The westernmost of the Touraine appellations
Saint-Nicolas-de-Bourgueil is confined to the single commune of the same name, on the right bank of the Loire, in Indre-et-Loire, on the border with Anjou. Almost exclusively red, it extends the Bourgueil vineyard, with which it shares its grape variety and main terroir types.
The terroir: the primacy of sand
Here, the soils are mainly sandy-gravelly over a clay base, with only a few clay-limestone slopes. This predominance of sand and gravel gives particularly fine, supple wines, purple in colour, often more airy than those of the neighbouring tuffeau hillsides.
The style of the wines
The gravel and sand wines charm with their fruit — red berries, violet — and their supple, easy-flowing palate, to be drunk within two to five years. The rare cuvées from the tuffeau slopes, denser and fleshier (raspberry, blackberry, liquorice, spice), keep for five to ten years. A charming Cabernet Franc, easy-drinking and fragrant.