Brendan Stater-West
Bizay, Loire Valley, France
Brendan Stater-West
With that infectious smile, a humble disposition, and a willingness to "trust the process," Brendan Stater-West is intuitively built to be a great vigneron. One might ask how a young American guy from Oregon with no winemaking background ends up in Saumur as the right hand man to Romain Guiberteau, one of the benchmark producers in the Loire Valley. It started while Brendan was working at a hip Parisian wine shop, where he first encountered a bottle of Guiberteau and fell hard for the purity and laser- focused expressions Chenin Blanc. After a move to Saumur, he pestered Romain until he finally gave in to that all-American charm and gave him a job chez Guiiberteau.
He worked hard, gaining experience in every corner of the domaine and soon was hungry to put his own mark on the region. So, when his current boss and mentor Romain Guiberteau suggested he could help him launch his own project by leasing him a single hectare of vines - Les Chapaudaises- a plot next to Romain’s famous lieu-dit in the town of Bizay, Clos du Guichaux - there was zero hesitation. His first vintage in 2015 turned heads, especially the team at Becky Wasserman who kindly made our early introduction to Brendan.
His luck and hard work continue to pay off, as he has since taken over farming in some choice old-vine parcels in Brézé for Chenin and La Ripaille for Cabernet France. Upon our last visit with Brendan, he shared the exciting news that he had recently bought a property in Chacé, a town in the appellation of Saumur-Champigny, from a family with deep roots in the region. He has begun the process of renovating this ancient tuffeau cave and turning it into his own. Needless to say, Brendan's story makes the case that in fact, "nice guys don't always finish last."
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“I arrived in France 10 years ago, originally to be an English teacher in Paris. In my second year of teaching, I became hooked on wine thanks to a coworker of mine. Fortunately, it was someone who had a good palate and took me to several professional wine tastings. This sparked the flame for my love of wine that has not yet died out! I then decided to stop teaching in order to learn wine and enter the profession. I went to a school in Paris to learn the trade, more on the retail side of things. I worked in a small and beautiful store, Spring, in the 1st arrondissement for an American chef, Daniel Rose, who has an amazing gastronomic restaurant.
During this period, we were selling the wines from Domaine Guiberteau. I remember tasting the wines for the first time and immediately being hit by a divine revelation of limestone terroir, through Chenin! I was hooked... thanks to Brézé 2008! I already knew that retail wasn't for me in the long haul, so after tasting this wine, I felt like it was time to make the move out of the city and get back into a more rural context where I could learn to grow grapes and vinify. I therefore harassed Romain Guiberteau and other winemakers in the area for a month, when finally, Romain gave in and accepted to take me under his wing as an apprentice. I enrolled in a BTS Viti-Oeno program and worked full-time at the domaine. My only time working outside the domaine was for a short 3 months where I went to the Clos Cristal, the hospices de Saumur, to learn how to work exclusively in the vineyard with horses. This is a future project of mine by the way...In 2015, I insisted that I wanted to find some vineyards to start making my own wine. Romain proposed one hectare of a vineyard called Les Chapaudaises to me, and I knew it was a terroir that could make the style of Chenin that I am crazy for: elegant, pure, vertical, with salinity from the limestone."
- Brendan Stater-West
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Brendan's story began with the 1 ha. parcel of Les Chapaudaises, where the topsoil (40cm) is composed of loam, sand and clay, with the tuffeau (soft limestone) bedrock just underneath.
Considering the shallow top-soil, Brendan finds that generally the vines have a much harder time growing and therefore the clusters are much smaller and more concentrated. This is the first vineyard that Brendan picks, even before any of the Domaine Guiberteau vineyards in order to preserve high acidity. Usually the pH ranges from 3.0 - 3.10.
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Light decanting of lees, indigenous yeast fermentation in older oak barrels. Aged for 18 months in barrel.
Wines
Saumur Blanc Val de Loire
This is coming from a selection inside the parcel of Les Chapaudaises in Bizay. The selection is made in the lower slope of the parcel (facing north-east), where the grapes don't have the same concentration and depth from the other half that go into the bottling Les Chapaudaises. The soil type is mostly clay-sand-loam based and about 1m in depth before being in the limestone. The picking dates vary from the picking for Les Chapaudaises as the ripeness is a little later on this part of the vineyard, therefore needing 4-5 days more of ripening than Les Chapaudaises.
Fermentation and vinification takes place in stainless steel tanks. Brendan left some fine lees in the tank in order to nourish the wine during the aging for 6 months.
Saumur Blanc Les Chapaudaises
Les Chapaudaises is a 1 hectare vineyard in the commune of Bizay, just two kilometers south of Brézé. The topsoil (40cm) is composed of loam, sand and clay, with the tuffeau (soft limestone) bedrock just underneath. Everything is pressed whole cluster and alcoholic fermentation takes place in stainless steel and is kept to under one month. Only indigenous yeasts are allowed. Once alcoholic fermentation is over, the wine is racked and then put into barrel at Brendan’s house in Chacé for roughly 12 months. He racks the wine to make room in the barrels for the upcoming vintage and then allows the wine to age in stainless steel for the remaining 6 months.
Saumur Blanc Breze
0.5 ha of Chenin Blanc planted in the 1960s, located in L’Ardillon, a single south/southwest facing parcel in the commune of Brézé (contextually speaking sits above La Charpenterie, Domaine du Collier’s most revered site). The topsoil (about 80cm deep) is a mix of clay and loam, above Turonian limestone.
Vinification: Sorted directly in vineyard, whole cluster pressing. No malo due to the very low pH (between 3.07 to 3.12) and the cold cellar environment (10 to 12°C). Aged on fine lees for 12 months in barrel (50% 225L barrels of one wine, 50% 225L barrels of 2-3 wines), then a further 6 months in stainless steel. SO2: varies from 15 to 25 mg/l free, and 25 to 60 mg/l total. Very low doses are added at pressing (2g/hl), after alcoholic fermentation to help prevent malo (1 g/hl), with a final adjustment at bottling. Unfined, light filtration.
Saumur Rouge Val de Loire
100% Cabernet Franc from a young south-west vineyard of Cabernet Franc in Brézé, in the lieu-dit La Ripaille. The soil profile is predominantly sandy-clay of 1.5m in depth. Brendan is just the second grower with La Ripaille. (The other is Antoine Foucault of Domaine du Collier.)
Harvest is sorted in the vineyard then destemmed 100% upon arrival at Brendan’s facility. Maceration is based on an infusion style, no extraction (no pump-overs, pigeage, delestage) and lasts 6 days in order to preserve delicate and purity in texture. Aging is also in stainless steel for 6 months. 2018 is the first vintage bottled.
Saumur Rouge La Ripaille
100% Cabernet Franc planted in the 1960s from 1.10 ha in La Ripaille - a single west-facing parcel in the commune of Brézé. The topsoil (about 1.5 meters deep) is sandy loam, above Turonian limestone. Vinification: Sorted directly in the vineyard (with sorting table). 100% de-stemmed, alcoholic fermentation in concrete tanks at around 24°C, infusion-style maceration, with no pump-overs or punch-downs, lasts 9 days. Aged on fine lees for 12 months in barrel and a further 6 months in stainless steel. SO2: varies from 15 to 25 mg/l free, and 25 to 60 mg/l total. Very low doses are added as the grapes go into tank (2g/hl), after malolactic fermentation (1 g/hl), with a final adjustment at bottling. Unfined, light filtration. 2018 was the first release of this wine.