Sparing in ornament and enological artifice, Domaine la Giraudière’s latest renditions, crafted by Fabrice Esnault, are pure expressions of some of the world’s most talented terroirs: Chenin Blanc from Brézé, and Saumur-Champigny of Montsoreau and Turquant.

In Plain View

For nearly two decades after Brézé rose to become the wine world’s newest darling of Loire Valley Chenin, Fabrice’s family domaine name sat in plain sight: a hundred meters north of Château de Brézé’s south gate, written in large Burgundy-red apothecary script pasted over pale yellowish-gray and the white tuffeau limestone blocks of their tasting room: Domaine la Giraudière. Above, to the right, in small font: Saumur Champigny, and below, Vins de Brézé—the latter seemingly positioned deferentially, still second fiddle to the greater public; a distant fourth to the celebrated reds of Saumur-Champigny and the sticky and dry Chenin Blanc of Anjou. The arrangement of hierarchy? A misunderstanding. Well, perhaps a lapse of historical amnesia.

While the sign was impossible for any importer to miss, names like Clos Rougeard, Collier, Guiberteau, and Lambert tend to cloud the vision. Everyone missed it, including us. But in 2022, after an inquiry the prior year about other growers on the hill, having passed the sign countless times while jogging off the foie gras, bread, and cheese, or meandering through the commune seemingly empty of any other promising growers that could rival the “big four,” a friend walked us into Fabrice’s cellar. Our companion is deeply linked to The Source, who, in January 2011, first told us of the former glories of the Château de Brézé, whose vineyards he had leased for twenty-five years: Arnaud Lambert.

On this once nearly forgotten hill—the greatest forgotten hill—the Château de Brézé, long before the arrival of widespread chemical farming after World War II, recorded exchanges of its Chenin Blanc from its tuffeau limestone-rich soil with those of the world’s most celebrated domaines and châteaux, including the inimitable Château d’Yquem. Fabrice is yet another newcomer of sorts to the now internationally acclaimed Brézé, a commune that sparked a makeover of dry-style Loire Valley Chenin Blanc and brought global attention to the expansive Saumur appellation.

Better Late Than Next Gen

Some importers like to zero in on well-established growers, or those prematurely anointed as “the next rising star” by social media wine ideologues, too early on in their process. To contribute to the rise of an unknown who quietly shows greater promise—and with quality terroirs to match—than what’s been put to bottle yet brings greater meaning to this importer, also a greater sense of accomplishment and camaraderie. Sometimes, all someone needs is for people to believe in and take a chance on them.

Before our first visit with Fabrice, Arnaud described him as a hard-working vigneron with a special level of skill and intuition in the vines. But the first tastes of his young 2021 Chenin revealed that we were just on the first page of what will be a long and rewarding tale of a late bloomer in one of the greatest terroirs in France.

Fabrice is a third-generation grower, built for the trade (and like a former rugby player), who looks like he could shoulder-press a mule or handle himself just fine in a lumberyard rumble. Following in the footsteps of his father, Maurice, he spent most of his working life doing the hard things first: farming, fixing, lifting, and pruning in freezing temperatures—then sending the bulk of his fruit to négociants and a modest share set aside for his tasting room. But appearances can be deceiving. Behind the strong physical presence, he’s timid yet open. He even appears surprised by compliments to his wines. But once he opens up, he’s warm, and his eyes twinkle as he smiles and speaks of his work.

It was one of those cold spring mornings in the completely exposed and windy Saumur landscape, the vineyard’s thawing frost condensing inside my boots, moving up through my body and out of my skin, keeping me cold to the bone. After we visited one of his vineyards and then had a cellar tasting out of barrel and vat, it became crystal clear that Fabrice had more than merely a talent for the vineyards.

Though his talent in the vines is obvious to his colleagues, his potential in the cellar may have been hidden even from himself.

The style was simple, clean, unadorned—a perfect test for whether a terroir has the mettle to elbow to the top of the podium. But it was a foregone conclusion. Given his vineyards inside Brézé and Saumur-Champigny, all that was needed was to taste one hit on his humble eight track to be sure that Fabrice had more in the tank than easy price point layups from vintage to vintage for tourists on their way to the château next door. There was more than a single hit, but one among the group would be an obvious win for anyone familiar with the magic of Brézé.

