Hi, I’m Tom: 24, Australian and I make wine. Right now I’m in France, in the northern Rhône, doing a stage at a domaine in Côte-Rôtie for my oenology master’s thesis.
My favourite style of wine is anything with acid, tension and some savoury edges. And Loire Chenin Blanc often has all three.
Which is why I chose this particular bottle to talk about. A sommelier friend first poured it for me blind at a wine bar in Montpellier, where I started my master’s, and it floored me.
Tom describes his favourite style of wine as ‘anything with acid, tension and some savoury edges. And Loire Chenin Blanc often has all three.’
(Image credit: Decanter)
‘Unmistakably Loire’
The reveal came in two parts. First, a new name to me – Etienne Bodet – then the bit that made it click: before starting his own label in 2020, Bodet had spent three years working in the cellar at Clos Rougeard in the Loire’s Saumur appellation.
While Clos Rougeard is probably best known for its Saumur-Champigny Cabernet Francs, it also makes a Saumur Blanc from Brèze, that is often compared in style, winemaking approach and price with top white Burgundy.
What makes Bodet’s wine so exciting though, is that it doesn’t feel like Chenin dressed up as Burgundy. It has the élevage, the lees, the reduction and the polish, but underneath it still tastes unmistakably Loire: chalky, saline and quietly austere.
Zooming in: discover more about Tom’s wine
(Image credit: Decanter)
Etienne Bodet, Clos Durandière, Graippeaux, Saumur, Loire 2023
Grape: Chenin Blanc
Alc: 12%
Available: €60, IDealwine / £79, Sip Wines, Parched Wine
What Tom says: It starts in the vineyard, with old massal-selection Chenin vines, roughly 70 years old, farmed organically and biodynamically on the chalk and tuffeau soils of Montreuil-Bellay.
Massal means the vines were propagated from cuttings from the estate’s own old plants rather than bought-in nursery clones, so there’s real genetic diversity in the plot, and no two rows are quite identical.
The cellar work is deliberately quiet. Indigenous yeast, no additions, 16mg/L of sulphur total, and no filtration.
The wine spends 22 months in used 400L barriques, sourced only from Clos Rougeard, where Bodet previously spent three years in the cellar (he had earlier stints at Domaine Guiberteau, also in Saumur, Sylvain Pataille in Burgundy and Pierre Gerbais in Champagne too).
Bodet started his own label in 2020, and is the fifth generation of his family to work the land in Saumur. The detail I love most is his ageing cellar, dug into the rock but deliberately left open to the outside. He could hold it at a constant 14°C but won’t, because he wants the wines to feel the temperature swing and experience all four seasons.
My choice in my words
And that memory stayed with me. So, in the last week of the first year of my master’s, where me and my cohort were doing a one-month project in Graves, just south of Bordeaux, I bought another bottle of this Chenin to open among the vines before we all scattered across the world for our winery stages. It was the right bottle for a goodbye.
Here are my thoughts: Pale gold with a slight haze. The nose is savoury and a bit odd in the best way: struck match and popcorn up front, then parmesan and a twist of preserved lemon.
The palate is where the miso and lemon curd show up, with a waxy texture, a saline edge and tart, just-underripe stone fruit. There is a phenolic grip and a tart, linear acidity. It coils tight into a rich mid-palate, then gets wiped clean off the tongue, saline and dry, leaving that bitter almond and a savoury, umami finish.
Serious wine, but easy to drink. It has that mix of tension and ease I keep coming back to. And I will.
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