Domaine de Riaux

Two hands on the same Sauvignon

Bertrand and Alexis Jeannot taste from the same family line as winemakers at Domaine de Riaux in Saint-Andelain, where the work still begins with Sauvignon Blanc on clay and flint. Bertrand Jeannot; Alexis Jeannot now lead a house formally established in 1923, though the Jeannot family’s cultivation here reaches back more than 200 years. The domaine’s own phrase, “Passionnés de Père en Fils,” sets the lineage plainly: father to son, vines to cellar, method passed through use rather than display.

The station is not a restaurant pass but a vineyard and cellar in a winegrower’s hamlet above the Loire, with Bertrand carrying the established generation and Alexis bringing the next set of decisions to the same parcels. Their stated discipline is “exigence et respect,” a useful pair of words in Pouilly-Fumé, where ripeness alone is not the point. The family works in a sustainable frame, on a small estate whose scale still allows the makers to know the rows by parcel and season.

Eighteen hectares of flint and white fruit

The domaine farms 18 hectares, planted mainly to Sauvignon Blanc for Pouilly-Fumé AOC, with 40 ares of Chasselas held for Pouilly-sur-Loire AOC. Those numbers matter here. They keep the estate within the proportions of a family cellar, not an industrial program, and they explain why the tasting line stays close to two local expressions rather than a broad catalogue.

The soil is argile à silex, clay with flint, the ground that gives Pouilly-Fumé its pierre à fusil register. The Jeannots describe the wines through richness, aromatics, fruit and length, but the method rests on restraint: harvest for clean, ripe fruit, preserve Sauvignon Blanc’s lift, let the flint speak without forcing it into caricature.

A hamlet above the Loire

The room around the work is quiet by nature. Domaine de Riaux sits in Saint-Andelain, a traditional wine hamlet set above the Pouilly-Fumé vineyards along the Loire, at 272 meters. This is not polished tourism infrastructure; it is a family estate atmosphere, with the cellar, the tasting and the welcome close to one another. Visitors come into a place shaped by rows, bottles and the pace of a small domain.

Inside that setting, the attention lands on the glass rather than the performance around it. Sauvignon Blanc carries the familiar aromatic reach of the appellation, while the Chasselas parcel keeps Pouilly-sur-Loire present in the program. The welcome has the cadence of a working estate: direct, personal, and tied to the bottles being opened that day.

Medals kept in proportion

The Jeannot family can point to 34 gold medals since 1998. The numbers have their place, but they do not replace the cellar. They sit beside the longer measure: a house founded in 1923, a family cultivation history of more than 200 years, and a father and son still working Sauvignon Blanc and Chasselas from Saint-Andelain.

For now, the next movement is the same disciplined one, from slope to cellar to glass, with Bertrand and Alexis Jeannot keeping the argile à silex line intact at Domaine de Riaux.