Alphonse Dolly Pinot Noir 2021

Eric Louis is a fourth generation winegrower and vigneron, working the same vineyards that his great grandmother Pauline did when she founded the family estate in the 19th century. 'Les Celliers de la Pauline' are the estate's cellars, built above ground due to the risk of flooding from the nearby Loire river.

Eric and his associate Sophie Bertin now tend a mosaic of 60 individual plots over 35 hectares along the Loire, including the appellations of Sancerre, Pouilly-Fumé and Menetou-Salon. The estate was awarded HVE level 3 — the top level of High Environmental Value — in 2019 and began the conversion to organic farming in 2020. The work in the vineyard is extensive and exhaustive — no herbicides, no insecticides, manual tillage, disbudding and bunch thinning — all geared towards improving the quality of the grapes while protecting the precious vineyard ecosystem.