With exceptional wines like this one comes amazing stories. Dominique Dufour is a former aeroplane engineer from Paris who decided to retire at an early age to return to his country house in Rablay-sur-Layon in Anjou and start making natural wine on more than just an amateur level from the old family vineyard just outside of the village. An amazing plot of land situated on a southward hill facing the village, a part of which he has been subletting to Mai and Kenju Hodgson. Well, if you know, you know..
Anyway, back in 2016 Dominique had some difficulties with a couple of barriques. For some reason the wine didn’t seem to be able to finish it’s sugars and on top of that it had an unusually high level of volatile acidity, something that was a bit to much for Dominique (and his wife’s) palette.
When Emil Olander came by for his annual visit in February 2019 Dominique presented him with a sample of the wine and he was completely blown away and his pure enthusiasm convinced Dominique to bottle the wine in collaboration with Olander Vin with a label specially designed for this highly unusual Chenin Blanc.
Volat’ is harvested from 0,7 ha of vines planted in 1980 on a southward facing hill just outside of the village with an underground consisting of flint and schist. The wines has been pressed directly, fermented on steel tanks and aged sûr lie for 6 months on old barriques and aged for a total of two years in barriques before bottling.
