Domaine de la Taille Aux Loups

The domaine was not founded by Jacky Blot. A Bordelais named Christian Prud'homme acquired seven hectares of old vines in Montlouis-sur-Loire in 1988 with a plan to shake up the appellation. By trade lore (carried most fully by Chris Kissack at thewinedoctor.com), he had worked at Mouton-Rothschild and Opus One and fermented in used Château d'Yquem barrels - particulars that are repeated across English wine writing without a clear primary source. What is documented is that the project ran into trouble within a year or two.

Jacky Blot - then a Loire courtier (wine broker), looking for land of his own - took over the vineyards (signing the 1990 vintage and acquiring the property formally by 1992) and built what Taille aux Loups is today. Alongside François Chidaine, he was the central figure in dragging Montlouis out of Vouvray's shadow and making a serious case for dry Chenin at a time when the appellation was still oriented toward sweet. "Sugar," he is widely paraphrased as saying, "blurs the underlying beauty of Chenin Blanc."

Montlouis sits on the south bank of the Loire opposite Vouvray - same river, different certificates. Blot's vineyards are around twenty-five hectares across Montlouis and a handful of Vouvray parcels (the Vouvray bottlings have been labelled Vin de France since the 2014 vintage, after a long-running dispute with the Vouvray syndicate). Almost entirely Chenin, planted on clay-limestone with flint and farmed organically. Wild yeasts, long barrel élevage, no chaptalization, no bâtonnage, no malolactic. The site-driven cuvées are the spine of the range: Rémus (old vines), Les Dix Arpents (around fifty-year-old vines), Clos de Mosny, Clos Michet, Clos du Hochet. In vintages that allow it, the sweet Romulus - botrytised Chenin from seventy- to eighty-year-old vines.

The most iconic bottling is probably Triple Zéro - Montlouis Méthode Traditionnelle pétillant, with zero chaptalization, zero liqueur de tirage, zero dosage. Launched 1993, a statement wine before Champagne made statements about dosage fashionable, and still one of the benchmarks of Loire sparkling.

In 2002 Jacky bought a second estate, Domaine de la Butte in Bourgueil, to work with Cabernet Franc on the north bank.

Jacky Blot died on 15 May 2023, aged 75, shortly after a pancreatic-cancer diagnosis. His son Jean-Philippe, who had been at the domaine since the age of seventeen, now runs both estates with the long-standing team.