Coulée de Serrant / Nicolas Joly

The Free Bacchus Story

Seven hectares of Chenin Blanc on a south-facing schist slope above the Loire, first planted by Cistercian monks in the twelfth century, and holding something almost no other vineyard in France has: its own appellation, granted to a single site.

Nicolas Joly took the estate on and, in the 1980s, began farming it biodynamically — well before anyone was doing so for commercial advantage, because there was none to be had. His reasoning was not mystical, whatever the vocabulary suggests. His argument, which he has spent forty years making, is that the relationship between soil life and plant health is agronomy conducted at a finer resolution than chemistry allowed, and that the calendar and the preparations are instruments for paying closer attention rather than articles of faith.

You are permitted to find that unconvincing and still take the wines seriously, which is rather the point. They are among the most polarising in France: oxidative, honey-textured, deeply mineral, built to age for decades rather than to charm on opening. Coulée de Serrant has earned 97 points from Wine Advocate and a Decanter Trophy, marks that validate the quality without requiring anyone to agree about the moon.

The estate withdrew from Interloire, its own regional trade body, in 2015, over disagreements about how the region promoted itself.

Joly's larger contribution may be organisational rather than agricultural. He founded Renaissance des Appellations, an international association of biodynamic producers whose collective effect on how the trade discusses farming and terroir has considerably outrun what any single seven-hectare estate could manage alone.