The standout was a wine that now carries the label, Chenin Terrage, which perfectly reflected its terroir in crystalline clarity. It was also much more accessible than the typical zippy and forceful style of Brézé, even if it also had plenty of zip. It also came with a price tag that seemed to have been carried over from his father’s days before Brézé even became a “thing.” It was Fabrice’s first organic cuvée, harvested from a parcel just 200 kilometers northwest of the cellar. Most revealing was that, even if all the wines weren’t yet at the level to compete with the big four and the other great Chenin of the region, the whites showed clarity and promise. Chenin Terrage (labeled simply at the time as Chenin Brézé) demonstrated that Fabrice would indeed find his own path for the entire range and one day likely stand tall next to the big four and even move up inside those ranks.

The reds were solid enough, if not solid values, at the start. He was a little deep on vintages, so most of the wines initially tasted were from about two or three vintages older than what was typically on the market at the time for short-élevage wines. They still showed promise and are from areas of Saumur-Champigny that highlight elegance over power. Like the whites, they were crafted directly and simply—no new wood in the way, and no funk either. Aromatic lift and palate tension lead the way.

Both Saumur-Champigny cuvées were a step up from younger vintages tasted a few years earlier. As he continues to refine his cellar work, perhaps simply by having enough market interest to bottle earlier and all at once, the uptick is inevitable. His two vineyards of Saumur-Champigny are adjacent, but couldn’t be more different, with Les Meuniers, on shallow limestone clay soils atop tuffeau bedrock, and Les Chauvelière, on sand and gravel with less direct tuffeau contact—only meters apart, but worlds away, by Loire Cabernet Franc standards.

The potential? No limit. And of the same sort I’d witnessed the first time I tasted with Arnaud Lambert in January of 2011. Though his talent and know-how in the vines are obvious to his colleagues, his potential in the cellar may have been hidden even from himself. His most promising aspect is his practicality, and the unlikelihood that he’ll get in his own way during his rise. All that was needed was a little nudge, some confidence, encouragement, and a commitment: a guarantee to buy should he produce more for us to export to the US. And, we were there to give it.

A Solid Stable

Fabrice farms more than twenty hectares across Saumur-Champigny’s Montsoreau and Turquant and the vast Saumur appellation’s crown, Brézé. His farming technique is careful, sustainable, and trending toward organic across key parcels first. L’Ardillon, a relatively large lieu-dit just above another expansive lieu-dit, en Bourguenne (home to the old-vine parcels of Clos Rougeard and Guiberteau, and Lambert’s unicorn cuvée, “Brézé,”), is set to lead Fabrice’s charge. A notable difference between these two lieux-dits has as much to do with temperature as soil. Both are richer in clay—shouldery wines—with Bourguenne warmer and fully exposed to the environment, while l’Ardillon (and another of Fabrice’s parcellaire wines inside of l’Ardillon, Champ Picard) abuts tree groves on two sides, and the temperatures are notably fresher. L’Ardillon’s vines average thirty-five years, the elders around seventy-five.

The cellar logic mirrors that of his vineyards: preserve fruit and place, sculpt when needed, and avoid the trickery that turns terroir into house style. The more clay-rich sites, such as l’Ardillon, are crafted in wood, while others in sandier, loamier soils are in larger neutral vats.

Small, unexpected moments often say a lot. One such moment was in the cellar in November 2024. There was an unlabeled emerald-green bottle—a personal favorite color of mine for bottles—with a crusty and aged cream-colored wax top and its old cork forced partially back in and a third of the liquid remaining. A Chenin from Brézé made by Maurice in the 1990s, it poured the color of platinum, moved like a wine a tenth of its age, and tasted like it was worth two hundred times its likely release price—the first tastes seemed otherworldly. The dregs of that bottle were gorgeous, but Fabrice insisted on opening another. It was also a capture of the sublime—a timeless wine; a wine of place that could’ve been from any of Europe’s great growers. It was as thrilling as a perfectly aged Vatan Sancerre, Müller Kabinett or Alzinger Federspiel Riesling, a hint of a Meursault only kissed by the vigneron in the cellar, and not much more. Perhaps it was the most stunning two-bottle showing of any white wine I’ve had from Brézé. Unadulterated purity—that’s the target: work well in the vineyard and let the terroir (if it’s a formidable one!) do the heavy lifting. This is what I love about Fabrice’s style. He’s already in that line—relatively tinker-free. That’s why I’m as drawn to him as much as any Chenin grower’s wines from Brézé—or any other hill growing high-quality Chenin, for that matter.

