Peter Hahn is an American who bought a tired old vineyard called Le Clos de la Meslerie after becoming disenchanted with his world, working as an investment banker in Paris.
He followed his passion and he had the courage to ditch it all and try to become a vigneron. From the very start his instincts told him the only way he wanted to make wine was as naturally as possible and thanks to his hard work and natural talent for the craft, he succeeded. It took him several years to breathe life back into this tiny four hectare domaine as two decades of conventional farming had sucked the energy from the soil and the environment. But he persisted and whilst working to revive the land and the vines, he also had a re-education in Viticulture and Oenology. In 2008 his first Vouvray Clos de La Meslerie was released and the results were spectacularly good.
After 20 years at his domaine, he now has this terroir and this wine in his blood. He is unusual in that he hails from a different world but he has found his true calling and a meaningful life working as a farmer in a small village in rural France . His philosophy mirrors everything that we think about wine here at Buon Vino. He is an inspirational wine maker.
As well as his 100% hands off approach in the vines, Peter also employs a very rare 100 year old hand press to extract the juice from the grapes. In terms of both production of the wine and emotional pull, the press is the soul of the domaine and has become emblematic of his approach to winemaking - which eschews mechanisation in every way possible.
“The fact that we press the grapes with a manual press is probably taking 'natural' to the extreme… For me, there are two reasons for being as natural as possible: number one, it is more ecologically friendly, and number two, it is the only way to get a true expression of the terroir. The more interventions there are, the more standardised the wine becomes.”
The wine itself is nothing short of pure gold, every year it is different. Some years Le Meslerie is drier, some years sweeter, but always authentic and always delicious. He follows Biodynamic principles and simply allows the wine to be as nature intends each vintage. This is brave when the market still always looks for consistency. But however his wine turns out, it is always exciting to taste and extremely easy to drink and enjoy.
‘I am a winegrower, not a winemaker…wine is made in the vineyard, and what happens in the cellar is ancillary at most and irrelevant at best. Everything is in the grapes. I am, first and foremost, a grape farmer.' Peter Hahn
Nigel Tiffany –
Incredible wine, the best white wine I have ever tasted and I am 68 years old!