La Piautre with Inès Poppe Show Notes

ReviewsShow NotesWhiskeySingle MaltNew World WhiskyFrenchFranceLa Piautre

Mar 25

La Piautre: From Barley to Bottle, Loire Valley Whisky with a Sense of Home

Some distilleries start with whisky. Others arrive there the long way around.

When I sat down with Inès Poppe from La Piautre, what unfolded wasn’t just a distillery story, but something broader, more layered. A brewery first. A malthouse born out of necessity. And eventually, a distillery built not on tradition, but on proximity to the land.

This is a story about getting closer. Closer to barley, closer to process, closer to place.

A brewery first, and a different kind of origin

La Piautre didn’t begin with whisky ambitions. It began, as many good ideas do, with a career pivot and a question.

Around the early 2000s, co-founder Vincent was looking for something more tangible, something rooted in the earth rather than behind a desk. That search led him to barley, and in 2004, to founding one of the first craft breweries in the Anjou region.

At the time, France wasn’t exactly synonymous with beer. The country had a long history of brewing, but by the early 2000s, most of it had consolidated into industrial production. The modern craft movement was just beginning to stir, and La Piautre was part of that first wave.

But even then, something didn’t quite add up.

Barley was being grown locally, shipped across the country to be malted, then shipped back again to be brewed. The ingredients were local, but the process wasn’t. That disconnect planted the seed for what came next.

Building a malthouse to close the loop

If you want to get closer to your ingredients, there’s one obvious step: take control of them.

In 2014, La Piautre built its own floor malting facility, reviving a traditional method that had largely disappeared in France in favor of industrial-scale production. It wasn’t the easiest route, or the most efficient, but it was the most direct way to understand what was happening to the grain at every stage.

That decision changed everything.

Today, the distillery is fully self-sufficient for its malt, while the brewery operates at around 85%, supplementing only where specialty malts require higher kilning temperatures. Barley comes from a network of about a dozen local farms, each with its own quirks, its own challenges, and its own influence on the final product.

And because they malt everything themselves, those differences don’t get averaged out. They get worked with.

Each harvest is tested, adjusted, and handled on its own terms. Germination times shift. Processes adapt. What might be a problem in an industrial system becomes part of the identity here.

It’s slower, more hands-on, and occasionally frustrating. It’s also the point.

From brewing to distilling, almost by accident

Distillation wasn’t part of the original plan; it started as a precaution. When Vincent first began floor malting, there were concerns about consistency, about whether the malt would behave as expected. So the early batches were distilled, just in case.

By around 2014, La Piautre had transitioned from brewing alone into brewing and distilling, carrying that same curiosity and process-driven mindset into whisky production.

And importantly, they didn’t abandon the brewery to do it. The two still exist side by side, informing each other in ways that feel intentional rather than incidental.

Brewing influences, but whisky on its own terms

There’s an easy assumption to make when a distillery has a brewery attached: that whisky is just distilled beer. Technically true, practically less so.

The recipes are different. The goals are different. Whisky ferments run for about a week, longer than many traditional Scotch fermentations, sitting somewhere between brewing and distilling conventions. The aim is to build flavor, not just alcohol yield.

And while they use standard distillers yeast for now, the brewing mindset still shows up in how they think about fermentation. There’s an awareness of how process shapes flavor, and a willingness to experiment, even if the results take years to fully understand.

It’s a distillery informed by brewing, but not constrained by it.

A Loire Valley whisky without pretending to be wine

It’s impossible to talk about the Loire Valley without talking about wine.

But La Piautre doesn’t try to turn whisky into wine, or borrow too heavily from its conventions. Instead, the influence is more structural than stylistic.

Barley is sourced locally. Production follows the rhythm of the harvest. Good years mean more spirit. Difficult years mean less. It’s a vineyard mindset applied to grain.

Casks follow a similar philosophy. French oak from nearby regions, ex-wine casks like Chenin Blanc, and ex-Cognac barrels form the backbone of maturation. Wine casks, they’ve learned, are best used with restraint, often as finishes rather than full-term maturation.

The goal isn’t to imitate wine, but to acknowledge where the whisky is being made.

Distillation the traditional way

On the distillation side, La Piautre leans into tradition, though not necessarily the kind most whisky drinkers are used to.

Their setup centers around Charentais-style stills, more commonly associated with Cognac production. Direct wood firing, hands-on operation, and a cutting technique inspired by Cognac methods rather than Scotch conventions.

There’s an added layer here too. Instead of the familiar heads, hearts, and tails, they work with a fourth intermediate fraction, recycling different portions into different stages of future distillations.

It’s a system that reflects how they learned, and one that continues to evolve as they refine their approach.

Smoke, peat, and curiosity

If there’s a throughline to La Piautre, it’s experimentation rooted in opportunity.

That shows up clearly in their approach to smoke. Peat came first, almost by accident, sourced locally through an importer. When that supply disappeared, they found another, this time from a French peat bog in the west.

Along the way, they’ve experimented with different woods as well, beech, birch, alder, even oak, each bringing its own character, not all of it immediately successful. Some batches sit in barrels waiting to soften. Others have already made their way into releases. All of them add to the broader understanding of what their whisky can be.

Aging underground, literally

Perhaps the most distinctive part of La Piautre’s process happens after distillation.

A portion of their whisky matures in troglodyte caves near Montsoreau, natural limestone cellars carved into the landscape, cool, humid, and difficult to access.

The conditions are radically different from their standard warehouses. Lower evaporation, more stable alcohol levels, and a flavor profile that took time to understand. Early results were challenging. Mineral, unfamiliar, not always easy to integrate.

Over time, those cave-aged whiskies have found their place, often blended or finished in ways that highlight their strengths rather than fight them. It’s not the easiest way to age whisky, but as we saw when interviewing fellow French producer Michel Couvreur, it might be one of the most interesting.

Where they fit in French whisky

French whisky is still defining itself. Some producers come from wine. Others from Cognac. Some are building scale. Others are staying deliberately small. La Piautre sits in a different lane altogether.

A brewery, a malthouse, and a distillery all in one place. A process that starts as close to the field as possible. A willingness to experiment, but within a framework that always comes back to where they are.

They’re not trying to define French whisky.

They’re trying to define their version of it.

From the field to the glass

At the end of the conversation, what stuck with me wasn’t any single technique or experiment. It was the throughline. Barley grown nearby. Malted in-house. Brewed, distilled, and aged with a constant awareness of place. Not as a marketing term, but as a practical reality.

It’s slower. It’s more complicated. It doesn’t always go to plan. But when it works, it tells a story you can actually taste.

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La Piautre