What seems clear about white wines from this tuffeau-rich hill and similar ones further south inside Saumur (in my opinion) is that those who harvest from vines grown on sandier soils and with more direct contact to the tuffeau bedrock express greater fluidity in more neutral vessels, like old oak barrels, concrete, or fiberglass. With a richer clay topsoil, like those en Bourguenne and l’Ardillon, they need a little help sculpting their muscular frame—old wood the right medium, though not for spice rack flavors of new oak that some view as increased complexity, but solely for the micro-oxygenation effect; to massage and unfurl the wine and allow its geological genetics to bloom.

Perhaps it was a function of costs with his limited ability to commercialize his wine on a greater scale, but when you have such magnificent talent as this noble grape on this noble bedrock, less is indeed more. Those two old bottles from the 90s would blow anyone’s mind; it was an unforgettable experience—a testament to Brézé, and simple and direct vineyard and cellar work—a capture of a wine’s truth!

Macro | Micro

Saumur sits on the southwestern rim of the Paris Basin, a broad, saucer-shaped, calcium carbonate-rich sedimentary bowl with concentric rings: older Jurassic strata below, younger Cretaceous strata above, and on and on. Saumur’s signature bedrock, tuffeau, arrived in the Upper Cretaceous (Turonian), when a warm, shallow, tropical sea thrived in this flank of the basin. For millions of years, the water teemed with hundreds of trillions of tiny creatures whose carbonate-rich micro-skeletons settled into lime-rich muds while fine sands washed in from the weathered heights of the Massif Armoricain to the west, and in later ages, from the Loire River’s origin in the acidic soils of the Massif Central that deposited much of the lower areas of the region.

Tuffeau is pale, fine-grained, and unusually porous for a rock often used for building (in all the white castles, churches, and residences of the Loire Valley!), usually composed of around 80% calcium carbonate with a notable fraction of micaceous sands (muscovite) that glint in the light and are easily visible with a geologist’s handheld loupe—and in the picture above. Low cementation renders it lightweight in the hand—and that lightness translates in the glass: Chenin that’s lifted and tensile; Cabernet Franc that’s vivid and clear rather than burly and chewy.

Saumur is also unique in its overall climate among other viticultural areas of the Loire Valley. It lives in the rain shadow (the lee side) of the Massif Armoricain to the west. Westerlies off the Atlantic shed much of their water over Brittany’s uplands, and by the time they slide into this area of the Loire trench, they’re drier and steadier.

Fabrice’s Saumur-Champigny vineyards in Montsoreau and Turquant are in the far northeast of the appellation, up on the plateau above the Loire. Set further away from most of the river and near the dense forests to the south, Brézé’s elevated exposures of east/west and north/south slopes, open to moving air, fend off rot and keep nights cool. The Loire itself is a long, shallow radiator but about a twenty-minute drive north from the hill. Maritime influence without the deluge, a longer runway into autumn, and enough diurnal range to lock in acidity, it’s no mystery why Brézé’s whites have been prized for centuries: the hill is built for them.

Contextual Sidetrack | The Brézé-Rougeard Effect

It is worth pausing here to touch on the irony of Saumur-Champigny’s most famous estate and the rise of Brézé. For years, Clos Rougeard occupied a perfectly ordinary corner of top U.S. wine shops—always there, seemingly by categorical obligation, usually slow to move, rarely spoken of with awe—more often criticized for its variability and perceived meanness when young. Then, almost overnight, the market turned. Rougeard was no longer the steady stalwart of the Saumur section but Saumur-Champigny’s lightning rod of global collector desire. The shift was as abrupt as it was total. Bottles once stacked quietly in retailers’ back rooms or out in the open on the floor (the same could be said for the Rhône Valley’s Allemand and Jamet around the same time) were suddenly being traded like securities, both financially and as the perception of credibility on social media platforms, accompanied by a mystique that rewrote the narrative of the entire appellation.

