Located on the right side of the Indre river, Château de l’Aulée and its cellars were built in 1856 by the Cordier family, a wine-merchant from Bordeaux. Champagne Deutz bought the domain in 1973, restored it, drained soils and entirely replanted it with chenin grape, on 37 hectares. As soils and grape variety are perfectly adapted to produce fine sparkling wines, the production of the domain was divided into still wines AOC Azay le Rideau and sparkling wines “traditional method” AOC Touraine and Crémant de Loire.
Since 2004, this is the love story of an oenologist and her husband from Touraine area and this outstanding vineyard. “We set up on the domain with a very strong idea in mind: growing high quality wines”. Oenologist from Champagne with work experience in some famous companies like Pommery, Bricout, Bollinger, Marielle wants to grow their vineyard and wines with good agricultural pratices, respecting environment and the soil.
In 2008, they added 6.5 ha of vineyard from Chinon area enabling not only the production of red and rosé wines AOC Chinon, but also Touraine and Crémant sparkling rosés.
Today, sparkling wines represent 80% of the production of Château de l’Aulée.
The vineyard
- The entire vineyard (37 ha) surrounds the castle, on clay with flint soils (also named “perruche”). For each patch, different proportion of flints gives different flavours to the wines, enabling the production of very different and specific vintages.
22 ha of Chenin
This is the leader grape variety in Loire area: it results in famous white wines like Coteaux du Layon, Savennières- Coulée de Serrant, Vouvray (sweet; dry; “demi-sec” or traditional method).
This grape variety gives long lasting ageing wines with deep aroma of toasted almonds, lime, quince and cinnamon.
The vines are aged from 10 years old to 40 years old. We planted 3 hectares of the same grape in 2011 and 3 more in 2012. In a few years, we will be able to produce on 25 hectares.
3 ha of Chardonnay
We produce on 1.40 ha in the so-called “Jeanne d’Arc” vine since 1989 and 1.44 ha more since 2001.
Guyot pruning is used for the whole vineyard, with natural or controlled grass growing in the dividing rows according to the needs. The phytosanitary attendance comes within a procedure of responsible wine-growing in order to respect the environment.
6,50 ha of Cabernet Franc
On light sandy soils of North Chinon, in Savigny-en-Véron village, it gives light and fruity wines, totally in a Loire Valley spirit.
