Le Bourg

Le Bourg is the smallest of Clos Rougeard's three Saumur-Champigny reds, from a walled parcel in the middle of the village of Chacé. The estate describes it as very old vines on a predominantly limestone terroir under a shallow clay loam, and the thinness of that topsoil over tuffeau bedrock is the point of the site. No hectare figure comes from the estate; one distributor gives a hectare and about 4,000 bottles in a good year, while the UK importer says only "a single walled parcel". A three-hectare figure circulates widely but belongs to Les Poyeux, not here. Vine ages are quoted between 75 and 95 years, with replanting after the 1991 frost.

The estate has been in the same family at Chacé since 1664, and the wines were made by the brothers Charly and Nady Foucault from 1969. Cultivation has been organic across generations, and the estate notes some hundred-year-old vines that have never seen a chemical product. Fermentation is in concrete with native yeasts, and Le Bourg goes into barrel for about two years before bottle ageing in tuffeau cellars seven metres down. In the Foucault era Le Bourg was raised entirely in new barrels, the most oak of the three cuvées; under the current ownership that share has come down to around 80%, so the 100% figure belongs to bottles of this period rather than to standing house practice.

The 2015 sits on a hinge in the estate's history. Charly Foucault died on 29 December 2015, aged 66, after a long illness. The wine was therefore made and raised under family ownership - reporting at the time of the sale credits Antoine Foucault, Charly's son, with running vinification from 2015 - and the estate passed to the Bouygues family in 2017, while this wine was still in barrel.

2015 was a hot, dry year in the middle Loire, and one where Cabernet Franc reached the phenolic ripeness it often struggles for there. A mild winter and warm spring led into a hot summer that never spiked past 40C, with cool nights holding the fruit back from overripeness, and September rain arrived on ground dry enough to absorb it without diluting the crop. The bottle is labelled 12,5%, which is lower than the vintage would lead you to expect.