Domaine de la Pépière

Since 1984, Domaine de la Pèpiére has been making some of the finest wines in the appellation. Founder/winemaker Marc Ollivier recently retired; but left the domaine in the capable hands of longtime partners Rémi Branger and Gwénaëlle Croix.

Rémi is a local that Marc has known since he was a kid. When his father retired in 2005, Marc purchased his land and Rémi started as an employee in 2006. Having long realized his daughters were not interested in inheriting the estate, Marc had him come on board as a partner in 2011. Gwen, on the other hand, joined in a less straightforward fashion.

After a decade working in the industrial sector, she moved to China with her family for her husband’s work. Gwen discovered wine there and it quickly became a fascination. Upon returning to France, she decided to switch careers and studied viticulture and oenology at Montreuil Bellay. Her first visit to Pépière was a pruning formation in early 2011. She instantly hit it off with Marc and Rémi (which to be fair is quite easy) and after finishing school, worked at the estate a year before becoming a partner in 2014.

Marc will be the first to admit that adding new people and perspectives helped push Pépière forward. He largely credits Rémi as the impetus of finally converting to organic viticulture, Gwen for biodynamics. Rémi and Gwen’s enthusiasm and ambition have also expanded on Marc’s legacy of single vineyard cuvées with their expansion of the cru bottlings for Clisson, Château-Thebaud, Monnières-Saint-Fiacre and Gorges.