Domaine de la Fontainerie - Vouvray

Domaine de la Fontainerie is a magical place. To step into its limestone cave, dug into the hillside beneath vines of Chenin Blanc, and witness the endless rows of bottles from decades of past vintages, all unlabelled and covered in sheets of mold, is to step into a time machine. Only it doesn't have any instructions and you need owner and winemaker Catherine Dhoye Deruet to guide your journey. Want to try the 2000 vintage? Just step over here. How are the 2016s looking? Right this way. 

The Domain was founded in 1712, when Australia had a population of roughly half a million first nations people and possibly 1 or 2 dutch navigators. Catherine took over a little more recently, in 1990, but still long enough to have more than 3 decades of vintages under her belt. She is the most reserved of all of the producers we partner with, preferring to let her wine do the talking. But oh boy do they have a lot to say.

Vouvray, roughly halfway along the Loire Valley, is a standout among global wine regions for its tradition of producing wines that reflect the vintage. Generally speaking, cooler vintages will produce a dry style of wine (sec), warmer vintages a sweet style of wine (moelleux), and mild vintages offer everything in-between (tendre or demi-sec). Sparkling wine has become the dominant production style of the region, but our focus with the Fontainerie range is on still wine. Being Vouvray, all of the wines are 100% Chenin Blanc. 

Due to that range of styles dependent on the vintage, Vouvray wines can be intimidating for consumers. But if you check the label, it should tell you all you need to know, and of course, we'll be careful to point out what you should expect from the wines we offer. We won't rule out bringing in the sweeter styles in the future, which can age very well, but our initial range focuses on the dry (2000 and 2006 vintages) and semi-dry (2016 and 2022 vintages) versions from the Domain which were our favourites after tasting many different back vintages and styles with Catherine. We'll tell you about their different flavours, freshness and sweetness, but we also noticed a wonderful nutty character that united them all. Probably something to do with ageing in that incredible cave...