Clos du Tue-Boeuf

The Puzelats have been growing grapes at the lieu-dit Tue-Boeuf in Les Montils for a long time. The family name turns up in fifteenth-century documents, and the lieu-dit has been producing wine at least since the Middle Ages. For most of that history they were farmers among farmers. It was Jean-Marie Puzelat, who took over in 1990, and his younger brother Thierry, who returned to the estate in 1994 after stints in Saint-Émilion, Bandol, and Montréal, who built Clos du Tue-Boeuf into one of the Loire estates the mid-1990s natural-wine conversation kept returning to.

Jean-Marie retired after the 2018 vintage. Thierry now runs the domaine with his daughters Zoé and Louise, who have both joined the cellar. Around fourteen hectares between owned and rented parcels, spread across the Cheverny and Touraine appellations near Blois, farmed organically since 1996. Soils are clay and Blois chalk with flint, on south-facing slopes above the Beuvron.

The grape portfolio reads like an inventory of what the Cheverny AOC tried to banish when it was granted in 1993: alongside the more familiar Sauvignon, Pinot Noir, Gamay, Chardonnay, and Chenin, there is Menu Pineau (also called Orbois), Romorantin, Côt (Malbec), Cabernet Franc, and Thierry's beloved Pineau d'Aunis - the obscure, peppery red he has done as much as any grower in the Loire to champion (often working with Valérie Forgues's century-old Pineau d'Aunis vines). When the AOC refuses his field blends, he declassifies to Vin de France and carries on.

In the cellar: spontaneous fermentation with native yeasts, no fining, no filtration, homeopathic sulphur at bottling. The mid-1990s natural-wine circle Thierry ran with - alongside Marcel Richaud, Yvon Métras, and Dard et Ribo - was one of the nodes through which natural wine took root in France.

The cuvées: Frileuse (Cheverny Blanc, Sauvignon with a touch of Chardonnay, plus a Romorantin bottling of the same name), Rouillon (Cheverny Rouge, Pinot and Gamay), La Caillère (Cheverny Rouge, Pinot from red sandy clay), La Guerrerie (Touraine Rouge, Côt-based), Le Brin de Chèvre (Menu Pineau from 1934 vines - a variety most Loire drinkers have never knowingly tasted), Gravotte (single-parcel Pinot), and the estate Cheverny and Cour-Cheverny (Romorantin) bottlings.

Thierry also runs an import business with strong ties to Georgia, collaborating with John Wurdeman at Pheasant's Tears - bringing the qvevri tradition and the 1990s Loire natural-wine argument into sustained conversation.