Laurent Lebled Je T’ai Dans La Peau 2022: A Wild Loire Orange Wine with a Taste for Bitter Orange and Trouble
Laurent Lebled has made an orange wine that refuses to behave like a fashionable aperitif. Je T’ai Dans La Peau 2022 is fragrant, tart, faintly smoky and armed with a deliciously bitter finish. Its fruit is vivid, its tannins surprisingly gentle, and its acidity has enough bite to make most conventional white wines seem rather sleepy.
The grape is Menu Pineau, an obscure Loire variety also known as Orbois. Lebled gives it an extended period of skin contact, transforming what could have been a discreet, rather neutral white into something much more restless: citrus peel, bruised apple, black tea and a peculiar smoky nuance that lingers after the fruit has disappeared.
There is a lovely contradiction at work. The wine looks rustic and tastes uncompromisingly dry, yet its texture is supple, almost creamy. It has the eccentric charm of a natural wine without making a spectacle of its own peculiarities.
The Basics
- Producer: Laurent Lebled – À la Vôtre!
- Wine: Je T’ai Dans La Peau
- Vintage: 2022
- Classification: Vin de France
- Region: Loire Valley, France
- Production area: Touraine
- Grape: 100% Menu Pineau (Orbois)
- Style: Dry, skin-contact orange wine
- Viticulture: Organically cultivated vineyards
- Harvest: Manual
- Maceration: Approximately two weeks on the skins
- Vinification: Low-intervention fermentation, with carbonic-maceration techniques documented for this cuvée
- Ageing: Fibreglass tanks
- Finishing: Unfined and unfiltered
- Added sulphites: None reported
- Alcohol: 12% ABV
- Bottle size: 750 ml
- Serving temperature: 12–14°C
Laurent Lebled: The Wood Merchant Who Became a Winemaker
Laurent Lebled did not follow the usual family-estate route into wine. He spent more than thirty years working as a timber merchant before the economic crisis of 2008 brought that career to an end. Rather than look for another job in the same business, he turned his longstanding passion for wine into a second profession.
Together with his wife Sonya, he established a small estate in the Loire Valley, farming vineyards around Savigny-en-Véron and working with an unusually direct, minimally interventionist approach.
The label À la Vôtre! means something like “Cheers!” It is a fitting name for wines intended to be shared rather than displayed in a cellar.
Lebled’s methods are deliberately uncomplicated. He works without chemical herbicides, uses spontaneous fermentation and avoids adding sulphur during vinification. Carbonic maceration is an important part of his winemaking vocabulary, particularly for his reds.
Je T’ai Dans La Peau takes those ideas in a different direction, applying extended maceration to a white grape that rarely enjoys the attention lavished on the Loire’s more celebrated varieties.
The result is an unusually individual expression of Menu Pineau, without the aromatic flamboyance of Sauvignon Blanc or the commanding structure of Chenin Blanc.
Menu Pineau: The Loire Grape Nobody Talks About
Menu Pineau, also known as Orbois, is an old white variety associated with the Loire Valley. It survives in relatively modest quantities, frequently overshadowed by Chenin Blanc, Sauvignon Blanc and Melon de Bourgogne.
Its natural aromatic character is fairly restrained. Rather than producing extravagant perfume, it can offer delicate fruit, fresh acidity and a modestly structured palate.
That makes it an intriguing candidate for skin-contact winemaking.
In conventional white vinification, the juice is separated from the skins relatively quickly. With extended maceration, the wine extracts additional phenolic compounds, changing its colour, texture and relationship with acidity.
The technique is explained more fully in our orange wine guide, but the essential point is straightforward: skin contact can make a white wine feel more tannic, savoury and texturally assertive.
In Lebled’s hands, Menu Pineau acquires a distinctive combination of freshness, gentle astringency and bitter citrus character. It is an entirely different interpretation of Loire white wine from the familiar saline directness of Muscadet.
How It’s Made
The 2022 Je T’ai Dans La Peau undergoes roughly two weeks of contact with its grape skins, giving the finished wine its amber colour and subtle tannic structure.
Accounts of the precise 2022 procedure differ slightly: some describe twelve days of carbonic maceration in concrete with whole clusters, while others report fifteen days of maceration after destemming. Both describe a lightly extracted wine, rather than an aggressively tannic orange.
After pressing, fermentation and maturation take place without the influence of new oak, preserving the grape’s delicate fruit and the savoury character acquired during maceration.
The wine is bottled without fining or filtration, and without added sulphur according to the importer documentation.
This approach carries a certain risk. Low-intervention wines can develop oxidative, volatile or otherwise unstable characteristics if the fruit and cellar work are not carefully managed. Minimal intervention is not, by itself, a guarantee of quality.
Here, however, the appeal lies in a fine contrast between aromatic freedom and a surprisingly controlled palate. The wine has personality without needing to become a laboratory experiment.
Tasting Notes
Colour: Hazy golden amber with muted orange reflections. The appearance is rustic, with a warm, slightly burnished hue that reflects its extended skin contact.
Bouquet: Bruised apple and dried flowers emerge first, followed by orange peel, aromatic herbs and a curious suggestion of black tea. There is a faint smoky accent, almost like a trace of cold wood ash, although it never dominates the fruit.
With air, apricot skin and a slightly oxidative apple note come forward. The bouquet is intriguing rather than conventionally pretty: savoury, gently wild and much more subtle than its unusual appearance suggests.
Palate: Brisk, lively and deliciously contrary. The opening has fresh apple and sharp citrus, immediately followed by a surprisingly soft, creamy texture. Fine tannins introduce a delicate grip, but the wine avoids the harsh astringency that can make heavily macerated whites exhausting.
The acidity is the real protagonist. It cuts through the gentle fruit, giving the wine an almost electric momentum, while black tea and bitter orange introduce a more serious, savoury character.
A faint smoky bitterness gradually develops through the middle of the palate. The combination is unusual, but remarkably appetising: fruit and softness at first, then an increasingly dry, herbal finish.
Finish: Persistent, tangy and decidedly bitter, with orange zest, black tea and a lingering smoky accent. A gentle tannic sensation gives the conclusion more authority than the wine’s moderate body initially suggests.
Our Verdict
Je T’ai Dans La Peau 2022 is a mischievous, wonderfully refreshing orange wine. Its greatest achievement is restraint: the maceration adds character without sacrificing the delicacy of Menu Pineau, while the acidity gives the palate a thrilling sense of urgency.
Its oxidative apple notes and bitter finish may disappoint drinkers expecting a conventional fruity white. But these are essential parts of its identity, not details to disguise.
The wine is more playful than profound, with modest concentration and limited aromatic breadth. Yet it offers a distinctive interpretation of an almost forgotten Loire grape, with admirable freshness and none of the lumbering tannins that can spoil ambitious skin-contact wines.
A delicious little rebel, best enjoyed with food and without excessive ceremony.
Price
The 2022 release is no longer widely available. A reliable Italian retail price for this exact vintage could not be established.
Food Pairings
Paella, vitello tonnato, chicken curry, pulled pork, empanadas, hamburgers.
