Marc Pesnot farms 20 ha of 50-year-old Melon de Bourgogne (the variety used to make all Muscadet wines) vines near the city of Nantes. In the beginning of Marc’s winemaking career, he spent a great deal of time trying to figure out how he could plant and work with some grapes of better and more interesting quality than his humble and native Melon. After much tinkering with different amounts of skin contact and other natural processes, he finally realized that he didn’t need any other grapes; that it was just the shoddy industrial work rampant in the region that was diluting the quality of his neighbours’ wines. Now he is very happy to work with what he considers a noble grape. His wines do their malolactic fermentation without added sulfites. In order to be free of sulfur and its disinfectant role, a manual harvest with sorting is obligatory because only one sick grain can contaminate the whole tank. Since the AOC imposes Muscadet wines without malolactic fermentation and therefore more acidic, he releases only Vin de France. Marc is known simply by the quality of his wines part from the industrial stigma of the region.