Laurent Saillard Ça Se Discute 2023

Laurent Saillard rediscovered himself as a winemaker after years of working in New York, managing at Balthazar and starting one of the first natural wine bars in Brooklyn.

After moving back to France, Laurent spent several years working under Noella Morantin and Didier Barrouillet of Clos Roche Blanche. He gradually developed his own footprint in winemaking and started making wines on his own with his first vintage in 2012. Having managed to buy part of the historic Clos Roche Blanche, Laurent now tends organically to several small plots of Sauvignon Blanc, Gamay and Pineau d’Aunis in Pouillé. He considers himself lucky to have been able to find vines with such maturity and relative rarity, as Pineau d’Aunis is not that easy to come by in these parts of the Loire. Laurent’s meticulous habits from his restaurant days and his advocacy of farm-to-table are apparent both in the vineyard and in his cellar, from pruning to grass and soil rejuvenation to picking and fermenting. Patience and quality are of the highest priority - with everything done by hand, his vines see no sprays and instead obsessive observation and constant care. Only indigenous yeast is used, neutral ageing is achieved in either fiberglass vats or old oak and the wines see no additions bar minuscule quantities of sulphur right before bottling.

Laurent's vibrant, accessible wines are very easy to get on with. He has an eye for detail that really reflects in the texture and vivacity of his wines.