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There are still remarkable discoveries to be made in a wine region one thinks has long been known through and through. At Domaine Claude Riffault, style and quality have changed remarkably in recent years. The people responsible are Stéphane and Bénédicte Riffault.
His wines have a style all their own. They are fruity on the one hand, and crystal-clear and pure in structure on the other. They are neither smothered in reduction notes, as one likes to find on the Loire at present, nor marked by oak, although Stéphane ages all the single-site and single-parcel wines in wood. Tonneaux used over several vintages provide the basis for the texture he wants.
More about Claude Riffault
Fleshy, sensual, mineral
The quality of the fruit is truly remarkable and recalls above all the fruit of old orchards with historic apple and pear varieties. Stéphane has little liking for the grassy, the pyrazine and the gooseberry aromatics. His wines come across as rather fleshy, almost opulent and sensual, yet nevertheless mineral, very clear and at the same time very open. Alongside the precise yet ripe acidity, one feels the spiciness of the Sancerres, which reflects the rock of the sites as much as herbs and austere citrus notes. All the wines can be drunk with great pleasure while young, but one may look forward with keen anticipation to how the monoparcelles in particular will develop over time.
Four generations in Sury-en-Vaux
Stéphane's great-grandfather founded the estate as a mixed farm in the tiny hamlet of Sury-en-Vaux, which nobody would know had it not also been the seat of the winemaker Vincent Gaudry. Grandfather Henri then switched entirely to viticulture, and Stéphane's father Claude joined in the 1980s. Stéphane himself studied in Beaune and then trained under Olivier Leflaive, while his brother went to Domaine Etienne Sauzet, fell in love there with Emilie and stayed; today he runs the well-known domaine.
The ties to Burgundy are thus close, not least because Stéphane's wife Bénédicte also comes from there. After his time in Burgundy the winemaker first went to Bordeaux, where he stayed for several years at Château Angélus, before returning home in 2001. When his father Claude retired, Stéphane was able to take over the reins. This included the conversion to organic farming, completed in 2016 with ECOCERT certification. Since 2017 the domaine has also been BIODYVIN-certified.
All three terroirs of Sancerre
The domaine today comprises 15.5 hectares of vines, with 12.5 hectares of Sauvignon Blanc and three hectares of Pinot Noir. All variants of the three most important soil types are present: Terres blanches, Caillottes and Silex.
Les Boucauds covers nearly half of the holdings and is shaped by the Terres blanches, a weathered Saint-Doulchard marl with high quantities of Exogyra virgula oysters. These soils yield fruity, quickly accessible wines. Les Denisottes shows the disciplined side of this terroir: mineral and free of any gooseberry cliché, with tension, drive and silky precision.
Monoparcelles: precision as a principle
Stéphane has let some cuvées initiated by his father run out, in order to respond even more precisely, with the monoparcelles, to the terroir that changes so often. Les Denisottes comes from vines not far from the estate on Kimmeridgian limestone with pale calcareous clay. Les Chailloux is marked by the rare silex, as one also finds it in Pouilly-Fumé.
Two single-site wines Stéphane has given up in favour of Monoparcelle 469 and Monoparcelle 538. These parcels each form the core of the former single-site wines and reflect the terroir more precisely. And that is exactly what Stéphane Riffault is about: precision.
Anyone wishing to explore the subject of Sancerre further will find another outstanding biodynamic estate from the region in Domaine Vacheron.