Valerie Forgues

VdF Rouge 'Icône' 2021

Name: VdF Rouge 'Icône' 2021
Brand: Valerie Forgues
SKU: FORGUESicone21
Price: 32.0 USD
Availability: InStock

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70% Pineau d'Aunis/20% Cab Franc/10% Gamay. Includes vines from 60-130 years old!

Valérie’s start was inauspicious and challenging. She had had an international business career, then became a stay-at-home mom. Her husband had bought and was running a vineyard property called Domaine de la Méchinière in the 1990’s. She was not involved in growing or making wine… until suddenly in 2008, she found herself on her own, with the babies and the business. Her only financial option was to fight to keep the domaine afloat. Enter her generous-spirited neighbor, Didier Barrouillet of the storied Clos Roche Blanche: he quietly stepped in to teach Valérie how to farm [properly] and makewine [naturally]. Didier saw the property’s potential: parcels totaling 12 hectares of vines, local varieties only, many of them quite old.

But the land had been worked hard, not farmed well, over time. With Didier’s gentle guidance and her own guts and grit, Valérie gradually converted herself into a vigneronne and her vines into an organically farmed oasis of true biodiversity (see her Insta: as many wild beasts as bottles!). She booted commercial yeasts in favor of spontaneous fermentations; cut sulfur usage dramatically; started cleaning up the rustic cellar; and most crucially, started harvesting by hand. Those shifts and more set her on the path to her eponymous label, which debuted in France in the 2015 vintage (2017 was the first here).

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What began as a scrap for survival morphed into a true labor of love for Valérie: love for her tiny corner of the Cher, its history and tradition, its forests and rivers and creatures, for her land and its vines and their individual personalities. You’ll find her unpretentious, unfiltered expressions of that special Touraine character in these Forgues bottles.

- Bowler / LDS

Vibes with:

The fire emoji.
Soft cheeses of all kinds.
Bringing a bottle of this to a party - and making friends.