The problem, of course, was the inevitable narrowing of vision. As it is today with Galicia’s Envínate in Ribeira Sacra, Château Rayas in Châteauneuf-du-Pape, or López de Heredia in Rioja, the gravitational pull of Rougeard nearly collapsed the diversity of the appellation into a single identity for the wine-centric restaurant world. Some buyers seemed satisfied to let this one domaine stand for the whole, while dozens of excellent growers worked in relative obscurity, or were relegated to great by-the-glass options. There are exceptions today—Fosse-Sèche, La Porte Saint Jean, to name only a few that frequent lists and shelves—of course, but fewer than there should be.

At the same moment, Brézé was mounting its conquest—not of red, but of Chenin Blanc; its leading domaines: Guiberteau, Collier, Arnaud Lambert, and Clos Rougeard through Saumur Blanc in addition to their Saumur red from Brézé. And while Chenin was the spearhead, the reds of these growers found their way onto lists, too. They were scarce, yes, but scarcity was part of the draw, and soon nearly every serious wine program had them. The effect was real: Brézé’s rise, even in red, wedged out opportunities for other Saumur-Champigny growers, whose production volumes and overall presence far exceeded Brézé’s before but whose visibility largely became eclipsed.

Overlay this with a broader cultural shift in taste. For many decades, Chinon seemed to be the central appellation of Loire Cabernet Franc, its stature elevated by Pierre Breton and Charles Joguet and the narrative eloquently spun through Kermit Lynch’s pen—they were, at the time, of the most prolific Loire Valley Cabernet Franc growers included among the top wine programs in the US. But as we entered the 2010s, the market began to prize tension over breadth, finesse over richness, minerally textures over tannins. The spotlight began to shift west, toward Saumur-Champigny, where the domination of tuffeau bedrock with deeper clay-rich topsoil along the same river, but higher up on bluffs, whose air made wines that seemed already tailored for the modern palate: brighter, higher-toned, and with the chalky figure of tuffeau that seems to translate through to the palate, staining it with a strong minerally sensation more than a tannic residue.

This is the paradox. At the very moment the broader style of Saumur-Champigny began to tailor itself to the market’s ideal of lighter, perfumed, and precise wines, the appellation’s visibility was all but closed off from view, at least in many parts of the US; there didn’t seem to be any Saumur-Champigny worth posting on social media if the label didn’t read Clos Rougeard, or if the poster had already exhausted it in previous posts. The result was a distorted map of the Loire: a few exalted producers and sites glowing brightly, while the wider, richer field of growers and terroirs remained on the sidelines. There’s too much talent in all of the Loire Valley’s main Cabernet Franc areas—Saumur-Champigny, Saumur, Bourgueil, and Chinon—to have them largely type-cast as value wines beyond Rougeard’s cult and Brézé’s rise. Isn’t it time for this to change?

One of the main challenges, though, is that those made in a serious way need more time in the bottle to demonstrate the depth of their merit and to show that they are indeed worthy of the highest praise. Rougeard has done this already for more than half a century, which means that for any contenders, there’s a lot of catch-up that needs to be done to prove the theory.

What’s missing, aside from this time for the potentially great wines to develop in bottle, is also the incentive for growers in Saumur-Champigny to make better overall wines and work on helping the world learn about their appellation. Saumur-Champigny is ripe for the picking, and this is one of France’s behemoths waiting to be truly awakened. For a moment, it seemed to get into about third gear, but troubling times have turned back the clock, and most have regressed into value-oriented utility rather than a new and exciting headliner. The same is happening in other regions of decorated history, like Italy’s Alto Piemonte wines—at least at the time of this writing, in August of 2025. To this wine lover, there isn’t a more promising category that offers widespread accessibility for terroir lovers in all of France than both Cabernet Franc and Chenin Blanc from the Loire Valley. There isn’t a larger category of wine in France that even remotely competes on price, quality and volume, and if they win in that category, there’s no reason their best terroirs can’t also get to the top of France’s podium.

