Gift set: AOC Sancerre

The village of Sancerre, perched on its peak above the Loire, was long a land of Pinot Noir: it is the red wine that made its reputation and fueled its rise. Then, at the end of the 19th century, phylloxera destroyed almost the entire vineyard, and the revival came through Sauvignon Blanc, which was particularly well-suited to the terroir. The AOC was obtained in 1936 for white wines, under the name Sancerre-Sauvignon, and then in 1959 for the reds and rosés, which restored the Pinot Noir to its rightful place. Today, the appellation remains overwhelmingly white, accounting for around 80% of production.

The vineyard occupies a succession of hills on the left bank of the Loire, between 200 and 400 meters in altitude, across fourteen communes and approximately 3,000 hectares. What makes it unique is a true mosaic of three soils, each with its own near-legendary vineyard sites:

The "terres blanches," or clay-limestone marls covering about 40% of the appellation, produce full-bodied and robust wines, closed in their youth, with high aging potential. This is the soil of Chavignol and its Monts Damnés, a village as famous for its crottin cheese as for its wines. The "caillottes," hard and very stony limestone, cover an equivalent portion and produce fine, fruity wines that are more tender and quicker to mature, found around Sancerre, Verdigny, Bué, or Sury-en-Vaux. Finally, on the flint soils—about 15% of the appellation, located mostly to the east in Ménétréol and Saint-Satur—we find wines with floral aromas, often associated with that famous gunflint note.

Three soils, three characters, one single grape variety. It is this ability to condense across a few hillsides all the diversity that other appellations take dozens of kilometers to display that has made Sancerre the global benchmark for Sauvignon, and its best "terres blanches" sites capable, in great vintages, of aging with nobility.

To judge for yourself, we have brought together six bottles signed by three essential winemakers of the Sancerre region: