Moulin Touchais

COTEAUX DU LAYON, LOIRE VALLEY, FRANCE

Moulin Touchais is one of those wines that shouldn't exist, but does, and the world is a better place for it.  Delicious wines, with decades of bottle age, that are affordable.

With Bordeaux, Burgundy and Port prices all on the increase, if you want old wine, or one from the year of your birth, Moulin Touchais is one of the few wines you can get without spending your child's inheritance.  

Documents prove that sweet wines were being produced in Layon in 1579, and the Touchais family know they have been making sweeter wines since the 1780s.  They own 150 hectares of vines, 35 of which are Chenin Blanc used for the production of Coteaux du Layon.  Jean-Marie Touchais is the current incumbent, with little having changed.  Hand harvesting, long, slow fermentation, bottling early in the March following vintage and a minimum of ten years in the cellar.  

This means that there is a wealth of old stock in their extensive kilometres of cellars and each bottle is labelled to order, checked, reconditioned (topped up with the same vintage) and given a new cork before release.