Laurent Saillard, an ex-chef, in a way rediscovered himself as a winemaker after years of working in the restaurant scene in Brooklyn, New York, only to come back and learn how to make the beautiful wines he had once drunk and poured at his restaurants in NYC.

After moving back to France, Laurent now tends organically to several small plots of Sauvignon Blanc, Gamay and Pineau d’Aunis in Pouillé in the Loire Valley. After several years of working under Clos Roche Blanche and Noella Morantin, Laurent developed his own footprint in winemaking and started making wines on his own with his first vintage in 2012. He considers himself lucky to have been able to find vines with such maturity and relative rarity, as Pineau d’Aunis is not that easy to come by in these parts of the Loire. Laurent’s meticulous habits from his days in the kitchen and his advocacy of farm-to-table are apparent both in the vineyard and in his cellar, from pruning to grass and soil rejuvenation to picking and fermenting. Patience and quality are of the highest priority - with everything done by hand, his vines see no sprays and instead obsessive observation and constant care. Only indigenous yeast is used, neutral ageing is achieved in either fiberglass vats or old oak and the wines see no additions bar minuscule quantities of sulphur right before bottling.