Charles Bouley of Domaine de la Crechette.

The Loire Valley! Ever heard of it? It's where my natural wine journey began. Probably many of yours as well. It was at the Ten Bells, sipping thin, slightly sour juice from a tiny glass. Damn! Wine was good, and you could drink a lot of it. For a long time, that was a good metric for how much I liked a wine. "I could drink a whole bottle!" That kind of thing. Today, I'm a serious wine expert and know many things. I put my name on stuff that I like for a living. I still mostly drink out of tiny glasses, however, in a constant state of amour with wines from this little strip of France. 

     Our trip in the Spring was a wild one but incredibly fruitful for the ever changing nature of our tiny portfolio. In a lot of ways, these trips are like going home. You taste wines that you've poured and drank time and time again, but in a context that turns up the volume and gives you the impression that you're getting to the essence of something you've only ever seen shades of. But it's completely novel at the same time! And you meet new people and different wines that are shocking or enlightening or confusing or whatever. 

     What am I trying to say? When I drank Charles Bouly's wine I felt really happy and wanted to keep drinking it a lot. It was like hearing a song that you think you might recognize but in fact it had just lived somewhere deep inside your lizard brain since you were a twinkle in the eye of your progenitor, only to meet you here and now and make you emotional in front of your colleagues. It was good, in other words. 

     So that was nice. We went and visited M. Bouly and his lovely family. We looked at his incredible vineyards on the bank of the Loire river and made lots of interesting inferences derived from all of our wine expertise and knowledge of agriculture. Also, we drank more wine and I was happy. Charles is just starting out, trying out a lot of things, playing with vine work and fermentations. Every part of the project was extremely impressive and something I knew would delight all my dear friends back at home. So I hope that you'll taste it and love it and drink a whole bottle with us soon. This is a guy deserving of our support.