DOMAINE PAUL PRIEUR ET FILS

The Prieurs come from a long line of wine growers. The newest member of the family to take charge of the winemaking is the youthful and enthusiastic Luc Prieur, who completed his studies at Lycée Viticole in Beaune. The Burgundian philosophy is felt in their wines, with a respect for individual vineyard plots, producing cuvées based on their terroirs.

We are delighted to list the following single vineyard cuvées: Monts Damnés and Pieuchaud Silex, alongside their gorgeous Sancerre Blanc and Sancerre Rouge. The Prieur’s try to intervene as little as possible in the vinification process. The wines are neither fined nor filtered.

The legendary Monts Damnés terroir was the first hill in Sancerre to have been planted with vines. The grapes growing here reach excellent maturity and are always the last to be harvested. The wines produced are endowed with amazing substance and express all the mineral richness of their terroir. The precision applied in the racking operations and in the length of ageing
preserves the wine’s potential.The Pieuchaud Silex cuvée comes from the silex (flint) soils, in the commune of Thauvenay, southeast of the Sancerre appellation. The Silex soils make a very tense and nervy style of wine. One third of the wines is aged in 600L barrels between 2 to 4 years old with the rest in tank.

The 5 hectares of Sancerre Rouge are grown in a local spot known as “Les Pichons” below the Monts Damnés hill. The soils are limestoneclay (limestone subsoil). They are deep enough to enable the vines to root well and draw out all the richness of the terroir. Half of the wine is aged in 228 barrels of which 7% is new, the other half is in large oak vats. The wine is then racked and blended. The mainly de-stemmed grapes go into open vats. After a few days’ cold, prefermentation maceration, fermentation takes place with indigenous yeasts and the performance of cap punching (pigeage) and gentle pumping over operations. The “Les Pichons” cuvée comes from the upper part of the terroir. The surface soil here is made up of a thin layer of marl derived from the erosion of the Monts Damnés. Poorer in nature, this soil creates clusters of grapes with very small, concentrated berries. Long ageing lasting 14 months in 228 barrels of which 15% are in new oak. The precision applied in the racking operations and in the length of ageing means that the wines do not have to undergo filtering or fining, thereby preserving their full potential.

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