2014 Muscadet Sèvre et Maine Sur Lie Expression de Gneiss

Veteran vintner Guy Bossard was one of his region’s earliest converts to organic viticulture (certified in 1975, just three years into his proprietorship) and eventually to a biodynamic regimen (certified in 1998), as well as among its first to try demonstrating the importance of terroir by vinifying and labeling according to geological underpinnings. His trio of Sur Lie bottlings – Granite, Gneiss and Orthogneiss – have long since become classics of Muscadet, those who cellar them being rewarded with an enhancement of what is already delicious and harmonious youthful complexity. Bossard’s “Orthogneiss” traditionally originates in a parcel that comes to within 15 meters of the vineyard informing the corresponding “Gneiss” bottling, yet the wines are consistently distinctive, from soils manifestly different in structure (that underlain with orthogneiss being the more friable). Thanks in no small part to Bossard’s efforts and his having for more than a decade now dedicated bottlings to these three soil types, wine lovers are not only more conscious of the potential profundity of Muscadet and of the effects of site on its organoleptic characteristics, but have become more sensitive to terroir effects globally.

Bossard had been thinking about a successor for some years before in 2009 ex-IT exec and passionate wine aficionado Frédéric “Fred” Niger Van Herck arrived for an internship, ended up staying to collaborate long-term, and eventually assumed the title to this iconic estate. Niger is passionate about biodynamics as well as about “natural wine” and turn-back-the-clock experimentalism. Fantastically labeled bottlings rendered from non-Melon grapes – whites fermented on their skins, myriad reds, wines raised in diverse clay vessels, wines bottled unfiltered and with little or no sulfur – now collectively outnumber bottlings of Muscadet by more than three to one. The humorous side of this situation is not lost on Niger; in fact, it’s captured in a huge photo that hangs in the l’Ecu tasting room in which, dressed as Mephistopheles and with a fiendish grin, he spreads his red and black cloak behind a typically amiable and earnest Bossard. L’Ecu’s 22 hectares around La Bretonnière and nearby Le Landreau already included mature vines of several cépages, so Niger had ample raw material with which to work even before adding parcels, and as I explained in my introduction to this report, the desire to supplement one’s line-up with wines of enhanced profitability is a nearly constant theme among Nantais growers. Here’s hoping not only that the classic virtues of terroir-specific l’Ecu Muscadet will be preserved, but also that Niger’s imagination and experimental enthusiasm don’t run away from him. Among his recent projects registered as vins de France – all, to be sure, works in progress – I found only half of them sufficiently intriguing or aesthetically convincing to merit a published tasting note. And a low-sulfur 2012 Muscadet Sèvre et Maine “Taurus,” which had spent 10 months each in tank and older Burgundy barrels but represented a current release, was disappointingly dull, drying and aromatically reductive.

(I recently revisited Bossard’s 2010 trio – some bottles of which can still be found in the US market – and given how strikingly the results of this frost-trimmed, freakishly concentrated, at times botrytis-tinged vintage have evolved, I could not resist including notes on those wines below.)