Back to Fabrice

If the Brézé–Rougeard Effect compressed Saumur-Champigny and Saumur into a narrow club, the many growers like Fabrice Esnault may offer a way out of that cul-de-sac. In his case, he has vineyards in Montsoreau and Turquant—two communes on the edge of the Loire, where the coteau drops toward the river—were never the terroirs yesterday’s critics lionized. For decades, reds from these villages were perceived as too sleek, too fine-boned to stand beside more muscular benchmarks of the western side of the appellation. Clos Rougeard, with its uncanny Grand Cru-like equilibrium, stood apart.

But Rougeard notwithstanding, the hierarchy was clear: in a world judged by tastings more than drinkings, power won. Elegance was relegated to by-the-glass placements or case-stacks. In Saumur-Champigny, Cabernet Franc has yet to find its Musigny beside its Clos de Béze-type (Clos Rougeard), but the possibility is there.

What’s more is that Cabernet Franc, as its main red variety and the Loire’s physical position directly north of Bordeaux, was always subject to greater influence by Bordeaux’s inner workings and hierarchy, much more so than Burgundy. And the noise of power was always amplified by the use of newer oak and longer élevage times—which, in retrospect, seems to have relegated Loire Valley Cabernet Franc as always the bridesmaid to the Bordeaux bride.

But that script has flipped. Even before 2010, the Côte d’Or’s most celebrated growers were still working to sell. Until around 2016 or 2017, we had a lot of inventory from top growers that was slow to move out the door. Even when in direct sales myself, running routes all over California, I had to put growers like Hubert Lamy and his 2011 vintage in the bag to show around Los Angeles, to engage people and prove that his humble center of Saint-Aubin was more than competitive and well worth the money. Then, that same switch that changed direction for Rougeard seems to have changed the entire Côte d’Or. Elegance had finally matched power and sometimes topped it.

Today, the measure of power in red wine is no longer extracted density or tannic wallop but the ability to hold intensity within a lighter frame. The most celebrated wines now are more about finesse-led power than power-led finesse. Fabrice’s Cabernet Francs follow this line, and its his terroirs that lead his hand in the cellar. The sandy-gravel skins and chalk bench of his Turquant parcel give his Saumur-Champigny “La Chauvelière” a soaring, perfumed register—violets, redcurrant, the chalk-dust snap of limestone. His Montsoreau Saumur-Champigny “Les Meuniers” with its greater share of clay limestone, adds weight without heaviness: black cherry and graphite carried on a taut, mineral spine. The result is a dialogue between lightness and drive, perfume and persistence, wines that feel full of flavor yet never burdened with too much weight or unnecessary matiére.

Yet this is not the Loire Cabernet Franc of yesteryear but that of the now, and the elegance once seen as a limitation is suddenly the definition of strength. Fabrice’s reds do not need to compete with the cult bottlings of Brézé or the mystique of Rougeard; they succeed because they express what the modern palate seeks: tension, clarity, lift. And unlike the bottlings that became so rarefied they ceased to represent their appellation, Fabrice’s wines feel grounded in their place, generous without pretense, immediate and joyful, yet relatively age-worthy.

In short, Saumur-Champigny has been waiting for growers who can realign the conversation, who can show that the communes at the river’s edge—long overlooked in the search for a Bordeaux-like impact are the natural bearers of a style the many now prize. Fabrice Esnault will likely rise to be among those voices, and his wines are not simply part of Saumur-Champigny’s present; they are signposts for its future.

Back to Earth

Fabrice made his first step into organics before 2020 with Chenin Terrage. In 2024, after some proposals about how the wines could manage a slight increase in price with the potential of greater losses in the vineyards from organic farming and the extra labor without losing the market share that we were building, he made a bigger move to convert many of the parcels that constitute the wines that go through his tasting room as well as to the export market. With twenty hectares of vineyards and the majority still destined for the co-op, it doesn’t make financial sense to convert everything to organic until he builds a greater market for wines he bottles. Money earned from selling to the co-op is nickels on the dollar by comparison. But once he starts to pick up steam with the wines’ continued uptick in quality, the confidence builds—not only for Fabrice, but also for the market. It could snowball.

