Domaine Frederic Mabileau

“With 27 hectares in production, you have to pay attention to the smallest detail and be convinced that nothing is left to chance...”
Frederic Mabileau

A Soil Personality

It is the earth made up of mostly sand and gravel that gives wines from St. Nicolas de Bourgueil their fruity and floral character. The gentle slopes give birth to wines which are more opulent and structured. The neighboring Bourgueil shares its soils with more clay thus creating a more fleshy wine.

The King of the Vine and His Prince

It is the Cabernet Franc that wins without dispute, but the Cabernet Sauvignon also lends its charms to our cuvee from Anjou.

Mature Vines

A large portion of our vines are between 35 and 50 years old which allow us to benefit from their deep root system drawing from the very heart of our soils.

Working the Vines

A quality wine starts at the vine; maintaining their height, systematic thinning in order to limit the yields, manual leaf removal in order to expose the grapes to the sun, having plentiful foliage in order to optimise photosynthesis, and working of the soils which forces the roots deeper so that they may best tap into the summer water supply.  All of these elements provide us with more fleshy grapes which ripen better and bring back into balance the acids and the many other elements that allow for a wine which is supple, round and concentrated.

Manual Harvesting

Wishing to respect the integrity of the grape from the vine to the tank, we harvest all of our vines by hand and inspect the grapes on two consecutive sorting tables, before and after the de-stemmer.The final step taken to reduce any extraneous abuse to the grape is seen with the use of conveyor belts to move them from last sorting table to the tank. The quality of the grapes is preserved during this gentle treatment which allows only entire fruit to enter into the tanks.

About the Winemakers

Frederic Mabileau

Frederic Mabileau operates a 27 ha domaine with the majority of the vines concentrated in St Nicolas de Bourgueil. Frederic is of a winemaking family, his father, Jean-Paul, having been proprietor at Domaine du Bourg. Some of these old family vineyards have recently been brought back into the Mabileau family, as Frederic, with wife Nathalie, is determined to expand and improve his domaine. He manages his vineyard with a great consideration for the soil, the environment, and the quality of the fruit that results. The vines, predominantly Cabernet Franc, are largely Guyot trained, see leaf thinning as required, are interplanted with grass to encourage the vine roots deeper into the soil, and are hand-harvested.

See other places in the Loire region.