Hervé Villemade

Since 1995, close to the vines

Since 1995, cellar decisions have stayed close to the vines. Hervé Villemade, winemaker and proprietor at Hervé Villemade in Cellettes, works the family domaine from the same Loire ground he took over from his father. The estate sits inside the Cheverny and Cour-Cheverny area, where work moves between vineyard, cellar, and the pressures of a frost-prone place. Villemade farms about 22 hectares organically, drawing the domaine from historic family parcels while also holding a négociant license to supplement with local grapes when the season demands it. That flexibility is practical. Between 1995 and 2012, there were nine vintages in which 80% or more of the family land was destroyed by frost. The house’s modern direction came after he left the conventional farming he inherited. Around 1997, the wines of Marcel Lapierre and Clos du Tue-Boeuf pointed him toward another method, and a serious sulfur allergy pushed a cellar decision into clearer form. “I decided to eliminate it from the cellar.” By 2000, he had converted the estate to organic viticulture, tying the low-intervention cellar to the quality of fruit from the rows.

Romorantin, frost, and fruit worth keeping

The program rests on Loire variety rather than a single house signature. Sauvignon Blanc, Chardonnay, Chenin Blanc, Romorantin, Pinot Noir, Gamay, Côt, Pineau d’Aunis, and Menu Pineau all appear in the estate’s orbit, with Cheverny Blanc and Cheverny Rouge forming the majority of production from the family parcels. Cour-Cheverny gives the cellar its sharper local grammar through Romorantin, an indigenous grape with its own protected home in this part of the Loire. Villemade’s significant holdings of Romorantin make wines such as Cour-Cheverny Les Saules and Cour-Cheverny Les Acacias central to the domaine’s identity. The soil mix is heavy clay, sand, flint, and limestone, and Villemade has spoken of learning through comparison before conclusion: “I took the time to taste many wines made on this type of terroir: that is to say hard soils such as granite, schist or gneiss.” In the vineyard, resilience has become part of the method. The estate uses anti-frost towers, later pruning, and grass cover that competes with the vines by design. In the cellar, the avoidance of sulfur remains the defining technical choice, but the lesson is agricultural first: sans soufre work asks for fruit that can carry the absence.

A cellar that keeps the table close

The room around the wines is casual, owner-led, and close to the work. This is not a polished tasting-room performance separated from the cellar; the domaine’s hospitality has the feel of bottles opened near where they were raised, with conversation folding into the practical matter of what the season allowed. The house is small in scale, and that scale shows in the way the portfolio moves from appellation bottles to Vin de France releases without losing the thread of Cellettes. Cheverny Blanc, Cheverny Rouge, Desiré, Les Ardilles, Bulle Blanche, Whats Up Blanc, Whats Up Rose, Rouge Bovin, VDF Pinot Noir, and Gamay all sit within that wider range, some formal, some freer in name and category. The most vivid cellar detail is also the least staged: dinner may end with marc, or eau de vie, poured straight from a demi-john, and the room can loosen from tasting into dance.

Family parcels under changing weather

What matters here is the continuity between inheritance and correction. Villemade did not leave the family land behind; he changed how it was farmed, then made the cellar answer to that change. Old-vine Pinot Noir planted by his grandfather remains part of the story, including special cuvées such as Desiré and, in favorable vintages, Les Ardilles as a magnum-only bottling. The next measure of the domaine is likely to remain the same one it has been under frost pressure: whether the family parcels in Cellettes can keep giving fruit for Cheverny Rouge.