Domaine Fabrice Gasnier

His great-grandfather Aimé Gasnier had begun with three hectares of vines intermixed with barley and corn—raising cattle, sheep, and pigs as well. Hubert took over in 1935 and grew the family’s vineyard holdings during World War II, when red wine was sometimes used as a food substitute when calories were in short supply. In 1966 Hubert passed the reins to his son Jacky, whose quarter-century of further development and modernization set the stage for a transformative injection of fresh thinking thanks to Fabrice, whose questing energy is palpable in the estate’s vibrant whites and tightly woven reds.

It was Dominique Roger, the inventive viticulturist from Bué-en-Sancerre, who first tipped us off. He called us from the La Foire des Vins de La Loire in Anger. The wine fair was bustling—his voice strained to be heard against the hubbub—but Roger stole a few minutes to divulge, with unusual excitement, that he was sharing a booth with a 20-something producer from Chinon. His name was Fabrice Gasnier, Dominique said, adding: “Crest un vrai.” (He’s a real vigneron.)

That summer we visited Cravant-les-Coteaux for the first time, and barrel tasted Chinon from the warm 1995 vintage. It was the first of dozens of visits—which gave us a front-row view of just how fully Fabrice had committed to an uncompromising vision. It has been a captivating evolution.

The turning point came after he converted to organic farming—when he couldn’t shake the feeling that he’d yet to fully tap the energy of the limestone substrata beneath his granitic and sandy clay soils. Turning to a septuagenarian acolyte of Rudolf Steiner, the father of biodynamic agriculture, Fabrice pressed further. Preparing composts rich in aerobic fungi and applying natural treatments like seaweed, mushrooms and copper, Fabrice chased microbial diversity and balance like a holy grail. The eureka moment arrived when he made a series of cross-sectional cuts to see how the vine roots were responding to his new practices. The results were revelatory. In rows where he’d gone from organic to biodynamic, the roots seemed to have curled upward as though seeking surface inputs—then looped definitively down to plunge toward the bedrock. 

Domaine Fabrice Gasnier won full biodynamic certification in 2008, and the wines now shimmer with an energy, purity, and precision that can be hard to come by in Chinon—where too much Cabernet Franc comes with a hard edge. Not so at this estate. The Les Graves cuveé expresses the de-stemmed berries of 40-year-old vines with juicy directness, using wild yeasts and homemade cement vats to emphasize freshness. Meanwhile a 30-day maceration and maturation in 10-year-old oak foudres suffuses the age-worthy Vielles Vignes with a plushness that flatters its concentrated and spicy red fruit; and the Chinon “Signature” channels 75-year-old vines into a dense and brambly intensity of high-toned black fruit.

Fabrice’s youthful experience in Champagne—and his own uncompromising nature—shows in La Cravantine, a labor-intensive méthode ancienne Cab Franc sparkler whose pale-rose hue and mousse-like frothiness resolve in a bracingly crisp finish, like a slightly rounder incarnation of single-grower champagne. And we love the energy and expressiveness he brings to Chenin Blanc—be it the rich, forward style of Le Coteau De Sonnay (fermented in barriques and demi-muids), or the livewire Clos de la Cure, whose soprano-pitched acidity seems to soar out of the richly textured depths of sur-lie élevage. 

There’s an invigorating minerality at the core of all of these wines—red and white, still and sparkling. The vine roots have been reaching down into that limestone for about two decades now, and Fabrice is reaping the rewards like few other winemakers in the Middle Loire.