Riverine Retreat / Oenology Expeditions
We offer personalized biking / hiking expeditions of post-industrial Nantes, the Brittany coast, and the surrounding wineries / terroirs of the Loire Valley. That’s just 2 hours by TGV from Paris to both meet small-production vignerons and taste authentic Muscadets, Saumurs, and Anjous. As for lodging, we occassionally host guests at our trinity home (specially customized for hikers and bikers) in Trentemoult, the historic, medina-like fisherman’s village situated just across the Loire River from downtown Nantes, the urban nexus of the wine-growing regions to the south and east and the wild maritime coast, popularized in the film Les Vacances de Monsieur Hulot, to the west. Please refer to our gallery and booking details for more information.
Wine Scouting / Buying
We’re always foraging for indigenous or obscure grapes, and are eager to meet new winegrowers. The Loire Valley wine region is massive, winding along the 630-mile-long Loire River, with distinct terroirs, soils, geology, and micro-climates as we go farther inland: from the ocean-influenced Muscadets near Nantes to the semi-continental Sancerres, south of Orleans. We primarily concentrate on the western and central part of the Valley, mostly around Nantes / Ancenis (Muscadet), and Angers / Saumur (Anjou / Saumur). If you are interested in specific wines / vintages / grapes / wineries, just contact us and we’ll reach out to you (we speak French — and even a little bit of Breton!).
Wine Analytics / Market Reports
We provide market reports and industry analytics focusing on Loire Valley wines. Information on the Valley can appear fragmented and opaque: it is massive, diverse, with numerous players (winegrowers, winemakers, cooperatives, negotiants, etc.) and often confusing labeling practices and AOC classifications. At the same time, the Valley has been recently propelled to the international stage with landmark vintages that had been previously overshadowed by those from Bordeaux or Burgundy. Thanks to a generation of young and increasingly entrepreneurial vignerons willing to take risks, the Valley wineries produce authentic and natural wines, unearth or “de-extinct” lost grapes, innovate with growing techniques and harvests better adapted for climate change, and otherwise have skin-in-the-game by selling their varieties themselves or through small cooperatives. For many of those winemakers, climate change, for instance, is seen not only as a challenge but also as an opportunity to produce sexier and slightly sweeter wines, as well as to experiment and blend with non-native grape varieties. Many in the industry, for example, consider the 2018 production-year extraordinary, even “miraculous” given the serendipitous confluence of weather conditions.
Wine Branding / Marketing
We partner with our sister company, Passenger Pigeon X (or PPX), a collective of itinerant graphic designers, Luddites, Dadaists, street artists, and urban archaeologists from Philadelphia, Nantes, and Genoa, to help independent winegrowers and winemakers with adaptive market development, viral marketing strategy, and nostalgic identity projects such as logo, web, social media, labeling, and packaging design. In particular, our guerrilla approach challenges our clients to think out of the (wine) box and stand out in an extremely competitive sector in which consumers have a seemingly infinite selection of wines with interchangeable labels.
