2012 Domaine de la Pepière Muscadet Sèvre et Maine Château-Thébaud Clos des Morines

A beautiful (if somewhat young) mouthful of stony, bright lemon, saline melon de bourgogne. Quite delicious and powerful. An insane bargain for the quality, giving many Chablis a run for the money.  Paired nicely with sauteed scallops.

Here are excellent notes from the David Bowler wine website:

"...Clos des Morines is a lieu-dit in the cru of Château Thébaud. It came into Pépière world via Marc Ollivier's partner Rémi Branger, whose father farmed it two parcels of it for decades. This 1.5 hectares of vines--up to 65 years old--is on a south-facing, earlier-ripening slope. The soils are of granite de Thébaud, a granite differing from that of Clisson in containing more feldspar and clay--this means more nutrients for the vines, cooler soil temperature, slower ripening, better water retention and a porosity that allows the roots to go deep to the hard granite mother rock.  The farming is organic and harvest  and all work by hand...."

"...Like for the rest of the Pepière wines, the fruit is direct-pressed in whole clusters and the juice settled naturally for 12 hours. It is then fermented in stainless steel tanks with natural yeasts; the wine is aged on its lees in large underground vats until bottling without fining or filtering. Thébaud needs longer aging on the lees than any of the other wines, for 3.5 years in the case of the 2012. It is typically the most austere, intensely salty and mineral of the line-up...."