COUNTRY

France

APPELLATION

Sancerre

VARIETY

Sauvignon

AGE OF VINES

35 to 45 years

FARMING

Sustainable

SOIL

Chalky and Clay based

ALTITUDE

800 to 1310 ft.

ABOUT THE WINERY

Hand harvested, Estate produced, Wild yeast

Magic Sancerre

The Domaine Sylvan Bailly is family-run wine business based in Bué, a village in the heart of the Sancerrois. Their vineyards are spread over the towns of Bué, Sancerre, Crézancy and Montigny. Their land is made up of limestone and calcareous clay with 75% Sauvignon and 25% Pinot Noir planted.  Sylvan Bailly’s Sancerre whites are based on limestone soils (small pebbles) hard and very stony, producing fruity wines of finesse. The white earth with some clay present adds structure and body.

The history of the Bailly family making wine in Sancerre started about 1700. After many challenging periods, the era of prosperity only commenced in 1950s, when Sylvain Bailly began to grow business and prosper. His son Jacques has been at the helm since the late 1980s. The Bailly’s estate covers 12 hectares and is spread over 23 separate parcels. The vineyards are located mostly around the village of Bué with holdings in the famous vineyards of Chêne Marchand, Grand Chemarin, le Château and les Chasseignes.

Winemaking

The white wines at this estate are vinified in separate lots based upon a number of factors. The main factor that decides which parcels are vinified together is related to vineyard site, i.e. parcels with similar exposures, soil types and vine ages are vinified together. In all, there are approximately 12 separate vats used to ferment the juice of 23 vineyard parcels. The must is left to settle for 18-48 hours after which time the fermentation begins at a controlled temperature of 18°C to preserve the primary aromas of the grapes. The first racking takes place in January followed by aging on their fine lees. The wines are then assembled, cold-stabilized and lightly filtered, followed by bottling. The wine exported to the U.S. is treated a little differently from the European cuvées: a small amount of CO2 gas is left in the bottle. By doing so, the fresh fruit qualities of the wine are better preserved throughout transit, so that the bottles drunk in the U.S. are as lively, if not livelier, than those drunk in France.

The red Pinot Noir grapes are picked, de-stemmed, crushed and left to macerate at a cool temperature for 3-4 days in order to achieve more color extraction. After this period, the grape must is heated up to 30-32°C and alcoholic fermentation begins naturally with its own wild yeasts. The temperature is then lowered to about 25°C for the duration of the fermentation. The finished wine is aged for 10-18 months in oak barrels of which 10% are new. A very light filtration precedes bottling.

Soils

As in all great winemaking regions, the soil composition is the overlying determiner of quality wine production. Thus the soils are what give French wines their special sense of place. The Sauvignon Blanc grape when grown 20 miles away from Sancerre does not produce wine which tastes like Sancerre. The soils in the wine-growing region of Sancerre are composed of two types. Chalky, upper hillside soils which have very little topsoil and which give the resulting wines and intense floral bouquet and great finesse. Clay-based soils with little chalk are rich in topsoil, and thus grow wines that are full, rich and have a greater ability to age.

Bailly’s estate is made up of 60% chalky soils and 40% clay-based soils. This composition enables him to grow red grapes (25% of his crop) in the clay soils and to split his Sauvignon vineyards between both the chalk and the clay-based parcels.

For more information, you may visit: www.sylvain-bailly.com