Nicolas Arnou

Nicolas Arnou comes from a family of farmers who have eschewed systemic chemicals their whole lives. As a young man, Nicolas had no interest in joining his family in the field, instead becoming an aeronautical engineer at Airbus in Toulouse. It was here, around 2001, that he fell in love with natural wine — a passion that drove him to study oenology in Jura, and ultimately led him back to his roots in regenerative farming. By chance in 2016, Nicolas secured the internship of all internships with Emmanuel Houillon and Pierre Overnoy. Here, he learned what is required to make pure and precise wines without any additives.

In 2017, Nicolas moved back to his hometown in Anjou and found an incredible plot of land for sale surrounded by old walls and forests. It covers a total of 10ha with around 8ha planted to vineyards, but of that, only about 4ha are currently fruiting vines; Nicolas is in the process of restoring the vineyard and planting to promote biodiversity. The property centres around an old cellar built in 1895 — the oldest gravity-fed cellar in the Loire Valley. Nicolas and his family do all of the work in the vineyards and the cellar by hand. His dad is 78 years old and still farms alongside his son.

Everything is done gently in the cellar without the use of additives. Nicolas uses an old horizontal press to slow press his fruit, working with macerations for his white wines to get nutrients, aromatics and complexity from the skins but without the tannins or intense structure; a technique he learned from Valentin Morel in Jura.

Vinification is done in epoxy vats and some of the wines are aged in concrete and old barrels, with no additions at any stage.