Domaine Gerard Fiou Terroir Silex Sancerre Rose 2022
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Enjoy this Rosé well-chilled but not too cold - about 10°C should be enough to conquer your guests!
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The 2022 Rosé is airy and lifted with a bouquet of crushed rocks, chamomile and freshly sliced yellow apple. This opens with a lovely inner sweetness complicated by zesty citrus and acidity tones as a perfumed wave of ripe orchard fruits cascades throughout. It finishes with tension and a tinge of saline minerality, leaving the palate salivating as rosy inner florals slowly fade.
Today, ensuring that the vines are worked in harmony with nature, the plots of land are now ready for their conversion towards biological culture. The parceling-out together with the wearing down of the equipment used on a hard ground, consisted essentially of flint stones on the surface, make this conversion an important expensive decision.
Nevertheless, this type of ground cultivated by Gerard Fiou is an exceptional soil where the effect of accumulation of the heat during the day in summer, and the restoration of this heat in the plant during the night, helps the maturation of grapes in Sauvignon Blanc and in Pinot Noir to be continuously active and the maturity is consequently always excellent.
The Domaine Gerard Fiou is a property which benefits from exceptional resources. The Bourgeoi Family, friends of Gerard Fiou for several years, accepted his proposal of a total partnership considering that the vineyard and the terroir are evident assets to develop quite a different style of wine (additional to the wines made by the family in Chavignol).
Bringing their know-how since the acquisition, as well as their experiences, the Bourgeois Family is nevertheless anxious to preserve the depth of the style of wines from the Domaine Gerard Fiou in order to reach more new values (complexity, intensity, fruitiness).
Whether it’s playful and fun or savory and serious, most rosé today is not your grandmother’s White Zinfandel, though that category remains strong. Pink wine has recently become quite trendy, and this time around it’s commonly quite dry. Since the pigment in red wines comes from keeping fermenting juice in contact with the grape skins for an extended period, it follows that a pink wine can be made using just a brief period of skin contact—usually just a couple of days. The resulting color depends on grape variety and winemaking style, ranging from pale salmon to deep magenta.
Marked by its charming hilltop village in the easternmost territory of the Loire, Sancerre is famous for its racy, vivacious, citrus-dominant Sauvignon blanc. Its enormous popularity in 1970s French bistros led to its success as the go-to restaurant white around the globe in the 1980s.
While the region claims a continental climate, noted for short, hot summers and long, cold winters, variations in topography—rolling hills and steep slopes from about 600 to 1,300 feet in elevation—with great soil variations, contribute the variations in character in Sancerre Sauvignon blancs.
In the western part of the appellation, clay and limestone soils with Kimmeridgean marne, especially in Chavignol, produce powerful wines. Moving closer to the actual town of Sancerre, soils are gravel and limestone, producing especially delicate wines. Flint (silex) soils close to the village produce particularly perfumed and age-worthy wines.
About ten percent of the wines claiming the Sancerre appellation name are fresh and light red wines made from Pinot noir and to a lesser extent, rosés. While not typically exported in large amounts, they are well-made and attract a loyal French following.