History
In 1954 Yves Bonnin, cattle trader, bought the winery.
He overall wanted to exploit its natural grasslands. However from 1955 he undertook to renew the small existing vineyard and also made cultivate the waste lands.
In 1961, his son Gérard settled in Maine-Michaud and développed the wine production there, completly making up most of today's existing land plots and building the technical installations.
Over the years the farm enlarged itself with neighbor plots and, step by step, structured itself at the cost of significant efforts.
Installed as a winemaker since 1986, Thierry Bonnin added 5ha of grain lands to the 2.5ha of vines in the family-owned farm. He therfore undertook an investment politic to develop his products quality and ensure its packaging and selling from the winery.
The Village
Saint-Simeux, small village where Maine-Michaud is located, overlooks the Charente river, which François 1er used to call « the most beautiful waterway in the kingdom ». Most of this rural district is taken up by vineyards of recognised quality, classed as Fins Bois (the most important Cognac terroir in surface area). Its light and dry clayey limestone soil is particularly suited to growing vines.
The proximity of the ocean softens the temperate and humid climate of Charente, allowing slow and steady maturation of the grapes under the action of the sun, confering on the fruits more fineness, flavors and delicacy.
The Vineyard
The farm includes a vineyard wich presents some heterogeneity, making its wealth by the diversity of the products it generates, and 60ha de grain lands.
The vineyard is made up of 13ha of Ugni blanc, principal variety over the farm, destined to the production of Pineau and Cognac, 0.5ha of Sauvignon for the white wine and 0.6ha of merlot/cabernet for the red wine.
The most ancient vines are low vines, which rows are 1.8m spaced, some of them are still manually harvested for the elaboration of Pineau and grape juice.
The recently planted vines, which production is used to elaborate the wine, have 2m spaced rows, this makes it easier to use tools for the ground working - to use less weedkiller - and decreases the amount of vine ceps above one plot, consequently having a beneficial role on the vine and the quality of its producted fruits. They are manually harvested too.
The most part of the wine destined for distillation is taken from high vines, which the 3m spaced rows are higher and more loaded than those of the low vines.
Ugni blanc lends itself perfectly to this type of cultivation, which allows to obtain both best productivity and good quality.
For obvious reasons of cost and time saving, these plots are harvested by machine. Besides the fact of handpicking the grapes wouldn't have a significant influence on the producted brandy's quality.
