Valérie Forgues Touraine Gamay

About Valérie Forgues Touraine Gamay

Valérie Forgues Touraine Gamay is an easy-drinking organic French red. Bright floral and fruit notes, red cherry, wild strawberry, and high-toned mineral acidity. Averaging 40 years of age, Valérie’s Gamay vines are planted on clay-limestone soils in the heart of the Cher Valley of the Touraine region in the Loire. She farms them organically (certified) and harvests them by hand. The grapes are destemmed and go directly into stainless steel and fiberglass vats. Fermentation is spontaneous with indigenous yeasts; the wine is aged in vats. It is bottled without fining or filtering, and the use of sulfur is minimal.

About Valérie Forgues

Valérie Forgues’ story is one of twists and turns, highs and lows, perseverance, and overcoming adversity. The unexpected disciple of Clos Roche Blanche’s Didier Barrouillet, she initially had no intention of becoming a vigneronne.

Valérie and her ex-husband purchased Domaine de la Méchinière in the late 1990s. Owning vines had always been a dream of her husband’s; Valérie, a young stay-at-home mother, agreed to the prospect. They chose Touraine because of its proximity to Paris and the affordability of the land. At the time of the acquisition, the estate was working chemically; already adverse to such practices, the young couple chose to work sustainably under the Terra Vitis certification label.

Fast forward to 2008: Valérie finds herself alone with her two sons at the estate. Facing bankruptcy and the possibility of uprooting her sons from the house they grew up in, she decides, despite no viticultural or winemaking experience, to persevere with the 16-hectare estate. Her brother-in-law, a retired vigneron, is there in the early days to help keep things afloat.

Parallel to these events, Valérie had struck up a friendship with her neighbors Catherine Roussel and Didier Barrouillet, who at the time was running the legendary Clos Roche Blanche just five minutes away. Seeing Valérie in need, Didier began giving her advice based on his vision of agriculture and winemaking. This philosophy resonated with her deeply.

She kept asking Didier questions, and with every answer was eager to learn more. Things were moving along, and the estate was once again being run sustainably. But Didier believed things could be pushed further and after a heated argument over converting the estate to organic viticulture, he agreed to help Valérie through the whole process. Today, all 16 hectares are certified organic. Commercial yeasts have been banned from the cellar for many years now, and Didier has guided Valérie with his master’s touch in crafting pure, precise wines from Touraine’s native grapes.

The estate is technically called Domaine de la Méchinière, but we know how impossible this would be for an American to pronounce. Plus we’d rather promote Valérie by name anyway.