New arrival doubleheader: Philippe Delmee from Loire and Domaine Mathouans from Roussillon

3/16/24 -

This weekend we feature new arrivals from two producers whose wines we haven't seen in a little while. Philippe Delmée is one of our favorite under-the-radar producers in the Loire Valley, humble and stoic, and a very skilled winemaker, he works with Chenin Blanc, Cabernet Franc, Grolleau, Pineau D'Aunis, and some other local varieties. His reds have always been vibrant, zingy, and thirst quenching. The whites, all from Chenin Blanc, are serious and structured, owing much of their minerality to the schiste soils of Faye d'Anjou. Aline Hock founded Domaine des Mathouans in 2009, after arriving to the Roussillon from Belgium and spending some time in the Latour de France area working with Jean-Louis Tribouley and learning a bit about the region. She works with Grenache, Carignan, Muscat, and a local variety called Lledoner Pelut, and her wines taste very local, but also reflect a low-intervention approach without over-extraction or any use of new oak.

A math teacher in his former life, Philippe Delmée became interested in wine in the early 2000's, and after studying for 2 years, began commuting from Brittany to Angers, in the Loire Valley. He worked with Benoit Courault and at Domaine des Griottes, before eventually making his start with one hectare (about 2 acres) that Courault helped him find in Faye D'Anjou.

Working about 6 hectares total, spread over multiple small vineyard parcels, Philippe's approach has always been low-intervention, with the use of only copper and small amounts of sulfur in the vineyard, along with biodynamic and plant-based treatments. Most of his wines are started with a "pied de cuve," which is a small batch of wine that is introduced to a larger vat of fresh juice once there are healthy yeast populations going. Though he uses a fraction of a mg/l of SO2 (usually around .5 or even less) with the pied de cuve, he does not add at any other stage, during aging or at bottling.* For the miniscule amount of SO2 used (and at such an early stage), his wines are always very clean and straightforward. There aren't a lot of winemakers whose wines are as consistent vintage after vintage as his are, and these 2020s we just got in are a testament! His reds have always been vibrant, zingy, and thirst quenching. The whites, all from Chenin Blanc, are serious and structured, owing much of their minerality to the schist soils of Faye d'Anjou.

Aline Hock came to the Roussillon and started Domaine des Mathouans in 2009. She has always been committed to organic and Biodynamic viticulture and has been certified AB and Demeter since 2013. All work is done by hand, with the help of a horse for some field work, and cows and sheep for mowing the grass and providing manure. As she explains on her website, her wines "are intended to be pure and preferably, single-varietal, to let them draw their typicity from their respective terroirs (Gniess, Schist, Black Marl, etc)." Besides being delicious, Aline's wines also teach us a lot about the varieties of southern France generally and the Roussillon specifically.

Though there are not many parallels with these two estates, we did just get a bunch of new wines from them! I will say that they also both have a purity and transparency that I appreciate in natural wines, without flaws or bacterial faults. As Aline writes on her site: "Natural wines are the result of a philosophical choice aimed at rediscovering the natural expression of the terroir... Sensations, intuition and influences of the moon, instead of technology."

-Eben Lillie

>>> VIEW THE WINES HERE <<<