although his total production is medium-sized, his yields are among the lowest in Muscadet; his Vieille Vignes yields are minuscule. Though toyed with in the vineyards for many years prior, organic conversion began in 2023 with the objective of having the entirety certified within five years. Located in the gently rolling hills of Mouzillon, Morandière is a tiny commune one of the most highly regarded wine villages in Muscadet. Mouzillon is distinctive for its soils high in concentration of gabbro (a metallic-flecked, pale green and black, hard igneous rock developed through slow cooling of basaltic magma) with loamy soil of orange-colored silex and quartz-like rocks. This unique rock imparts the wines with tremendous power and tension.
La Morandière is located on the eastern side of Muscadet Sèvre et Maine, in Mouzillon-Tillières, near Déramé’s top cru, Clos des Roches Gaudenières. The vines, planted at 60 meters altitude, grow on a gently sloping parcel with 80 cm of sandy and silty topsoil, likely derived from the underlying gabbro bedrock—a hard, pale green-black igneous rock, rich in magnesium and iron, formed from the slow cooling of basaltic magma beneath the earth’s surface.
Whole-cluster pressed, settled overnight, and racked off the sediments, it undergoes natural fermentation in steel tanks and is blocked from malolactic fermentation. The first sulfite addition occurs after primary fermentation, and the wine is filtered with diatomaceous earth (a natural product) before bottling the following spring.
