Mathilde Magne spent the better part of a decade in wine before making any of her own, first as an agronomist and oenologist in Bordeaux at Château Lilian Ladouys and Château Figeac, then in Tuscany with Stefano Amerighi, and finally three years in the cellar of Sylvain Pataille in Marsannay, one of our favorite producers in all of Burgundy. It was Pataille's aligoté that turned her toward terroir-driven white wine, and a single bottle of Bruno Rochard's chenin that pointed her to the Loire. In April 2022 she and her husband Nicolas settled in Rochefort-sur-Loire, the schist country known as Anjou Noir, with just under seven acres of chenin blanc. She called the domaine Terres d'Imaginaire, terre for the ground and imaginaire for the creativity she brings to it, a shorthand for the meeting of terroir, personal taste, and experiment that she says every wine she loves comes from. The domaine has since grown to about 22 organically farmed acres, with pineau d'aunis, grolleau, and sauvignon blanc joining the chenin, every wine fermented with indigenous yeasts and bottled with the barest touch of sulfur.
Obscur is the one wine Mathilde does not grow herself. The grolleau noir comes from a small parcel planted in the 2000s at Domaine Belargus, the only red vines on an estate otherwise devoted entirely to white, rooted in clay strewn with schist, sandstone, and quartz. Grolleau is usually made light and quick, and Mathilde pushes it somewhere darker: the fruit goes into the vat 100 percent whole cluster for a three-day maceration, then ages eight months, 90 percent in tank and the remainder in used barrels. This is the first vintage under the Obscur name; until 2024 the fruit went into a deeply colored rosé, and Mathilde split it into a true rosé and this true red.
The glass is bright ruby and smells of raspberry and red currant with a ripple of peony. What sets it apart from most grolleau is texture, a velvety mid-palate carried by small, well-integrated tannins, before a cool finish that tastes of the schist it grew on. Chill it lightly and drink from 2025 through 2028.
