Anjou from Mark Angéli of Domaine de la Sansonnière

Profile

The rather small area of the Coteaux-du-Layon is fertile terrain for winemakers with strong personalities. There are Sugar Mavens Patrick Beaudoin, Philippe Delesvaux, Jo Pithon and their archenemy, INAO director René Renou, a Bonnezeaux producer. Many of the most brilliant and eccentric winemakers are newcomers to the area and the profession. Mark Angéli is one of them, a chemistry student turned stonemason who embraced viticulture as a form of environmental protection, a firm believer in bio-dynamie and in the wines that can be made from this method of culture.
He bought his estate in 1990, with 7 hectares of Anjou, Coteaux-du-Layon and Bonnezeaux. These last two appellations, planted by law entirely in Chenin blanc, are supposed to yield richly sweet moëlleux or liquoreux wines every year. The AOC rules do not admit any demi-sec or sec wine, as it does in Vouvray and Montlouis. Anything below a moëlleux loses the names Coteaux-du-Layon or Bonnezeaux, has to be entirely sec and becomes an Anjou blanc, the lowliest of categories in the area and the least remunerative too. So, every year early in the picking season, winemakers have to gamble that the weather in September and October is going to concentrate the grapes’ sugar through noble rot or passerillage, and that they’ll be able to make sweet wines.

Wines

A.O.C Anjou "La Lune"