VDF "Entremêlés"

50% Menu Pineau/50% Chenin Blanc. This wine is a pineaux blend, about half each of Chenin Blanc (known locally as Pineau de la Loire) and Orbois (known locally as Menu Pineau). Planted on clay-limestone soils and organically farmed, the pre-phylloxera vines go back to around 1890. They have been perpetuated by provignage, a traditional method of burying a cane in order to get it to sprout roots and start a whole new vines; a vineyard becomes literally layered over a long period of propogation of this kind. Needless to say, the yield of these very old vines is very small.
The bunches are harvested by hand and direct-pressed; the juice is cooled down and settled naturally. Fermentation is spontaneous with indigenous yeasts in vat. The wine usually goes through malolactic fermentation and is aged in vat before being bottled without fining or filtering; sulfur use is very modest. "Entremêlés" or "intermingled" is a reference to the interplanted varieties in this special parcel.