Moulin Touchais

Some wineries age their wines before releasing them onto the market, but at ‘Moulin Touché’ in Loire, the wines are aged for at least ten years, and around a million bottles are currently stored in the dark beneath the village of Doué-la-Fontaine in Anjou. The wines on sale today were produced in the early 2010s. If you know where to look, you can even buy bottles from the 1970s. 

History

The estate was founded in 1787 and has belonged to the Touché family ever since, now in its eighth generation. For most of its history, it produced sweet white wine as one of many activities within a large agricultural estate. The turning point came after the Second World War, when Joseph Touché decided that, rather than rushing to release wines onto the market, he would bottle each vintage shortly after winter and then simply wait. The minimum waiting period was ten years. The cellars filled up, vintages accumulated, and the estate built up one of the most extraordinary wine libraries in France.

Jean-Marie Touché, who took over in 1990, continued the same policy, regularly tasting each vintage to determine when individual bottles would be ready to be sent to customers.

Vineyards

The estate covers around 150 hectares, but only a small part of this area is used to produce the wine for which it is famous. The Coteaux du Layon plots from which the flagship Moulin Touchais wine is produced are located in the communes of Tigné, Martigny-Briant and Maligny, in the heart of the Coteaux du Layon appellation south of Angers. The rest of the estate’s production is used to make Anjou Blanc or sold in bulk to sparkling wine producers in Saumur. The estate is managed according to the principles of sustainable development, and only the finest plots are used to produce wine sold under the Moulin Touchais brand.

Terroir

Coteaux du Layon is situated on the southern slopes overlooking the Layon River, a tributary of the Loire. The soils of the Touchais vineyards consist of clay and limestone, which lend the wines both structure and a mineral character. The microclimate plays a key role here: cold, misty autumn mornings, followed by hot, dry days, create the conditions for the development of Botrytis Cinerea , noble rot, which concentrates the sugar and aroma in the grapes. On the Touchais plots, this process is less intense than in some neighbouring vineyards, which partly explains the distinctive balance of sweetness and freshness in the wines.

Grape variety

The sole grape variety is Chenin Blanc, which the locals call Pinot de la Loire. Chenin is a white grape variety from Anjou and Touraine, from which wines across the entire spectrum can be produced, from completely dry to very sweet, and its natural acidity makes it one of the longest-lived white varieties in the world.

At Moulin Touchais, it is grown specifically for the production of sweet wine, and it is the combination of its natural acidity and the residual sugar from botrytis-affected fruit that gives these wines the ability to age for decades without losing their freshness.

Winemaking

Harvesting takes place in several stages, involving up to four separate pickings. The first picking occurs when the berries are just reaching ripeness, ensuring a good acid structure. The next two or three stages focus on overripe and botrytis-affected bunches, which impart sweetness and aromatic concentration to the wine.

At the winery, the grapes are immediately sent for pressing, where they undergo gentle pressing, after which spontaneous fermentation begins using indigenous yeasts at a controlled temperature. This fermentation can continue until January. The wine is then bottled shortly after the onset of winter cold to preserve its freshness, and transferred to underground cellars where it will rest for at least ten years before the bottle goes on sale.

Wines

Moulin Touchais produces a single flagship wine: Coteaux du Layon, a sweet Chenin Blanc classified within the Anjou-Saumur appellation of the Loire Valley. The current release is always aged for at least ten years, and the estate regularly offers much older vintages from its cellar stocks.

With around a million bottles maturing underground, buyers can often find wines dating back to the 1960s, and sometimes even earlier. The style of the wine is medium-sweet rather than intensely sweet, and the Chenin’s acidity lends the wine tension and length.

Critics and collectors who have been following this estate for many years note that the wines can continue to develop for 50 years or more, placing them in a very select category of French white wines capable of rivalling aged Burgundies or Sauternes in terms of their longevity.