Loire Valley

Domaine Didier Dagueneau - Louis-Benjamin Dagueneau

• Sauvignons for cellaring: Dagueneau is a reference for Sauvignon wines built to age: ‘Silex’ and ‘Pur Sang’ undergo long maturation in wood. La RVF emphasises their ability to evolve, beyond twenty years in great vintages.
• From sidecar racing to a teaching barrel: Yet Didier had come from sidecar racing; two accidents had led him towards wine. His precision extended to a teaching barrel with transparent walls, where he showed new employees how to stir the lees and clean barrels.
• Succession and leaving the appellation: Louis-Benjamin continued after his death in 2008. Not all recent cuvées are Pouilly-Fumé: departure from the appellation is documented from the 2017 vintage.

Domaine Richard Leroy

• The choice of dry chenin: « Les Rouliers » and « Les Noëls de Montbenault » are Richard Leroy’s two dry chenins, now Vin de France. Their place in his range comes from a decisive choice: he abandoned intensely sweet wines to devote himself to dry whites.
• Reciprocal learning in a graphic novel: This former banker settled on a few hectares of chenin in Anjou. He then introduced cartoonist Étienne Davodeau to his work, while Davodeau introduced him to comics in return. Les Ignorants grew from this mutual learning: the reader follows vineyard work as well as the discovery of the cartoonist’s craft.

Clos Rougeard

Loire · Saumur-Champigny and Saumur

• The Foucault brothers’ patience: The Foucault brothers built Clos Rougeard’s identity around gentle vinification and long maturation. The wine spends more than two years in barrels, then several years in bottle in the tuffeau cellars.
• Three cabernet francs and a chenin: In Saumur-Champigny, « Le Clos » blends fifteen parcels, while « Les Poyeux » and « Le Bourg » come from specific sites. « Brézé » is the estate’s white: a chenin in the Saumur appellation.
• Fruit, finesse and depth: « Le Clos » shows crisp fruit, delicate flowers and spice. « Les Poyeux » emphasises finesse, while « Le Bourg » offers fleshier fruit and a dense body.

Domaine Bernard Baudry

Loire · Chinon

• A Chinon for each soil: Bernard, followed by Matthieu Baudry, reveals cabernet franc through Chinon’s different soils. They vinify the sites separately to preserve their individual characters.
• The old vines of Les Grézeaux: « Les Grézeaux » comes from the estate’s oldest vines, around seventy years old and planted on gravel. The cuvée is aged in concrete, without spending time in barrels.
• Dense and silky: « Les Grézeaux », a red Chinon, presents a dense, concentrated cabernet franc with a silky feel. In great years, it can age for ten years and longer.

Domaine de la Taille aux Loups

Loire · Montlouis-sur-Loire

• The grapes supply all the sugar: With « Triple Zéro », Jacky Blot rejected all three possible additions of sugar: to enrich the must, create the bubbles or sweeten the wine. This sparkling chenin completes the fermentation of the grapes’ natural sugar in bottle.
• Chenin as a dry white: Jacky and then Jean-Philippe Blot also made dry whites the signature of La Taille aux Loups. « Rémus » 2024 combines several Montlouis parcels, with vines aged fifty to eighty years, and ferments in barrels.
• A delicate bubble: « Triple Zéro », tasted in 2024: delicate bubbles, a rounded mid-palate and precise expression, with a supple texture.

Domaine Henri Bourgeois

Loire · Sancerre

• Oysters beneath the vines: On the Côte de Chavignol, the marls, a mixture of clay and limestone, contain small fossilised oysters. These are the soils where the Bourgeois family grows the sauvignon for « Jadis ».
• Time on the lees: The white « Jadis » undergoes long ageing in large, previously used casks. The lees, natural fermentation deposits, are stirred back into suspension to develop this sancerre’s roundness and complexity.
• A generous, aromatic sancerre: The white « Jadis »: green mango, citrus, honey and minty nuances. The generous, rounded palate retains freshness and a long finish.

Domaine Vacheron

Loire · Sancerre

• Inspiration from Burgundy: Influenced by their experiences in Burgundy, the Vacherons chose to vinify the lieux-dits separately. After the pinot noir « Belle Dame », they created « Les Romains » in 1997.
• Sauvignon on flint: « Les Romains » comes from a flinty site in Sancerre. This cuvée has become one of the signatures of the estate’s parcel-by-parcel approach.
• Smoky, citrus-led and incisive: « Les Romains » shows smoky and stony notes, with delicate citrus reminiscent of grapefruit. Its freshness is incisive.