Domaine Vincent Ricard

That wasn’t a convenient attitude. His grandfather had been a founding member of the local Oisy-Thésée wine co-operative. Its by-the-kilo buying practices made for an easygoing status quo—but that was precisely the problem. As growers had pushed the envelope on yields, high crop levels begat dilute Sauvignon Blanc that bore no resemblance to the great mineral whites of Sancerre and Pouilly-Fumé further up the Loire Valley. Yet Vincent believed that the clay, limestone, and flinty silex soils of his south-facing vineyards were capable of something much finer.

He had good reason to be confident. Upon completing his enology degree he’d gone to Chinon to work for Philippe Alliet, soaking up that vigneron’s famously meticulous organic vineyard practices. After that he’d honed his white wine craft under Claude Levasseur in Montlouis, mastering barrel vinification a little closer to home. The stage was now set for an even bolder move. When Vincent told his dad that he planned to aggressively drop clusters a couple months before his first harvest, and then to vinify and bottle 10 percent of what he picked under a new label bearing the family’s name, Alain Ricard was worried. But Vincent’s father really became alarmed when the younger Ricard announced plans to travel two hours east to ask for advice from another Sauvignon Blanc winegrower who also farmed flint-strewn hillsides.

That would be the infamous Didier Dagueneau.  Dagueneau’s flint-soil Pouilly-Fumé “Silex” was sending international collectors into a frenzy at the time, but the iconoclastic vigneron all but petrified the frugal, conservative farmers of Touraine. He’d implemented the most rigorous viticultural protocol the valley had ever known, and capped it with Burgundian barrel fermentation in 350- to 400-liter cigar-shaped casks, maximizing contact with lees, while keeping levels of sulfur dioxide at a strict minimum. Alain “thought I’d lost my mind and would bankrupt the family,” as Vincent would recall. “But he bit his tongue. He was excited by my passion, proud of me—even if he was terrified by what I might say after a couple days with Didier.”

It was less about what Vincent said than what he did. The 24-year-old took to the hillsides, manually retraining each vine. He dropped clusters at veraison and occasionally de-budded, trimming back yields to spike concentration. Doing away with herbicides and pesticides, he let the rows fill with grass as he adapted Dagueneau’s Silex protocol to his revitalized terroir. Soon the results were in, and the first review showed just how much risk he’d been courting. After tasting Ricard’s first wines prior to release, the neighbors struck back, appealing to the local AOC, arguing that Vincent’s wines should be declassified as “atypical of the region.” Their desperate regulatory gambit only proved how far Vincent had left them behind. 

Ricard’s Trois Chênes cuvée continues to exemplify what sets this domaine apart. Drawn from 75-year-old vines rooted in sand and silex above the Cher River, this barrel-fermented Sauvignon Blanc spends 8 months on fine lees with gentle bâtonnage every four days to coax a creamy texture from the fruit’s citric vigor and saline minerality. Gamay and Malbec also grow in gravely clay-limestone plots the family has overseen for generations. Vincent starts the de-stemmed Clos de Vauriou Gamay in concrete, giving it a 20-day maceration before shifting it to 225-liter barrels for malolactic. The P’tit Villain Malbec gets one week of maceration in a combination of concrete and oak before spending 6 months in an equal mixture of new, one-year-old, and two-year-old 400-liter barrels. Each red conveys its own brand of lighthearted joy, with juicy freshness lifted by the minerality that attests to Vincent’s mind-meld with his soils. 

Yet his Sauvignon Blancs remain the richest sources of fascination. From the vivacious Le Petiot—matured mostly in stainless steel to channel its elegant florality—to the voluminous Tasciaca, whose wide spectrum of fruit gets further dimension from a mix of two- and three-year-old 400-liter barrels plus a single 25-hectoliter cuve tronconique, these are wines that have well and truly broken the mold that constrained Touraine for so long. That place-name still graces every label, but in a way it hides what this native son has accomplished.  In France, the path to winemaking plaudits typically involves fulfilling your appellation’s best expectations. Vincent Ricard, by contrast, has earned his acclaim by transcending his appellation.