Nicolas Arnou

Nicolas Arnou settled in Champ-sur-Layon in 2018, a small village located along one of the wine-growing tributaries of the Loire River. His encounter with wine dates back to the early 2000s during a post-master internship at Airbus in Toulouse. Together with his friend Aymeric, who was studying oenology at the time, he attended and organized informal tastings, visited winemakers, and explored wine fairs. Aymeric would later go on to found Domaine Mélaric in 2008 in Doué-la-Fontaine, another town in the Pays Angevin, about 30 kilometers from Champ-sur-Layon. At that time, and for the following fifteen years, Nicolas was deeply engaged in his career as an aeronautical engineer. He worked both in France and Canada, while wine quietly remained at the back of his mind. Eventually he began to reflect on what the second chapter of his professional life might look like. His growing interest in wine, combined with a desire to develop a more thoughtful relationship with nature, led him back to school. In 2017 he enrolled in the organic viticulture and oenology BTS program at the well-known Lycée Montmorot in the Jura. As he puts it: “It was the first time I was excited to wake up and go to class.” He threw himself into the program with great enthusiasm. Without fully realizing it, he had landed in what is perhaps the most iconic region for natural winemaking in the world. Lacking connections in the Jura, he asked his teacher where he might complete his internship. This ultimately brought him to one of the region’s most respected estates: Maison Overnoy-Houillon. His first task there was to head out and cut wood for the winter with Emmanuel Houillon — a good way to get to know each other. The year that followed was filled with learning in both vineyard and cellar, accompanied by many remarkable wines shared during long lunchtime tastings. Nicolas and his wife fell in love with the Jura, but family circumstances and practical considerations eventually led them closer to Angers. There they discovered an old winemaking property surrounded by roughly eight hectares of planted vines. Nicolas had grown up not far away in Cholet, where his parents still ran the family farm. The land had already been farmed organically for five years, and the buildings offered a unique opportunity: the first and second floors could be renovated as living space, while the semi-buried cellar and ground floor would be dedicated to winemaking. The building dates back to 1895 and is a fine example of the gravity-fed cellar architecture built in the late nineteenth century. No wine had been produced there for more than twenty years. The vineyard was planted with Chenin Blanc, Grolleau, Cabernet Franc, and a small amount of Chardonnay. Some of the oldest vines date back to 1950. More than twenty years after his first encounters with wine, Nicolas had come full circle, reconnecting both with the craft and nature. His experience in the Jura strongly shaped his philosophy: a desire to go beyond organic farming by integrating practices such as agroforestry, and to make wines with nothing added and nothing taken away. He planted trees among the vines, works only the topsoil every other row, and brings sheep into the vineyard to graze. In the cellar, the grapes are pressed using an old horizontal Vaslin press. During the first few vintages he embraced experimentation, exploring a wide range of approaches and cuvées: skin-contact whites, ageing in oak, concrete, or fiberglass, direct presses, petnats, and longer infusions for the reds. All the wines are made without additives, including no added SO₂.