A former judoka from Bordeaux, Thibaud Boudignon trained under Philippe Charlopin in Burgundy before spending nearly ten years as cellar master at Domaine de la Soucherie in Anjou. In 2009 he began assembling his own estate on the chenin blanc and schist of Savennières, with the Clos de la Hutte at its heart, adding adjacent parcels over the years until the holdings read as a coherent map of the appellation's most coveted slopes, among them a rare plot of ungrafted, own-rooted vines that yields his Franc de Pied cuvée. He is a vigneron who lives in the vineyard: organic from his first vintage and certified in 2019, cropping well below the permitted maximum and running the estate as a closed ecosystem of rainwater recovery and homemade compost. In 2016 he completed a purpose-built gravity-flow cellar, where gently pressed juice settles without a pump before fermenting with indigenous yeasts and aging on its lees in large-format barrels up to 1,200 liters, never new oak, and the top sites are held back for extended élevage.

A first-time release, Clos Devant Le Jeu is the newest vineyard on the estate, a 2-hectare site just below the Clos de Frémine that slopes toward the Loire without quite reaching the water. Where Frémine runs to finer sand, this ground is denser and darker, built on shallow gray schist threaded with a little sand, and it faces south into full warmth. Boudignon planted it in stages from 2019, finishing the last rows in 2023, all by massal selection drawn from top Loire estates for small berries. The name has nothing to do with games: Jeu descends from a Gaulish word for a wooded hill.

Even from young vines the wine shows real definition, opening with a wisp of smoke, white blossom, green apple, and fresh lemon, then drawing out a firm, finely built palate of pear and quince that closes cool and salty. It already carries the gray-schist imprint that should only deepen.