By Francesca Hansen
on Jan 23, 2025
in Harvest Reports

Current Arrivals from Château Yvonne

As the Château Yvonne wines are set to land in the U.S., we took the time to chat with Mathieu Vallée, winemaker at Château Yvonne and one of our original and most valued partnerships at Paris Wine Company, to hear a bit more about what's going on in the vineyards / cellar.

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The previous year’s reds are always released before the current year’s harvest, so this summer, the 2023 Reds (La Folie, L’Ile Quatre Sous, and the eponymous Saumur-Champigny) were released, landing at the end of year / beginning of 2025. “In 2014, the years have been getting warmer, but 2023 was a brief step back in time; we essentially harvested in October. The vintage best resembles 2007,” Mathieu told us.

The scattered plots of Château Yvonne are dizzyingly scattered around Parnay, Turquant, and Champigny, forcing Mathieu to juggle harvest order: Chenin harvest started on September 20th, followed by Pineau d’Aunis and then Cabernet Franc. The teams then went back and harvested the rest of the Chenin around the 1st of October. 

Mathieu’s showstopping Chenins proved to be a challenge, as they were attacked by the dreaded drosophila suzukii (cherry vinegar flies), forcing the team to harvest in up to three passes on the same vine. The incorporation of two new Chenin parcels in 2023 (Clos de la Pouges and Pérouges, both planted to 50+ year old vines) resisted well to the drosophila attacks.

Regionally, Mathieu qualifies 2023 as a heterogeneous vintage, and with manual harvest and reducing clusters on the vine (a first run-through removal of clusters at the end of July), he was able to focus on quality, as well as allow the rest of the grapes to arrive at later maturity.