Annick Tinel-Blondelet took over the Estate from her parents, Camille & Fernand, in 1983. She represents the 12th generation of winegrowers in the family.
Indeed, the story would have begun with Guillaume Blondelet, winegrower at Chaulgnes, at the end of the XVIth century. Regarding Camille, the tracks of the first winegrowers in the family go back to 1650s with Louis Figeat.
More than 50 years ago, Fernand Blondelet was cultivating a few hectares of vines in the heart of Pouilly sur Loire, in addition to his other agricultural and farming endeavors. Over time , he decided to focus his activity exclusively on viticulture. He became the first to open a wine-tasting cellar, « A la Cave du Vigneron », along the famous Nationale 7. The cellar exists to this day.
Later, he took the opportunity to buy some plots of vines in Thauvenay, a village close to Sancerre. Thanks to this acquisition it was possible to work on a new appellation: “Sancerre”. Today, this vineyard remains a very valuable one for the estate.
Indeed, before 1880, the Chasselas grape variety was very present in the vineyard, particularly for the production of table grapes. Thanks to the railway, the grapes traveled from Pouilly to Paris in a few hours and were resold, freshly picked, in Paris. Unfortunately, everything stopped in the 1880s, with the arrival of phylloxera in the vineyard. This insect, which came from America in 1863, ravaged French vines, region after region, for around thirty years, until the vineyards were replanted with American rootstocks, naturally resistant to this little aphid. The Pouilly vineyard, then destroyed by phylloxera, the winegrowers decided to reorient themselves towards Sauvignon Blanc, a grape variety which allows them to produce more complex wines. The vines planted in Chasselas disappear little by little from the vineyard…
