Jo Pithon
The domaine amounts to some 10 ha comprising eight different parcels, seven of which are in the Coteaux du Layons and one in Savennieres.
The area benefits form a wide variety of bedrock and topsoil which differ in each of the Pithon’ parcels. Jo is keen and brilliantly able to capture this in his wines. Like all serious wine producers, he places prime importance on the work in the vineyards. He knows that the only way to make great wine is to grow top quality grapes. He says, ‘Viticulture and basically agriculture, has the choice between a mass-producing system providing good looking fruits, without any faults but tasteless, and a much more genuine system, closer to the ‘terroir’ and more tasty”. He has therefore chosen to work the vineyards organically involving ploughing the soil, weeding the soil mechanically, and treatments based on the Bordeaux Mixture. After a short cane pruning in May he tells me that they check through the row hundreds of times in order to remove suckers, divide the twigs, green harvest in July and also to thin out the foliage in July and September. The harvest for the dry wines commences in early October, normally in two tris, to ensure optimum ripeness. The sweet and botrytised wines are picked in 3-5 successive tris, bunch by bunch and even berry by berry
The wines they produce are completely natural without the use of any cultured yeasts and strictly no chaptalisation. The fermentation is long and slow – often continuing into the summer and takes place solely by the action of the natural yeast found on the grapes and linked to the terroir. All the wines are fermented in barrel between 12 – 18 months.
The area benefits form a wide variety of bedrock and topsoil which differ in each of the Pithon’ parcels. Jo is keen and brilliantly able to capture this in his wines. Like all serious wine producers, he places prime importance on the work in the vineyards. He knows that the only way to make great wine is to grow top quality grapes. He says, ‘Viticulture and basically agriculture, has the choice between a mass-producing system providing good looking fruits, without any faults but tasteless, and a much more genuine system, closer to the ‘terroir’ and more tasty”. He has therefore chosen to work the vineyards organically involving ploughing the soil, weeding the soil mechanically, and treatments based on the Bordeaux Mixture. After a short cane pruning in May he tells me that they check through the row hundreds of times in order to remove suckers, divide the twigs, green harvest in July and also to thin out the foliage in July and September. The harvest for the dry wines commences in early October, normally in two tris, to ensure optimum ripeness. The sweet and botrytised wines are picked in 3-5 successive tris, bunch by bunch and even berry by berry
The wines they produce are completely natural without the use of any cultured yeasts and strictly no chaptalisation. The fermentation is long and slow – often continuing into the summer and takes place solely by the action of the natural yeast found on the grapes and linked to the terroir. All the wines are fermented in barrel between 12 – 18 months.
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