When Romain Guiberteau and his right hand Brendan Stater-West do something new, we pay attention. Starting with the 2024 vintage, Romain, his daughter Camille and Brendan have launched a new project Chai de la Dive making wine from purchased fruit in and around Saumur farmed with the same ethos as their respective domaines.

Chai de la Dive

The collaboration between Loire Valley vigneron Romain Guiberteau and the American ex-pat Brendan Stater-West has been a dynamic partnership for over a decade in the Saumur-Champigny area. Absolutely mesmerized by the incredible quality of the wines at Domaine Guiberteau, Brendan left Paris to take a job in the cellar with Romain in the early 2010s and hasn’t left since.

In 2015, Romain helped Brendan get his solo project off the ground, proposing that he start with a hectare of his own vineyard Les Chapaudaises. In the decade that Brendan’s label has been around, the wines have carved out a formidable reputation amongst many wine directors and sommeliers.

2024 marks another milestone with Chai de la Dive, their newest venture with Romain’s daughter Camille, looking to source fruit from high quality vineyards from neighbors. Chai de la Dive will also become the home for some earlier releases for the two winemakers.

"Diving in to research a little more, I was perhaps disappointed to learn that the critics love Jerome's wines as much as I do - really only because that means there will be less to go around!"

Jerome Galeyrand

Jerome makes his wines at home, like a true farmer. Much as I suspected when tasting the wines several times over the last year, his vision is really just for us as drinkers to obtain a clear vision of the vineyards he's working with. The grapes are treated with the utmost respect - some whole cluster, but always a delicate extraction so as not to obtain too much stemmy, seedy or astringent flavors. From the Aligoté through to the reds, the wines are focused and never heavily oaked, each and every one having the same attention to detail as me barely makes 2000 cases a year.

For me the shining stars were the Aligoté Le Cran - stunningly snappy, the best touch of reduction and meyer lemon curd; mouth-filling and drool-inducing all in one. Come to find out that I'm not alone, as his Aligotés are highly sought after by all of the people I trust. On the red side of things, Gevrey-Chambertin La Justice is perhaps the most pure example of Pinot Noir I've tasted this year. Brilliant dark pink color, dancing in the glass and right out again as it oozes spice and gorgeous dark cherry aromatics. It is so serious yet playful, commanding a sip one directly after the next. Why these wines are so cheap completely escapes me. I need more!

"Family-run estate is verbiage we are all too familiar with. Usually it is family-run and one family member is making the wine while the other is working the books; the Pressanda family has a different definition of this. "

Ca' di Press

The vineyard and cellar work truly is a family affair and when speaking about family, this also importantly includes the place they are from, Perno. Alice & Cristina's grandparents have owned land in La Morra and Monforte since 1900 historically were a farming family that sold their grapes. Their father, Bruno, has spent most of his career overseeing and working their 7.5ha estate. He knows the land, the vineyards, and the grapes like the back of his hand. When Alice and Cristina decided to get involved in the family business, they didn't do so by fully taking over, but rather working together with their father, seeking to absorb the amounts of of knowledge he had that could be passed along, the depths of which couldn't just happen overnight.

Historically, the family sold off all of their grapes and kept a small amount for family and friends. Little by little, they have stopped selling their grapes and are now producing 3 of their 7.5ha, and trying to create in the bottle, what Perno is to them. 2018 was the first vintage they vinified at home and decided to sell themselves. The oldest vines in Perno were planted in 1960 - Nebbiolo, Dolcetto, and Barbera. Their production is slowly increasing along with the winery!

The history of Ca' di Press begins in the early 1900s, driven by love for nature, and also by necessity. An activity borne of a close bond with their territory and linked to the atmosphere of when wine was made for family, friends and for a few customers who often ended up becoming friends, too. This is where their name Cà di Press takes its inspiration from - in Piedmontese dialect this means “House of the Pressenda” - to them their wine is passion but above all it is home. Even though their family is by no means new to Perno, they are on a new journey together, one that fits seamlessly with Thatcher's Imports.

Viticulture and Vinification

All of their wines are fully de-stemmed. Right now, fermentation is happening in stainless steel tanks. The Langhe Nebbiolo and Barbera only see stainless steel. They believe the wine is a bit more sensitive to the wood and can easily become overpowered, and its best expression comes from absence of wood. They have recently started working with new foudres from two coopers, Garbellotto and Pauscha. To reduce the impact of the new wood, they chose Slavonian oak casks (25-30 HL). Right now, they are trying to be as hands-off as possible in the winery, letting the grapes take their own course, and simply overseeing the fermentation and aging and making decisions to best keep control and identity.