Patrick Baudouin

Patrick Baudouin took a circuitous route from city life to his final destination in the Côteaux du Layon. It was only in 1990, after twelve years of factory work and a stint selling books in Paris, that he decided to take over the estate his great-grandparents founded in the 1920s. Today, Patrick is shaking things up, where he is fighting to outlaw chaptalization for sweet wines. In collaboration with some of France's greatest wineries – he is...

The domaine is certified organic. In the cellar, Patrick “gives birth to wines, (he does) not fabricate them.” He uses ambient yeast during fermentation, eschewing chaptalization, and adding only very small doses of sulfur. Patrick has received considerable recognition in France as one of the new stars for Côteaux du Layon and Quarts de Chaume. His is the only Loire Valley wine to be included in legendary French collector Michel Chasseuil’s ‘1...

No chaptalization since 1994, 100% de-stemmed, fermentation and aging in used barrels and demi-muids, fermentations started with ambient yeasts but sometimes neutral yeasts are used to re-start fermentations. Minimal SO2 added before bottling.

Patrick Baudouin’s 13.5 hectares are northwestern France’s Anjou, Coteaux du Layon and Savennières appellations, rooted in the terroirs of the Anjou Noir. Here, the dark, ancient Pangea-age rocks of the Massif Armoricain tell a tall tale: once towering as high as the Alps, the Variscan (Hercynian) mountain range has, over 400 million years, been worn down to rolling hills of ancient volcanic and metamorphic rock once deep under the earth, now ...