Domaine Delettre
Loire, Bourgueil, France
Domaine Delettre began in 2016, with the first vines planted on sand and gravel soils in Restigné, in the heart of the Bourgueil appellation.
Hillside parcels on clay and limestone soon followed, many of them old vines from massal selection, which give elegant, deep wines that keep well over the years. Today Stéphane Delettre works across both Bourgueil and Saint-Nicolas-de-Bourgueil, with plots spread over about 10 kilometres, from the estate at Clos de l’Épisse to Ingrandes-de-Touraine in the east. It’s all Cabernet Franc, the Roi de Loire as he calls it.
The estate itself is an old farm where vines and mixed crops once grew side by side. It used to be a large working farm, with several dozen people living and working on the land. The main house dates from the end of the 19th century, and the other buildings are several hundred years old. It suits Cabernet Franc well, with a vaulted barrel cellar and tuffeau caves dug deep into the rock, ideal for ageing the wines.
Two types of soil dominate. On the sand and gravel terraces the wines are light and full of fruit. On the clay-limestone hillside, with tuffeau in the subsoil, they are more complex and tannic, and built to age.
The estate has been farmed organically from the start, with the soil worked mechanically, weeds left to grow naturally and much of the work done by hand. Biodynamic practices follow the seasons too, without certification, which Stéphane describes as ancestral common sense.
In the cellar everything is fermented with indigenous yeasts, out of respect for the
terroir and the vintage. Fermentation is natural in most cases, though Stéphane doesn’t rule out a little sulphur when it’s needed. Wine isn’t an exact science, he says, and he stays humble in his approach.
The range follows three styles. The petnats are bottled before fermentation has finished and are sometimes disgorged to clarify them, with nothing added. The “thirst” wines are made to drink with friends, using short macerations, direct pressing for the rosés and carbonic maceration. The wines for keeping come from Cabernet Franc picked at good ripeness in the best vintages, with longer macerations, and can age for years.
