Francois Blanchard came to wine the long way around, touring France as a professional jazz musician before returning to the family land in the Loire to make some of Touraine's most singular natural wines.
Backstory
Blanchard is a fifth-generation member of a Loire winegrowing family based at Chateau du Perron, just outside the village of Lemere, about forty minutes south of Tours. After years working as a jazz musician in Tours, he returned to the vines and made his first real vintage in 2003, devoting himself fully to natural wine, organic farming and a holistic way of living.
The Region
His wines fall under the Touraine appellation in the central Loire Valley, in the Indre-et-Loire, an area of mixed farming and woodland between Tours and the Sologne.
Vineyards and Farming
Blanchard farms a small holding of around 4 hectares, the heart of which is Le Grand-Clere, a roughly 2.7-hectare parcel of fifty-year-old vines hidden among woods a short drive from his home. The vines grow on firm clay littered with silex and have been farmed organically for over two decades, with certification by Ecocert and a move toward permaculture and biodiversity. Plantings include Cabernet Franc and Cabernet Sauvignon for reds alongside white varieties such as Sauvignon Blanc, Chardonnay and Gewurztraminer.
Winemaking
In the cellar Blanchard works intuitively and experimentally, fermenting with native yeasts and aging in a variety of vessels, making decisions vintage by vintage based on the fruit. He frames everything he does in terms of jazz and music, letting each grape, as he puts it, sing its own song of ripeness. The wines are made naturally with minimal additions.
The Wines
His bottlings, often built around old-vine Cabernet Franc from Le Grand-Clere, are energetic, expressive and made in tiny quantities. They have a cult following among natural-wine drinkers and tend to sell out quickly.
