EPINE

Tim and Anne-Marie

Tim and Anne-Marie invited us to come visit their gite and meet the owners. The couple, Nicole and René, have three hectares of cabernet franc grapes around their cave which they make into wine. They invited us to visit the cave and sample the fruit of last year’s harvest. We drove together to the property, about five minutes away from their house. In the cave they showed us the original winemaking setup that consisted of a screw type press and a big stone collection basin. The grapes were dumped down a chute carved into the tuffeau stone right into the crusher.


The Crusher

We sampled their wine, an excellent young and fruity Saumur style red. They have an arrangement with the winemaker whereby he takes care of the grapevines then harvests the grapes and makes the wine and bottles it on the property. They split the wine with him 50-50. Every year they get about 1500 bottles from this arrangement.



1.5 liter bottles of red wine.

Before we left they offered us a taste of a dessert wine that they make called “epine”. Basically, they take their wine before it has aged, mix it with sugar and infuse it with the leaves and branches of a local wild plum. They bottle this concoction and reserve it strictly for family use. It was delicious with a strong flavour of almond even though there is no almond used in its creation.




View from small derelict private chapel on the property.