Clos Thierrière is a 12-hectare estate in Vouvray (Touraine, Loire). It is the story of two twin brothers, Guillaume and Baptiste Frey, who bought the vines in 2021 in order to start their own business. They produce 5 cuvées, parcel and blend, in 100% Chenin.
Currently undergoing organic conversion, the estate is multiplying its experiments in order to move towards cleaner agriculture and winemaking that respects natural biotopes. The name of the estate comes from a project of vegetative closure favouring local biodiversity. Their objective? Giving life to unique, authentic and true wines.
To discover their wines, contact the sales team at contact@vinhop.com.
What led you to winegrowing?
We were not especially destined to make wine, because in the family, no one was in this field, nor in the agricultural field. But we have always been sensitive to nature, because of our childhood in the middle of the woods.
Our parents, it's true, were big wine fans (exclusively on the tasting side), and we started to take an interest in it when we were about 19-20. When you approach (from afar) wine tasting through the regions, the appellations, you quickly arrive at the notion of terroir and what happens in the vineyard.
At the beginning, I (Guillaume) was supposed to start a sales job in Paris and finally I was offered to do the harvest with Nicolas Réau in Anjou, I said yes straight away and it was one of my best experiences so far. I spoke to Baptiste about it so that he too could discover it, and that's when we thought "why not us?". At the same time, I enrolled for an Advanced Technician Certificate in wine-making and I worked a little for Vincent Carême (Vouvray, Loire).
From there, we started to visit different estates for sale in the region. The choice of the Loire Valley was quite obvious because we were born in Amboise and grew up between Tours and Royan. And we believe that the region has great potential in the years to come. We first looked in Anjou, as this is where the beginnings of the story started. So Thouars, Bourgueil, Chinon... and one day we visited an estate on the Rue Neuve in Vernou-sur-Brenne (in the heart of the Vouvray appellation). We fell in love with the vines, the place, and even if the winemaker wasn't necessarily looking to sell, he was getting close to his last vintages, so he agreed to hand over to us. It is really a creation because the former owner was a fine connoisseur of the terroirs and had a certain number of vintages behind him, but he worked in a hard conventional way, and it was not at all the vision that we had of the terroirs and of nature. We are currently undergoing organic certification, we have gone 100% manual, and we would really like to work as cleanly and naturally as possible. All of this has happened very quickly, because between those first harvests and today, it's been just over two years.
What would you tell yourself 10 years ago?
We are young, so there is little hindsight. But to keep on doing what we do, ignoring other people's opinions, and living by passion. That's really what's most important in the end: passion. That's what makes us want to make the best and truest wines possible.
What is your first and/or most vivid memory of wine?
I think we have the same first memory of wine: when we were children, our parents used to organise bottling of Chinon wine bought in bulk, with their own homemade and printed labels, then glued together with egg whites. It's not really a tasting memory, but it's a memory of sharing wine with family and friends.
Otherwise, we recently visited Olivier Humeau (Domaine des Menhirs, near Saumur, Loire), who mainly works with Cabernet Franc. We were able to talk for a long time, and above all we tasted a 2011 vintage and it was a very nice moment, there was a lot of emotion.
What would you like us to say about your wines?
When we present our wines, we hate to talk about the aromas that we are supposed to feel etc. For example, we sometimes have to say that we have a very good nose. For example, we sometimes have people say that they smell like harlequin candy, we know how to explain that, but everyone has their own references. We consider that tasting is different for everyone, depending on their tastes. So we just present how we work, and how the vintage went. This is what gives rise to a real reflection and a real exchange.
What we would like is for people to say that our wines provide emotion, a vibration, something that we can't really describe but which is there. If our wines were to be summed up as "this is a Vouvray", it would almost be taken the wrong way because it is so vast. We want people to recognise that our wines are well made, of course, but that they have that little extra something. For example, at the Paulée des Vins de Loire we had the opportunity to taste Richard Leroy's Les Noëls de Montbenault. So many things are happening in terms of life, vibrations, emotions. This is exactly what we would like to have in our wines.
For us, this life and these emotions are achieved through non-interventionism and naturalness. Of course, one should never go to extremes and be there anyway, but for us we must let the vine and the grapes live their lives as much as possible to give these wines.
What other terroir / grape variety would you like to vinify? And why?
Guillaume: Personally, Cabernet Franc, to stay regional. First of all because it is the first grape variety that I vinified (at Nicolas Réau in Anjou), and then because we made some this year and it was really good. It's a grape variety that has a lot of potential (in terms of taste and ageing), and when it's well made, it's incredible. And the terroir, I don't know... where this variety will express itself best, I imagine!
Baptiste: I would say a Jura grape variety; Trousseau or Poulsard. These are grape varieties that I love, rather simple but easy to drink, like little sweets. It's probably also linked to the fact that over there they make a lot of natural wine, in which you find precisely these vibrations and emotions, which you don't have in a processed product in which you intervened.
What do you remember about your training?
We don't really have any training. The little I got in the BTS (Guillaume) was all about what you don't do. The training at school is mainly about learning how to prevent problems, and therefore how to treat. But when the grapes are beautiful and have no problems, there is no reason to intervene.
So we don't apply much today, except for the viticulture part, where we still learn this notion of accompanying nature - rather than forcing it.
How do you best embrace nature?
Simply by accompanying it. Even if we have soil differences in our plots in Vouvray, they remain minimal. We still have a global approach on the 12 hectares. So we will adapt to these differences, and also adapt to the vintage (e.g. in hot years we will try to avoid heat, evapo-transpiration, compensate for the lack of water, adapt the date of the harvest to harvest at maturity etc.).
Each year, we start from scratch and we try above all to understand so that we don't have to force the vines. The idea is really to restrict it without forcing it. The vines, we mustn't forget, are above all living beings, and so we just try to put them in the best possible conditions so that they give beautiful grapes. That's all there is to it!
We really try to develop this understanding and apprehension of the terroirs as we go along. We've only been in business for two years but we're very interested in studying the soils (at the moment a study with 200 core samples has been launched by the AOC), and we also want to do some on our parcels specifically.
Finally, was there an encounter that changed your way of seeing things or made a particular impression on you?
Reading Les Ignorants by Etienne Davodeau with Richard Leroy. Unfortunately we haven't had the chance to meet him personally yet, but we both read the comic book and we found in it all the values that are a bit lost in our society, but which are important to us and inspire us on a daily basis: patience, the human and social side, understanding, perseverance, tenacity at work... We also realised that the people who make good wine are often exceptional, interesting people, and with whom we spend real life moments. Each of these encounters brings back a small stone that we try to add to our edifice, and hopefully we'll progress like that!