Caroline Meurée & Hervé Malinge are a young winemaking couple who met while studying in Bordeaux. Despite neither of them being from the Loire Valley, in 2019 they bought Domaine des Sables Verts in the heart of Saumur Champigny and embarked on their first vintage. The domaine comprises 16 hectares of vines across 5 communes (Varrains, Chacé, Saumur, Souzay-Champigny and Parnay) which they intend to work organically in order to maintain the soil diversity. Fifteen hectares are planted with Cabernet Franc and just one with Chenin Blanc. The vines lie on deep clay-limestone soils that are rich in tuffeau and green sand, or ‘sables verts’, which inspired the name of the domaine.