The name came to Fabrice Gendrot as a joke. Looking out the window of his office at a gym across the street, he thought: making wine is really a kind of sport. The idea stuck, and in 2016 Les Athlètes du Vin was born — a négociant project rooted in the Loire Valley and shaped by the Vini Be Good collective of natural winemakers.
Backstory
Vini Be Good is a network of some of the Loire's most respected producers, and Les Athlètes du Vin is their shared label for a range of approachable, everyday natural wines. Fabrice Gendrot and Francis del Tedesco manage the project today, sourcing grapes from within the network and vinifying them using the same minimal-intervention principles that define each producer's own estate work.
The Region
The Loire Valley is France's longest river appellation and its most diverse wine region, stretching from the Atlantic to the heart of the country. The Athlètes wines draw on the valley's core strengths: Chenin Blanc, Sauvignon Blanc, Pineau d'Aunis, Grolleau, and Gamay — each variety at home in a specific Loire microclimate and soil type. The collective's producers span the full length of the valley.
Winemaking
Les Athlètes du Vin hand-harvests from vineyards farmed sustainably across the Loire. Fermentation relies on native and ambient yeasts, with wines aged in a mix of stainless steel, concrete, and wooden vats. The wines are unfined and unfiltered, bottled with small doses of sulfur when needed. The approach is minimal-intervention throughout, consistent with the philosophy each member producer brings to their own cellar.
The Wines
The Les Athlètes du Vin range includes Chenin Blanc (Vin de France, from 35-year-old vines), Pineau d'Aunis Touraine (from vines 50 to 120 years old), Grolleau Vin de France (from 60-year-old vines with spontaneous carbonic fermentation), Gamay, Pinot Noir, Fine Bulles de Touraine (Chenin Blanc sparkling), and Gardien de Bulles. Each label features a different sport drawn by Michel Tolmer, the unofficial visual chronicler of the French natural wine movement since the 1990s. We also carry the Touraine Sauvignon.
