Domaine des Sables Verts, Les Poyeux, Saumur-Champigny, Loire, France 2019

Caroline Meurée & Hervé Malinge are a young winemaking couple who met while studying in Bordeaux. They bought Domaine des Sables Verts in 2019, with 16ha of vines across five communes in the Loire, predominantly Cabernet Franc, with a tiny bit of Chenin Blanc. Among their holdings is 1.8ha in the Les Poyeux vineyard, one of the region's most famous red-wine sites and famous as one of the Clos Rougeard cuvées. These are old vines (planted in the 1950s), on silica-limestone soils with green sand and tuffeau. Fermented in stainless steel using indigenous yeasts and then aged for 11 months in barrel, this single-vineyard Saumur Champigny is deliciously aromatic, with fleshy and fragrant blackberry and mulberry fruit, soft tannins and an appetising freshness.