His whites already express their origins with clarity and bring familiarity—salt, chalk, and a vibrating line carried by tuffeau’s porosity and Brézé’s long, cool glide into fall. The reds are honest to their terroirs: Turquant’s sand and gravel bring lift with juicy, earthy wines; Montsoreau’s clay topsoil and tuffeau bedrock provide spine, deeper mineral textures, tighter fruit; old vines used in Fabrice’s Marquisat Cabernet Franc on Brézé, bringing freshness, authority, and cool-climate depth compared to his Saumur-Champigny wines grown in slightly warmer areas. The label has changed; the cellar work has sharpened; the hill is doing what it has always done. It’s happening, but it will take time.

Cellar Notes | Chenin Blanc

The Chenin Blanc wines are pressed gently, kept cool, and fermented either in tank to preserve primary tension, or in old barrels to broaden texture without adding overt oak—few barrels in the cellar are younger than ten years. The split between tank and barrel is guided by site character: tanks to underline mineral line and snap, and old barrels where the clay-rich topsoil needs a little sculpting. The maximum fermentation temperature hovers around 17°C. No malolactic is preferred across the board, but if a barrel develops, it’s accepted rather than prevented. Sulfur is first added after vinification and again at bottling. All his whites are lightly filtered for clarity.

Fabrice’s Saumur-Brézé Blanc “Chenin Terrage” was planted in 2018 at 48 meters altitude on a gentle east–west slope on the northwest side of the hill on deep rocky limestone and clay topsoil on tuffeau bedrock. Saumur-Brézé Blanc “Champ Picard” comes from Chenin Blanc planted in 1983 at 75 meters altitude on a gentle east–west slope inside the l’Ardillon lieu-dit, with deep clay, limestone and flint over tuffeau bedrock. This vineyard has a unique rock type that differs from any other vineyard Fabrice knows in the area, which has yet to be identified. And finally, the Saumur-Brézé “L’Ardillon de Brézé” was planted in 1985, 2003, and 2009, at an altitude of 75 meters on gentle north–south and east–west exposures with deep clay, limestone and silex over tuffeau bedrock.

Terrage is the most elegant of the three with a strongly crystalline mouthfeel and aromatic purity—lines, angles, and as the French would say, aérien, meaning light, ethereal, literally “of the air.” Both l’Ardillon and Champ Picard are more muscular than Terrage and take longer to develop their aromatic profile upon opening. These two tend toward a compact core and broad shoulders. The time in old wood works well to loosen them up and round out their edging.

Cellar Notes | Cabernet Franc

All of Fabrice’s Cabernet Franc is destemmed and fermented in tank at a maximum temperature of around 21°C with gentle pumpovers (more frequent early, then tapering) to favor freshness over brawn. Élevage is in neutral large vats or old French oak, depending on the cuvée, so tannin feels fine-grained, and the soils do the talking. Sulfur additions are kept modest: post-fermentation and again at bottling. Filtration and/or fining only when the wine asks for it.

Saumur-Champigny “La Chauvelière” is in Turquant and was planted in 2005 at an altitude of 74 meters on a gentle north–south slope of deep sand and gravel over clay. Though Saumur-Champigny “Les Meuniers” is in Montsoreau right beside La Chauvelière, its topsoil is quite different. It was planted in 2001 at 72 meters on an east–west slope with a topsoil composed of around one-third fragmented tuffeau rock and two-thirds clay on tuffeau bedrock. Saumur-Brézé “Marquisat de Brézé” is harvested from 65-year-old vines at 80-meter altitude on an east–west slope of deep calcareous clay on tuffeau bedrock.

Chauvelière reads as sand and gravel should: silky, perfumed, quick on its feet. Meuniers’ clay-limestone mix renders it more centered and classical. Marquisat, from old Brézé vines with extended maceration and old oak, shows the most depth and cadence without tipping into heaviness.