In our young wine importing history, there's just a few wines we've known since the very beginning, and have watched come into their own the way we have with Roche de Mûrs. It's a story that explains a lot of what cultivation at the level of viniculture is all about. It starts with Marc Houtin of La Grange aux Belles. He'd been growing and vinifying Chenin Blanc for a few years but didn't have access to fruit he thought could make the wine he had in his mind: tense, dry, complex, and of its place. When the trio finally found this vineyard of black schist and nearly zero topsoil, they had to proposition the local government for permission to cultivate the old vineyard again. It's an historic site of a bloody battle, memorialized in the sculpture at the top of the hill, and on the label of this beautiful bottle. The idea was to grow fruit with less ripeness than the loamier vineyards they'd been working. As the climate in Anjou has warmed, wines made from the more famous limestone vineyards have gone up in potential alcohol, making room for the poorer schist vineyards to produce wines like Marc had envisioned. They took massale plantings from all the top dogs in the Loire, including Jousset, Coulrant, Foreau, and others. In 2016 they produced their first wine in a new barrel. Each year they buy a new barrel from a different cooper in hopes they will render more complexity each year. That has been the case. Every year we get a taste of each barrel and of a quick blend. It's always my favorite part of the trip when this dream of many years comes to fruition